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Show "Opportunities of the Mississippi Valley for the Journalist" By LAFAYETTE YOUNG, Editor Des Moines Capital I-' 'I I could take every journalist and future journalist jour-nalist in this room and locate him in the Mississippi valley, where he'd grow to usefulness to himself and to community and country, where he'd enjoy the respect re-spect of the community and self-respect, where he'd have his flivver, and more books than anybody else in the town, where they'd send him to the state and national na-tional conventions, and where he'd be a trustee of the church that he rightly or wrongly belongs to, where, m short, he'd be a factor and not a nonentity known only to his landlord once a month, and then only because once a month the big city landlord raises the rent. ( A thousand newspapers in the valley today could be in better hands. Shall some of them some day be in your hands? I hope so, for I believe in schools of journalism. Education for his work never hurts any worker. A thousand newspapers in the valley where today there are poor ones or none would be of more value to the valley than the same number of chambers cham-bers of commerce.. Think it over. My advice to all young journalists, the girls as well as the boys, is have your own shop, hang out your own sign, be somebody, be known to somebody besides that landlord. Engage in a work of immeasurable value to hundreds of communities, but, if you go to one of them, you must cling to your energy and not allow it to be swallowed up by the elements which may surround you. You will have trials. Journalism is a treadmill. It's work or starve. You'll never know what life is until your paper comes C. 0. D. That's a great education ! In journalism your calling is more than half an affection for the public. It isn't all getting dollars. The first element in a good editor is a good heart. If they'd had a free, unshackled press in Europe tSiere'd have been no European war. |