Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1883-04-05
WOULD.BE JOURNALISTS.
The Aspirants Who Succeed and Those
Who Don't.

The young man who thinks he would be
an invaluable addition to the working force
in newspaper Office is more prevalent, says
the Boston Globe, than anybody imagines,
except the managers private secretary, who
reads and files away the applications for
positions on the repOrtorial staff.
The graduate of some academy or one
horse college is very apt to think his mis-
sion on earth is to fill up some daily news
paper with allusions to ancient history and
NEUROLOGICAL metaphors, and so he sits him
down, and with much labor covers sheet
of paper with clumsily constructed sentences
intending to convey the information that he
is willing to accept position on the paper
This he mails to the editor, and from day to
day thereafter he calls at the postOffice fol
the answer of the delighted editor eagerly
placing desk at his disposal. When the
Postmaster gets tired of seeing him round
and tells him so, the brilliant young man
turns sadly away and looks for job in a
shoe shop, and becomes a good shoemaker in
time. He contributes gratuitOusly to the
local weekly an occasional essay on How to
Make Home Happy" and secretly cherishes
q very poor opinion of the editor on the city
daily who failed to recognize his budding
genius Horace Greeley's pet aversion was
the college graduate, and he usually flew in
to very profane passion whenever one of
the tribe applied to him for work on his
paper. He thought that the devil was OF
more use than college graduate in news
paper office. In this he was neither
altogether right or wholly wrong. The
young man who has been educated in a uni
versity is apt to start out with the notion
that college course of study comprises the
sum total OF all useful knowledge, and that
familiarity with dead languages is sufficient
equipment for a man in world full of live
facts, and it is only his readiness to perceive
and discard the error that constitutes his
capacity for becoming useful.
A college education does no harm to man
whose brain is naturally roomy enough to
hold something else, and who has sense
enough to put his Latin and Greek away in
corner, and the heather gods on shelf
devoted to intellectual bric-a a-brac, while he
goes about picking up knowledge of the
things and people that he must come in con-
tact with every day. Such young man
may earn a salary on a newspaper, after he
has learned the business of reporting and
and acquired the knack OF writing up a run
away without abiding to Pegasus Or Buce-
phalus, and OF leaving Nero and his fiddle
out ofa description of tenament-house fire.
But the college graduate who has crammed
his head full Of Greek roots and faces the
the bustling world with calm conviction
that he knows it all, and everything out
side of university course is vanity, might
as we'll have skull full of cobwebs. The
boy who lett school after learning the three
RS, and began his journalistic training by
sweeping out the Office and going after the
mail, will make better newspaper man
than he, and know twice as much worth
knowing when he is twenty-one. The eX
Office boy may not know the difference be-
tween q Sanscrit poem and paralax, but
neither will he care tinker's maledictiOn.
He'll know what Congress is doing, and
whether the news that comes over the wires
should 60 into the morning paper or the
waste basket.