Arizona weekly enterprise., 1888-08-11
ME ON JOURNALISM. :
He Launches Forth a Few Remarks on a
 Big Subject.

He Launches Forth Few Remarks on a
 Big Subject.
 I am glad to know Cornell university is to establish a department of journalism next September. l have always claimed that journalism could be taught in universities and colleges just as successfully as any other athletic exercise Of course you cannot teach boy how to jerk giant journal from the clutches of decay and make of it a robust and ripsnorting shaper and trimmer of pub lie opinion, in whose counting room people will walk all over each other in their mad efforts to insert advertisements. You cannot teach this in a school any more than you can teach boy how to discover the open Polar sea, but you can teach him the rudiments and save him good deal of time experimenting with himself
 Boys spend small fortunes and the best years of their lives learning the simplest truths in relation to journalism. We grope on blindly, learning this year perhaps how to distinguish an italic shooting stick when we see it, or how to eradicate type lice from standing galley, learning next year how to sustain life on an annual pass and sample early rose potato weighing four pounds and measuring eleven inches in circumference. This is slow and tedious way to obtain journalistic training If this can be avoided or abbreviated it will be great boon.
 As understand it, the department in Cor nell university will not deal so much with actual newspaper experience as it will with construction and style in writing. This is certainly good move, for we must admit that we can improve very greatly our style and the purity of our English. For instance, l select an exchange at random, and on the telegraphic page l find the details of hor- rible crime. It seems that an old lady, who lived by herself almost, and who had amassed between S16 and ST, was awakened by an assassin, dragged from her bed and cruelty murdered. The large telegraph line reads; Drug from her bed and niurderedr This is incorrect in orthography, syntax and prosody, bad in form and inelegant in style Carefully parsing the word drug as it ap pears here, find that 1t does not agree with anything in number, gender or person. 1 do not like to criticise the style of others when l know that my own is so faulty, but am sure that the word drug should not be used in this way.
 Ex-Mayor Henry c. Robinson, of Hart ford, Conn.,, if am not mistaken, suggested a school of journalism at least twelve year. ago, but it did not meet with immediate anC
 practical indorsement Now Cornell come
 forward and seems to be in earnest, and an
 glad of it The letters received from day t.
 day by editors and written to them by mel
 engaged in other pursuits, practically admi
 and prove that there is not now in existenc sn editor who knows enough to carry liver t
 bear
 That Is the reason why every means shoul be used to pull this profession out of th mire of dense ignorance and place it upo , the high, dry soil which leads to genius an
 consanguinity.
 ? The above paragraph 1 quote from treatise on journalism which I wrote just b. 3 fore knew anything about it.
 The life of the journalist is a hard on
 and, although it is not so trying as the life ( g the newspaper man, 1t is full of trials an 7 perplexities. If newspaper men and journa t ists did not stand by each other l do nt f know what joy they would have. Kindne e for each other, gentleness and generosit,
 even in their rivalry, characterize the col ,l duct of large number of them. There are many reasons why the establis e ment of department of journalism at Co . nell will be good move, and believe thu d while it will not take the place of actual e.
 perience, it will serve to shorten the appre . ticeship of young newspaper man and u ' fatigue of starting the amateur in journa Il Il ism will be divided between the managir ! editor and the tutor. It will also give t '. aspiring sons of wealthy parents chance o toy with journalism without interfering wi
 those who are actually engaged in it.-B t. Nve in New York World