Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1870-05-12
The Liberfine Press.

The rapid increase of flash and trashy
news prints in our country is alarming.
The evil is creeping into the daily city
and country press under the sanction Of
public sentiment, under the guise and ar
gument that they must be made sensa-
tional and pander to the purient tastes of
the community to be successful. This is
simply saying to the world, "We are
willing to sell body and soul, and deprave
the taste of our fellow beings for dollars
and cents" We will subscribe to no
such sentiment. The daily and weekly
press can succeed and prosper in an hon
orable, independent, high minded course,
above all purilities, scandal and vulgar
isms. AS public journalist, we never
have, and while it is our fortune to be a
conductor of the press, we do not intend
to pander to the vulgar taste and low
blaekguardism of the community, al
though we have often been solicited to do
it, and have as sternly refused to be the
instrument of making the press the vehi-
Gle of scandal, Gbertinism and vulgarity.
Our attention has been called to this sub
ject in an article by George W. Curtis,
who deals sharply and shrewdly in Har-
per with the evil and vice of hbertinism
in journalism, so Extensively illustrated of
late years by the San and New York
Herald, among dailies and such pubhca-
tions as Leslie's and Days D0iagS among
the weeklies.
The truth is, he says, that the public
wants entertainment in a newspaper. It
is not news that it seeks, nor didactic mo-
rality, and there is a large part of the
public that delights in personal scandal.
The same curiosity that carries old peo-
pie to look at the dead body of person
whom they never knew, or that draws
the young people to crowd a church to
see the marriage of those in whom they
have no interest, whets the appetities of
thousands of readers for every kind of
gossip. Now, if shrewd and honorable
editors make an interesting paper without
pandering to the blackguard taste of the
public, they detach from the support of
the blackguard papers those who buy
them because they find them more enter
tanning than any others; and thus the
line will be drawn. The blackguard pa
pers will not be ruined, indeed, for they
can always count upon fellow feeling in
certain part of the public. But honora-
BILE men who become journalists will pre-
fer to make money honorably, and will
decline the other kind of service. In this
way the real dignity and worth of the
press may be advanced, while just in the
degree that the libertinism increases
the character and civilizing power of
the press will decline. The touch of
the libertine press soils every cause as it
dishUnors every person. Its advocacy is
| felt to be either venal or sensational. Its
object is that of the pirate and the adven-
turer-to make money at any price, and
Ito give it's baseness the finest name.
Among truly sagacious and self-respect-
| ing journals the hbertine newspaper is
what sharper and a pander is among
gentlemen. He affects to resemble them.
But he listens at keyholes. He cheats at
cards. He lies and swoars. He swaggers
and cringes. He is bully and a coward.
Gentlemen avoid him and do not name
him. 1t is in this way that the encroach-
ments of the ibertine press are to be op-
posed. The active work must be done by
the editors. If they denounce and then
embrace, they must not be surprised that
the public embraces without denouncing.
They must show that libertinism is not
essential to the liveliest and most attract
i've of newspapers, and then the black
guard journals will go to their own place
and patrons.