The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1873-09-17
MISTAKEN NEWSPAPER ExrERPRIsE.

MISTAKEN NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE
The Nation says The interviews, wheth-
er real or imaginary, between newspaper
correspondents and the most distinguished
persons of modern times, on both continents,
recently reported at considerable length by
several Of our daily contemporaries, are suffi-
GENTLY farcical in their character to warrant
the belief that :" interviewing" as a means of
attracting attention, is rapidly becoming as
inefficacious as the revelations of spiritual
mediums. As soon as people found out, which
they did very rapidly, that the greatest nren
of ancient and medieval times talked in their
interviews with mediums as foolishly and
pointlessly as silly school girls, communica-
tions from the other world lost all their inter-
est, even to those who believed in them. The
devoutest Spiritualist cannot now deny that a
half-hour with Plato, or Marcus Aurelius, or
Descrates, is one of the dullest and most I'M
that nobody can pass through it without won-
dering that a sage can be such an ass. The
newspaper correspondents, we regret to say,
are slowly driving the public into similar
state of mind with regard to the great men Of
our own day. Either it begins to say, inter-
viewers are false knaves, or the King of Swe-
den or the Shah of Persia, N. Lesseps, Nj.
THEIRS, Marshal MacMahon and Don Carlos
are all but born naturals. The alternative is
not as general rule faced with resolution or
definiteness. Most people content themselves
by lowering their opinion both of the ssinter-
viewer |" and the distinguished parsonage"
without making up their minds fully as to the
merits of either, but the general result Is a
greatly increased indifference as to what the
newspapers say, whether by way of news OF
comment Indeed, the conductors of some Of
the great newspapers already begin to recog
nize the fact that the sensational vein has
been in the matter. of news getting, nearl,
worked out and they begin to turn their at
tention in other directions. The success %
one of them in hunting up a lost explorer ha'
set another to paying man for making exca
vations in aid of antiquarian researches, ant
still another of paying man for making
hazardous ascent in balloon. This field
once entered ON, we may fairly expect to see
a prodigious amount of competition between
rival journals in the prosecution of startling
enterprises having no special or necessary
connection whatever with journalism, proper
ly so called. It has hitherto been considered
the proper function of the newspapers to see
or hear and report but competition is now
driving them into producing the facts which
they reeord-a process not unlike that wit
messed in many other lines of business, in
some of which, for instance, it is by no means
uncommon for the successful jobber or com
mission merchant to supply capital to thu
manufacturer in whose goods he deals. The
position of a journalist who makes his own
news, in the honest sense of the phrase, is OF
course the proudest imaginable; it is like
being chief and bard, Agamcmnon and Ho-
mer, sword and Tyre, all in one, and there is
no limit that we can well sec to the prosecu-
ton of this peculiar species of undertaking.
If journal hires an explorer or 9ronaut or
excavator, there is no reason why it should
not eventually come to employ its own war
riors and statesmen. This sounds extrava-
giant, but some of the recent talk of men Or
dnarily considered sensible certainly ought to
do something towards making it sound proba-
BILE. Mr.. s. S. Mill, for instance, years ago
compared the relation of the modern news
paper to society to the Hebrew prophets, and
Mr.. Froude has very lately compared it to
that of the Church in the Middle ages. Be-
You'd this it would be hard to go. More than
this newspapers can hardly do without taking
charge of the government, If not Of all babies
from birth.