The Pine Bush Herald's editor and proprietor is George W. Jamison, a former school teacher and an educated man and good writer.
Monroe has the Ramapo Valley Gazette (started March, 1908), with J. B. Gregory as publisher and proprietor.
The Orange County Record at Washingtonville has Montanye Rightmyer as editor and manager.
JUST A FEW REFLECTIONS.
Inspecting the field of Orange County journalism one sees the Glebe strewn with wrecks of ambitious effort, and sympathy goes out to the disappointed strugglers, they of tattered aims and ambitions; of immolated hopes and desires.
Looking at the files and samples of the papers of to-day and the relics of early journalism in Orange County, one's pride over progress in certain lines is mixed with humiliation. The old papers were printed with artistic ideals. The type was neat, the page was pleasing to the eye, and the printer showed evidence of intelligence. Words were divided at the ends of lines with some idea of method and reason; the break-lines were made neat. The old-time compositor who would have divided "campaign" on the "p" and run "aign" over, or worse yet, made a break-line of "ed," "ly," or a single or even two numerals, would have been laughed out of the office by his companions. The writer will never forget an incident in his own very early career at the "case," when he divided "Messrs," running the "srs." over into the next line. It was a long time before he heard the last of that break, and it was never repeated. To-day one sees all sorts of divisions—anywhere, everywhere; it matters not whether it is on the vowel or the syllable or between—it all goes. The outrage on neatness of a single numeral making a full break-line is no longer confined to the "blacksmith" who was aiming to gel a "phat line," but is seen in the work turned out from the marvelous Mergenthaler Linotype, the excuse being that it "takes too much time" to space and adjust the line neatly. This same excuse is given for a lot of other abominations—really intolerable and vexatious—that one sees in the machine-set newspaper. Really, if modern mechanical appliances are sweeping the "art preservative" back to the most crude and primitive specimens of workmanship, there is cause for deep regret. Neatness should go hand in hand with improved methods and aids.
The old-time newspaper was not a hand-bill. It was a model of taste and neatness. The idea of the average editor, publisher and printer today seems to be how he can make his paper the most hideous to the eye, and to the aesthetic senses. Big, black type for headlines, and glaring, sensational, spectacular, flaring "big heads" are the order of the day.
Compare these modern newspapers with almost any of those printed one hundred, fifty, forty, thirty years ago. The contrast is so markedly in favor of the papers printed under the old regime that one who really loves the art is disgusted with modern printers and printing as applied to newspapers.
This criticism, it should be borne in mind, is made with reference to newspapers, and not of "job work." The man who is getting out bill-heads, letter-heads, etc., is constantly striving for neatness, and his work is a great advance over that done by his predecessors in the "job department." This is as it should be.
The modern job printer is an artist; the modern newspaper printer a botch. The printer may blame the editor or publisher, but that does not excuse his vile distortions and caricatures on the art. The publisher or editor may blame the "popular demand" for his efforts to cater to the sensational and hideous; but that does not help the matter any, nor does it tend to elevate the art of newspaper printing.