The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1872-07-24
Needed Reform in Journalism.

Another reform, which we may fairly
expect, will be shown i'll a better COM
prelension of the scope of the news,
which is the life-blood Of the paper.
1t is possible to fill up the largest
metropolitan sheet with record of
actual news which shall be simply
revolving; yet you shall go over it,
line By line, and put your finger on no
paragraph to which you can fairly oh
ject as not part of the news of the
day. Led by its hand, you STROLL the
world around, and gather every vice
on Christian ground. 1t is possible,
again to fill the same sheet with neither
record of actual news which shall be
simply respectable, and unreadable;
yet you shall 90 over it, line by line,
and put your finger on 10 paragraph
which does not convey genuine infor-
nation about the actual events of the
day.
Once again, it is possible to fill the
same sheet with record so compound
ed of that which most freshly and
widely interests your average consti-
tuency, that you shall have neglected
no pressing topic of the times; shall
have fairly given your readers as
minute a glance as their occupations
will permit, at the salient features of
the worlds progress for the day /; and
yet shall have cast the lights in your
picture on what q gentleman wants to
see, and the shades on what he only
sees because he must. Now the vicious
newspaper pays, and the only way to
make the other kind stand the com
petition is by making it equally inter
esting. Many q daily journal is loaded
down with sucll feculence that it should
only be handled in your homes with
pair of tongs, not because its proprie-
tor really prefers to minister to mems
baser instead of their better wants,
but because he has found the one way
of making money, and hasn't vet hit
Oh the other. It is easy to fill his
columns with prurient stories of crime
from the police courts; itgis harder to
find men who can make the details of
politics, the wonders of our material
development, the progrers Of thought,
rs readily and certainly interesting,
But we shall get larger ideas of news.
We shall come to regard it as some
thing other than daily chapter of ac-
cidents and crimes more even than a
detail of public meetings, % history of
legislation and the courts, a record of
political intrigue at home, and diplo-
matte complication abroad. We shall
come to embrace in it far more gen.
orally and Systematically every new
and significant fact affecting tie social,
political, intellectual, or moral move
ments Of the world and to compre-
bend that this world is composed of
two sexes, the one demanding a recog-
milton of its tastes and wants as we'll
as the other. We shall learn to win
now all the vast mass of facts which
the mails over all continents and the
wires under all seas are perpetually
bearing to the newspaper doors. We
shall learn to reject the most Of these
as worthless or inconseqnent; to adjust
the perspective of the rest more in ac-
cordaDce with their intrinsic impor-
lance, not their fuss; to divine what
the public WANT and what they will
want when they come to know about
it; and to give the whole with a COM
pleteness, spirit, a rerpe which shall
make this chronicle of the time as at
tractiye as its themes are absorb
ing Scribner's Magazine.
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