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Show Mr. Waterson On Journalism JH LAST Tuesday night the Canadian Publishers' j association gave a dinner at Toronto, at M which Col. Watterson of the Louisville H Courier-Journal, was the principal speaker. His H theme was journalism, and his speech, of course, B was most Interesting. do not quite agree with H all he said, though with most of it. He declared IB H that yellow journalism must go. We are not so H sureof that, at least not for a good while yet, be- H cause the conditions that caused its birth and H made it first prosperous, still fill a wide field, and H that trait in human nature which has no elements H within it "to exalt mortals to the skies," has still H often a disposition to be glad when it sees "an- H gels pulled down." Cowards and sneaks and souls H filled with envy and malice delight to see anyone H abused, and the higher the character of him who H is abused, the better are they suited. While this Hj is so there are plenty of men willing, for coin, to B run newspapers to oblige them. m The Colonel hopes the time will come when H the journalistic branch will be no less accepted H and honorable than that of physics, divinity and M jurisprudence. That ought to be the case now, for there are B quack doctors, shyster lawyers and now and then B a clergyman who fails to convince thoughtful peo- M pie that he ever had a divine call to preach the B gospel. M The Colonel says the journalistic profession H "has no code of ethics or system of self-restraint, H or self-respect." There is no written code, sure- B ly, but there is an unwritten one. Colonel Wat- B terson has carried one in his mind and has been fl controlled by it all his life. Because he has and H has practiced It together with his great abilities, H is why, in men's thoughts, he is singled out as B one of the great editors. The real editor holds his journal as a trust, B and is careful never to betray it. B The Colonel thinks journalism has retrograded M from its ancient prestige; that publishers have, H as is said in Kentucky, "lost in bottom what B may have been gained in speed." j That is partly true, partly wrong. Mount I Shasta is much more impressive than Mount Whitney, though Whitney is far the higher and greater mountain. The secret is that Shasta Is a butte rising abruptly from the plain, Whitney is surrounded by peaks only a little less impos- H ing than Itself and its majesty in that way is B , dwarfed. If it was isolated and sprang out of B ' the plains, only a little above tide-water, like old B Shasta, it would be a world's wonder. When B Horace Greeley and George D. Prentice were great B editors, news from Europe was from one to two B months old, a speech in congress was days and B weeks reaching its readers, and two or three col- B umns a week from the great editor, were enough B ' to impress all country readers of their strength , and power. Now a hundred thousand men, and Hk the ubiquitous telegraph are all at work to fur- B nish next morning the world's history of the pre- H . vious day to gentlemen, that they, between muf- B; fins and coffee may catch on a run as it were B a synopsis of the news. Any single writer is lia- B' ble to be lost in that company. Then again the B readers are not half as thorough as they former- B ly were. Then, in modern- s a great many B newspapers are controlled 1 .he counting house, Hr B and as a rule, the bookkeepers and managers are not great editors. Still some papers have great Influence. There is here and there an editor like Colonel Watter-son, Watter-son, whose character shines out through the types and cannot be obscured, and a journal so edited is a school-master, counsellor and support to all the adjacent community, and such a paper counts more for the shaping of the thoughts of the young and in steadying the thoughts of the old, in a community, than would "an army with banners." |
