Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-10-08

The TeleerRph and the Associated Press.
Wear not much addicted to complaint
and are inclined to bear Inconvenience and
even annoyance good while before becom-
ing querulous. We have done so with the
Telegraph Company until we deem it high
time to express our disapprobation of the
peculiar manner in which its directors man
age or mismanage its affairs, SO far as the
Associated Press is concerned.
Every few days we find something in the
dispatches that ought not to be there, either
because of its insignifcance or advertising
character and when we receive our mails,
we discover really Important events that
have been omitted altogether. Indeed it has
become common in the newspaper offices to
look for important news anywhere else but
in the telegraph column.
Hardly day passes that we do not pub
lish a telegram of so little consequence that
we would not mention it as an item of in
telligence; and sometimes we have column
of triviaiities that our news-editor would
either condense into an eighth Of the space
or omit altogether. So much so has this be-
come the case that many persons will not
read the telegraph at all. No wonder; who
desires to peruse so much matter to gain 50
little information2
The original design, however much the in-
tention may have altered, of the telegraph
was to mention briefly events of Importance
and those only; not to inform us that John
Jones, in a country town in Indiana, had
broken his arm; or that William Smiths
grocery, in Massachusetts, village, had been
robbed of four wooden hams-instances that
are no exaggerations, as we could show,
were it necessary, by reference to our files
for the past six months.
Where examples of omission and commits
sion are SO numerous, it would be tedious to
mention them; but we will take the latest
at hand as a specimen Of telegraphic enter
prise and punctuality.
Our Saturday evenings dispatches fur
nished us with an account of the explosion
of the steamer Bayou City in Texas (which
wss cancelled of course), when the account
by mail reached us, on Thursday evening,
and the particulars were published in Friday
morning edition of the DAILY Press. Surely,
this is news by lightning with a vengeance.
The eleOtric fluid must have taken passage
that time on q fiat-boat bound up stream
The instance just cited, however, is not
rare: we could mention a score, if we saw
fit.
Apropos of this, the telegraph operators,
every once in q while, send intelligence
from the extreme South, particularly Louisi-
ana and Texas, over the lines from New
York and Washington, when we receive the
New Orleans and Texas papers here from one
to three, and even four, days before they
reach either of the Eastern cities named.
The operators seem so much prepessessed in
favor of and absorbed by, the East that they
forget there is any such region as the great
West.
This is shown by the fact that we are daily
RECALLED here by all the little incidents and
insignificant occurrences in the Eastern
cities, especially New York-shall we never
cease to learn about this center of egotism
and concentration Of gasconade Pas if they
were matters of moment. Here, however,
some thing may occur of general interest
and decided Importance, but the telegraph
is silent: it is of no consequence because it
did not happen in New York. If John
Morrissey or Billy Mulligan, or some other
brutal rufian gets drunk, and talks of
punching the head" of one of his fra
ternity, we must have lengthy telegram at
once, gotten up in the sensational style; but
if some quiet and intellectual gentleman is
shot down in the streets of Cincinnati, it is
not deemed worthy of mention by the
Thales of the Telegraph Company.
Here let us mention that the operators
seem to have an inordinate fondness for men
tioning the death of all the nobodies in the
land in the most amiable and pathetic man
ner. "Death Of Distinguished Citizen"
over dispatch, means the decease of some
obscure individual, of whom no one, unless
his immediate family, ever before heard.
Mr.. Robinson, one of the partners of a
green grocery in the city of Where-the-
devil-is-it, or Mr.. Brown, the chief proprie-
tor Of peanut stand in the metropolis of
MudholeVille, may be, and doubtless are,
very worthy persons in their way; but we
can not see that the public are particularly
interested in their history, or that they care
whether they are in Heaven or-any other
place.
All these causes, combined with the dis
connected manner of sending in dispatches
most puzzling to our compositors-the care
less writing, barbarous English, inappro-
pirate heads, and such dates as Hamilton,
Franklin, Jefferson, without a word as to
the State; leaving it matter of conjecture
whether the town is in Maine or California
are, we think, sufficient to justify complaint
and we therefore make it now for the nu-
merous grievances we have suffered at any
time between the present and the last ten
years.