Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-07-26
BUSINESS AND BRAINS.
How They should be Combiued In
Newspaper ManaEement.

Newspaper Management.
James Parton, in a very interesting ar
ticle fh Hdpers for July, has the follow;
ing to say of business and Brains" in con-
ductiBg a newspaper:
potentate has taken the place of the
capricious editor in some newspaper Offices,
who may be STYLED the Homogeneous Pro
prietor. The time was when almost every
editor owned his paper. The time is at
hand when scarcely any editor will do 50,
for complete newspaper establishment at
present absorbs an amount Of capital which
a highly intellectualized person has never
possessed unless by accident or inheritance,
and which he could not efficiently WELD
if he had il. I'm conducting the prodigiOuS
establishments of modern days there
must be a division both OF labor and
responsibility, and when this is done justly
the public is served with an economy and
efficiency never possible before. No body
of learned men could produce such a work
as the American CyclOpedia unless they
have behind them both the capital and
business talent of great publishing house;
and no newspaper up to the demands OF
this ace can exist unless there is great
man in the cOunting-rOOOm, as well as
great man inthe editorial chair, each keeping
TO his sphere, but working in harmony,
neither of them wholly subject or wholly
lord. By the chances Of business the most
ignorant person may come to own a
newspaper, or one may fall by inheritance
TO the most incompetent individual. A
lucky operator has taken a newspaper, or
part of one, for a gambling debt. A cor
rIpt ring might acquire in newspaper a
silencing interest, and mOneyed dunder-
head has occasionally bought one outright
as an investment. John Taylor, the witty
author of Monsieur TOnsOD,' one OF the
best known humorous poems in the Tau
gIIage, who was editor for some years of
the Morning Post of London, had an
ignorant savage for proprietor. 'AmOng
other complaints Mr.. Taylor records in
his Memoirs, he told me tia the paper
was wholly confined TO politics and had
none of those little dntedOtes which had
before diverted the readers Boys said
the proprietor of a newspaper
IN Western New York TO his corps, as he
presented stranger to them-'Boys, this
is Mr.. Smith, from SmithtOn, who has come
down here TO write up the new railroad
Whatever he writes print just as he writes
il, but not word ON the other side And
they Obeyed. Every mail brought remon-
strances against the scheme, all of which
went into the basket unread. The convict
Tweed was well aware of this new fact in
newspapers, the supremacy of the counting
room, though the poor man could not know
that newspapers unduly controlled by the
counting-rOOm are pOwerleSs over public
opinion. The number of newspapers upon
the pay-roll of the Ring was eighty-nine
of which twenty-seyen so depended
upon this plumber for subsistence thai
when the ring was broken they gasped and
died. In those halcyOn days of rOguery
people used to glance in their morning pa
per over a MAYORS message Of SIX or eight
columns, innOcently suppOSing it part of the
news of the day, while boOk-keepers were
at the same moment charging it To the city
| as an advertisement at the rate Of dOllal
a line. Petty evening papers received q
thousand dollars a month; and after the
newspapers had been bought and silenced
at this rate for five years, and the ring had
no longer the control Of the treasury, the
unsettled claims of the various counting
rooms amounted to more than two millions
of dollars. The writers for the press got
= tie of this. They were put off with Z
| ridiculous gratuity Of two hundred dollar
a year, voted 10y the Aldermen TO the re
| porters. who omitted twice a week 10 tel
| the public what the Aldermen had done
There never was period during the thirty
wears reign of thieves i'm the city of New
| York when the press could not have brough
them to naught, if its counting rooms haO
been disinterested or its editors in com
| maud