JOURNALISM
What is a journal? What is a journalist? What is journalism? Is it a trade, a commercial business, or a profession? Our word journal comes from the French. It has different forms in the several Romantic languages, and all go back to the Latin diurnalis, daily, from dies, a day. Diurnal and diary are derived from the same source. The first journals were in fact diaries, daily records of happenings, compiled often for the pleasure and use of the compiler alone, sometimes for monarchs or statesmen or friends; later to be circulated for the information of a circle of readers, or distributed in copies to subscribers among the public at large. These were the first newspapers. While we still in a specific sense speak of daily newspapers as journals, the term is often enlarged to comprise nearly all publications that are issued periodically and distributed to subscribers.
A journalist is one whose business is publishing a journal (or more than one), or editing a journal, or writing for journals, especially a person who is regularly employed in some responsible directing or creative work on a journal, as a publisher, editor, writer, reporter, critic, etc. This use of the word is comparatively modern, and it is commonly restricted to persons connected with daily or weekly newspapers. Many older newspaper men scout it, preferring to be known as publishers, editors, writers, or contributors. Journalism, however, is a word that is needed for its comprehensiveness. It includes the theory, the business, and the art of producing newspapers in all departments of the work. Hence, any school of professional journalism must be presumed to comprise in its scope and detail of instruction the knowledge that is essential to the making and conduct of newspapers. It must have for its aim the ideal newspaper which is ideally perfect in every department.
Journalism, so far as it is more than mere reporting and mere money making, so far as it undertakes to frame and guide opinion, to educate the thought and instruct the conscience of the community, by editorial comment, interpretation and homily, based on the news, is under obligation to the community to be truthful, sincere, and uncorrupted; to enlighten the understanding, not to darken counsel; to uphold justice and honor with unfailing resolution, to champion morality and the public welfare with intelligent zeal, to expose wrong and antagonize it with unflinching courage. If journalism has any mission in the world besides and beyond the dissemination of news, it is a mission of maintaining a high standard of thought and life in the community it serves, strengthening all its forces that make for righteousness and beauty and fair growth.
This is not solely, nor peculiarly, the office of what is called the editorial page. To be most influential, it must be a consistent expression in all departments, giving the newspaper a totality of power in such aim. This is the right ideal of journalism whenever it is considered as more than a form of commercialism. No newspaper attains its ideal in completeness. If it steadfastly works toward attainment, it gives proof of its right to be. The advancing newspaper, going on from good to better in the substance of its character and the ability of its endeavor, is the type of journalism which affords hope for the future. And one strong encouragement to fidelity in a high motive is public appreciation.
—The Boston Herald.
EXERCISES
Give as complete an answer as possible to any two of the following questions:—
1. Why do fish bite better on a cloudy day than on a bright one?
2. Why should we study history?