Litchfield enquirer., 1875-03-18
InpersonaI Journalism.

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 One of the most remarkable develope. ments of the great Scandal suit is the light it throws on the matter of ''lmpersonal' journalism. This is of so much the great. CT importance as the tendency of journal ism is strongly towards the ''1mpersonal, ' and away from older personal form which is rapidly dying out in our large cities.
 The "personal" journalist is one who stamps his paper with his own personal views. The old Tribune very frankly and accurately reflected the personal views of Horace Greeley; the old Herald, those of James Gordon Bonnet; and the old Times, those of Henry J. Raymond. The man owned the paper not the papers the man. The old Tribune was an excellent type of its class. Men who read it felt that they were making the personal acquaintance of Horace Greeley. He wrote as no hired advocate of other peoples views can write. Every sentence blazed with the heat of are intense personal conviction. It was full of the savage earnestness of fight on the result of which was staked not only the life of the paper but the life of the man. Whoever attacked the paper at- tackled the editor, and whoever attacked the editor attacked the paper, and person alities abounded to an extent now un- known. But with the bitterness of per sonal warfare came also an earnestness. a vigor, and an independence unknown to these days when a journal is corporation, and journalist it's feed advocate.
 We feel almost tempted to say that when journal becomes corporation 1t loses it's soul; that when a journalist be- comes feed advocate he loses his con- science. Fairness compels as to admit, however, that the great city paper has ne- cessarily outgrown. its personality. The immense capital and the variety and amount of editorial work itrequires makes the starting of great daily impossible without an amount of capital beyond the reach of the professional journalist. We cannot but regret, however, that he is now compelled to serve the corporation which serves the public. instead of serving the public, direct, as of old. With the new style has grown up the lawyer-like habit of advocating any cause without much regard to it's merits. He accepts the retainer of the journal whose case he agrees to maintain, knowing it to be un- just, with just as clear conscience as the lawyer upholds the client he knows to be deserving of punishment. One tries pri- vate causes to the jury; the other, public causes to the people. So the great jour- alist is no longer the prophet or the re- former of his age-a man the better half of whose power lies in the earnestness of his convictions and in his fearless expres- sion of them-but he has dwindled into the mere man of skill in profession.
 The scandal suit gives pretty accurate picture of the impersonal journalist in MT. Oliver Johnson, managing editor of Christian Union. He is a Unitarian, Q Universalist, and Spiritualist. If Chris tian at all, he is peculiarly Independent Quaker of the stripe known as Progress sive Friends" One of that denomination "a trife more orthodox than Mir. John son, we judge-was expelled from the North Carolina legislature the other day for being an infdel. Then, too, there is Theodore Hilton, Unitarian and Univer- sallst, at the very time he was edit ing the chief religious paper in the coun- try, if Mir. Beecher's witnesses are to be believed Indeed, had Hilton heen will ling to write orthodoxy instead of hetero- doxy, and he had been content to be the impersonal agent of Mir. Bowen instead of the personal expounder of Tiltonism, the Chicago Advance might never have been born, and he might have filled the''proud- est editorial chair in Amerca," to this day.