There is a great hubbub once in a while in courts and among lawyers about what they are pleased to style trial by newspaper, and it is astonishing that before a court can reach any important case, the conduct of the case, its merits and its probable conclusion have been so well foreshadowed by the press that interest in the trial itself is comparatively slight. So general is the resort to newspapers for information and opinion, that a short time ago when one of the famous boodle aldermen of New York was called up for trial, it was impossible, under the jury laws of the State, to find even one single competent juror in a city the population of which was one million and a half. Everybody had formed opinions, and the opinions generally agreed. They had seen the testimony—seen it discussed from all sides and all points—discussed so clearly, that they had no reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused. And all this they saw in the newspapers.
It begins to look as if the time might come when lawyers, courts, jurors, judges, would all be supplanted by the editor, and as if soon afterward teachers and preachers also might feel occasion to shake in their shoes. There is no danger in such an event of the editor becoming conceited. He always has a regulating principle close at hand. It is right in the counting-room at the book-keeper’s desk. The public can change its opinion of a newspaper as quickly as it can of a political candidate; and when it does, the editor knows of it at once by a class of figures that never are allowed to lie.
Because all this is true—and everybody admits that it is—a great many men of more ambition than brains are attempting to be full-fledged editors at a single bound. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Angels, who have unequalled opportunities of knowing the true inwardness of things, would think twice, or oftener, before attempting to be editors, without first going through a laborious apprenticeship. It seems the easiest thing in the world for a man who has a lot of money of his own, or, better still, some money which belongs to other people, to start a newspaper and air his own opinions—which consist principally of partialities and prejudices—but the end is sure to be disastrous. Many daily papers have started in our large cities and reached a large temporary circulation, which afterward disappeared in the mists of oblivion and left nothing but debts behind. A successful newspaper is the result of natural growth and accretion.
Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, says: “The result of any newspaper enterprise depends upon the character of the man who engages in it—his capacity to discern correctly and to adapt his paper to the wants and needs of the audience it is meant to serve.”
Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, and now Minister to France, says: “Every great newspaper represents an intellectual, a moral and a material growth—the accretion of successive efforts from year to year—until it has become an institution and a power. It is the voice of the power that the twenty or thirty years of honest dealing with the public and just discussion of current questions have given.”
Horace Greeley, the founder of Mr. Reid’s paper, said truthfully that “The office of a newspaper is first to give the history of its time, and afterward to deduce such theories or truths from it as shall be of universal application.” Can any mere peddler of news and scandals, or any man whose sole gratification is a desire to see his own impressions in print, live up to this standard?
Conscience, application and money, as well as intellect, is necessary to the successful management of a newspaper. George W. Childs, editor of the Philadelphia Ledger, snatched the sympathies of all decent members of the editorial fraternity when he said: “Few persons who peruse the morning papers think of the amount of capital invested, the labor involved, and the care and anxiety incident to the preparation of the sheet which is served so regularly.” Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun, says: “The legal responsibility of newspapers is a reality, but their moral responsibility is greater and more important.” E. L. Godkin, editor of the New York Evening Post, says: “News is an impalpable thing—an airy abstraction; to make it a merchantable commodity, somebody has to collect it, condense it, and clothe it in language, and its quality depends upon the character of the men employed in doing this.”
George William Curtis, editor of Harper’s Weekly, admitting the tremendous influence of the press, voices the sentiment of successful editors everywhere when he says: “If the newspaper is the school of the people, and if upon popular education and intelligence the success and prosperity of popular government depends, there is no function in society which requires more conscience as well as ability.”
Evidently newspaper men who amount to anything realize their responsibilities. The press is not “all right,” but it seems as far from wrong as conscience and common sense can make any earthly institution.