Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1880-05-10
H NEWSPAPER.
Its Inside WOrkings---MethOds
aud Mistakes.
"Reminiscences of Chas. T. Cong
don, for Many Years n
Writer ON the New
York Tribune.

y A0AA
fl may venture to say so, the
Office of a newspaper is a republic
tempered by despotism. The men
who make journals are obliged to
think for themselves, but this intel
%leotual independence must be kept
within certain limits. Still, an edi-
torial writer who has any brains soon
finds out what he may say. and what
he may not say, and how far he may
put his private Opinions'into his arti-
Giles. When l asked for some con-
venient rule to guide me in writing
for the Tribune, MI. Greeley told me
that there could be none; "but you
will be safe here, he said, while you
KEEP within the general tone of the
newspaper; aud if you write what we
denN want, you may be perfectly sure
we will not print it." Yet it is al
ways a delicate business. What
seemed excellent in the evening did
not seem so fine in the morning. News
paper writer's make awful mistakes,
well calculated to fill the bosom of the
editor in chief with despair. Things
get into the columns which ought to
be kept out Of them. Constant vigi-
lance is the price of safety, even Of
the comparative sort. An ill-consid-
cred article may bother a newspaper,
and be a perpetual source of irritation
for a zeal to come.
Take, for instance, that wonderful
article on ''miscegenation" which |
wrote for the Tribune, in which, half
sportively and half seriously, l DEM
onstrated that the marriage of blacks
and whites was just what this great
and glorious republic needed. The
trouble was that the irony was so fine
ly spun hat nobody could see it, and
everybody thought the writer was in
absolute earnest. Those were times
in which we had to be careful what we
said, and Mr.. Greeley, who saw end
less controversy ahead, was angry
enough at the appearance of the arti-
Gle. He did not scold me; | am proud
to say be never did that; but | have
reason to believe he scolded the man
ager, who then expressed his mind to
me, which answered just as well. 1t
was like that scene in Sheridan's
Rivals" in which the master kicks
the footman and the footman kicks the
page.
0fthe toll which a newspaper de-
mands, of the unceasing attention
which it exacts, of the judicious care
which it requires, the great public of
readers takes no account. Those who
come to the breakfast-table more or
less bilious, expect to find in their
morning sheet something like perfec-
ton, and | do not mean to say that
they are not right in expecting it.
But when they glance hastily over the
columns, and then ju~dieiany declare
there is nothing in them, they may
often forget that there is everything
in them Of importance which has hap
pened in the whole world during the
past twenty-four hours--that fifty,
seventy, one hundred, maybe one hun
dred and fifty men toiled all night
while these snap critics were sleeping,
their heads, as Carlyle says, full Of
the foolishest dreams"-worked TO
make up this great compendium.
this map, the picture Of a day,
Its fluctuations and its vast con.
Germs" 1t might lead the dissatis-
fed purchaser to revise his Judgment,
if he could stand, between one and
2 o'clock in the morning, in the COM
posing-room of a great journal and
witness the intese excitement, all kept
well under in well-regulated offices.
which oharacterizeS the makeup"
of the sheet which he sometimes dis
misses so CONTEMPORARY. The night
editor, ii then in a state to speak to
anybody nationally, might tell him
that the great point was not so much
what should be left out. For there
never was a morning paper yet which
was big enough for all the matter pre-
pared for it; and there never can be.
The larger the sheet the more news
will come to it-for every additional
column, three columns of Intelligence,
or Of matter of some sort, will demand
Again, the rule is that
there shall be nc mistakes. It is in
exorable, yet thrice happy is the jour
nal in which it is never violated.
There are more mistakes than the
.sagacious public ever finds out. No
where is a newspaper SO criticized az in