Wichita eagle., 1888-03-27
THE AMERICAN PRESS.
WHAT A SCOTCH OBSERVER SAYS OF
OUR NEWSPAPERS.

The Vast and Valuable Service Performed
in the Interests of the Public-Detec-
ton of Crime and Fraud-Work of Re-
porters and Editors.
The American press is the most incom-
prehensible of American institutions to
strangers. Day after day its columns are
freighted with astounding crimes, with
marvellous adventures, with social scam
dals, with political programmes and re-
ligious heresies. One wonders how it is
possible such surprises should be con-
stautly happening, and how their details
should be SO exhaustively wrought out.
But the astOnishment subsidies when it is
known that the American press in organi-
ZatIon, In enterprise, in talent leads the
world; that it deals not with one country,
as in the Old World, but represents whole
continent; that the population it controls
and informs is drawn from every Euro
pean and several Asiatic nations; that
among these are crowds of dangerous and
lawless emigrants, some Of whom have
escaped from European jais and many
from the European police. And whatever
contempt for law and order the native
American may inherit is deepened by con-
tact with the frenzied men driven to
American shores by the regimes of Bis
marck and Salisbury.
DETECTION OF CRIME.
Forced upon it by such surroundings
the American press has accepted func-
tons which no other nations newspapers
have had delegated to them. The fore
most of these has been the detection Of
criroa ha Iafo Of I'd Nd ~, ho
performance OF both tasks American press
men have won the admiration Of the
American people, and ought to be source
OF pride and surprise TO press men every
where. American criminals may tamper
with American judges: they may evade
the police; they may defy the law; they
are never safe from the press. Again and
again have assassins been hung on the
gallows wholly through the astuteness
and amazing ability Of American press
reporters. Again and again have scan
daious swindles been exploded through
the single handed efforts of press men.
The great Tweed ring was burst up by
the persistency of newspaper men, The
Preller murder was cleared up through
the acuteness of press inquiries but illus
trations are endless.
Why such services are seldom at
tempted by the British press is easily ex-
planned. The British press man is short
hand writer, whose work is mainly to re
produce the speeches of the people who
would hardly be listened to on this side Of
the Atlantic. In America verbatim re-
porting is hardly wanted; it is reckoned
very secondary accomplishment. The
American press man must have require
ments the British reporter may do with
out. The American must be born de-
tective, have an intuitive faculty of fol-
lowing up the course criminals, advent
urers and delinquents pursue in planning
crimes and evading their conviction. He
must have an address which fits all sorts
of people on all sorts of occasions. He
must be equally ready to speak on level
terms with statesman or confab with
thief; and it is his business to get at the
intentions of both. The American press
man must be an educated man of the
world, who can represent his journal
under any circumstances, and this is at
once apparent to any stranger who has OPP
portunities Of coming in contact with the
leading representatives Of the New York
journals