The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1853-08-27
The Southern Press.

loud complaints against the Northern ploaf''
and hitter denunciations of the course pun
xued nv Northern Journals. Inc sou'nefh
r.ners saw and often with justice, that the
press at the North is devoted eAei'si'et ~
Northern affairs, and that the interests Vi 'i'e
South are forgotten altogether we are con
...r.;ned To admit the fact, but cannot blame,
the Northern journals for the course which.
they have thought proper to pursue. In iact,
Northern papers have no option in the mat
4er They rely like every body else, in a great
5arree. upon their exchanges for news and
the Southern press, instead of giving Southern
facts and Southern news, contents itself with
publishing heavy columns OF intelligence
from the North, while the editors studiously
-ove,,ook the facts which occur under their
ewn noses.
We receive daily some two hundred ex-
changes, and make it matter of conscience
.o Iook them over But we must say that a
large majority of the South and Southwestern
naners are entirely barren of news, and as
worthless, for our purposes, as if the white
manner had been sent to us. The whsie sys-
fem is wrong, and needs amendment. We
take up. at random, papers of the South, out
of the cities, and the same lack of Judgment
and energy is conspicuous in nearly all of
them One might serve as specimen OF the
whole. As a leader, we often tnd fiamng
piece of emptiness on Southern Rights
the DELICATE offspring of grammar and die
tionarv "got 'twixt sleeping and waking,
concocted by some nascentlawyer, who seeks
to sheathe his maiden pen in the heart of a
subject that he knows not great deal
about, and which just now, as people are
learning to act more and talk less, has become
a lore.
1t would be well forthe conductors Off many
Southern papers to remember that nothing
can be so interesting to their readers as &C.
counts of occurrences happening in their own
Immediate vicinity. Instead of these, we find
papers, hailng from the interior of Alabama
or Mississippi, with no single line of local in
J telligence, while the shocking accident
or lawful catastrophe" which has been CO.
e. pied from some Northern print, is set forth in
all its details. They complain of the aggres-
sions of the Northern press, and yet in every
number of their papers, acknowledge abso-
lutte and unqualified dependence upon it
, Their selections are Northern, every thing
about them is Northern, excepting the want
of energy, which shows itself in every
= column. They complain of the influx of
( Northern papers, and of limited patronage,
but forget that they neglect the conditions on
oh }ba ,ofr of =
ever depend. They devote columns to the
prospectus ofthis or that Northern Magazine,
or Family paper, published in New York
or Philadelphia, which like Peter Pindar's
razors is "made to SELL and as each number
arrives, with its "weak, washy, everlasting
food of stale jokes and staler sentiment, in
all the glory of wood cut Illustrations and
gamboge and carmine denominations profess
ing to be fashion plates the model South
'ern editor goes into ecstacies, and declare:
that it is splendid affair" and "highly
creditable to The unparalleled enterprise an(
,liberality of the publishers, Messrs. Humbus
--& CO."
No wonder that Southern papers complain
: of limited patronage. Let them first deSerc
at, and the patronage will follow. Newspa
,pers, like every other article, must suit tn,
market. Get up something worth reading, an(
thousands will pay freely for the privilege o
reading it. But once establish in the minds o
men the idea that you are slow COACH
and fit only to chronicle mammoth squash
ses,'' or last weeks suicides, thousand miles
off, and nobody will care for you or your pa
per. If you publish nothing but hashed up
extracts from Northern journals, what right
have you to complain if your neighbors pre-
fer the Northern papers to yours? Adver-
Users will fall off, and consider that there
could be no surer way to keep thing pro-
found secret, than to publish it in your paper
We mean to make no wholesale denuncia-
tions, and even while we speak thus boldly,
more than one honorable exception occurs to
rs; but OF the Southern press generally, we
do wish that we could make more honora
BILE mention. Apathy, Incidence, lack of en-
terprise and industry, carelessness of every
thing, except of getting the paper Out" arc
visible IN all directions The country editor
beyond the mountains, instead of telling u
what has happened within the last week IL
nus vicinity, the account of which would III
terest every one of our readers, and his own
and which we would pay money to know
about, tells us very gravely of steamboa
explosion, or the like, which we got by tele
graph, and published fortnight ago. Their
must be a radical change in the character O
the Southern press, before we can enter o
equal terms with other States, upon the ca
reer of Improvement. o
The Northern press, with all its faults, is a
engine of power. 1t has taken the lead i
every improvement and every enterprise Tn
thought which springs to-day crude and Il
defined in the mind of an editor, is flung forth
and thousands examine and sift and conside
IL. The result is progress. The press ha
done more for the North than any one apepc
which could be named, and will continue =
do SO while men retain the faculty of think
ing. 1t has built more cities canals and rail
reads, than all the legislators in the land :
How are towns built up business directed
10 particular points, and prosperity insure
Y 70 rising communities BY the press. vb;o,
talks twapfv or