The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1888-11-01
WESTERN JOURNALISM.
An Implicit Confidence In the Future
Greatness of the Country its Main
characteristics.

..The West that" as Murat Halstead
saws, "never was in the wilderness,
and never will be in this world, has
long ago outgrown the primitive, but
wholly original, daringly enterprislng,
and intensely characteristic Journalism
that it once had. In the early times,
that is, half century ago and more
(for the magnificent empire beyond the
ALLEGHENY mountains is the child of
but two generations), the west, es-
pecially the frontier, was the Mecca OF
two classes of men from the older Sec
tions of the country-the great army
of hardy pioneers, who sought perma-
nent homes for their families, and the
few who, being "Otf color" in the East,
found residence more convenient IN
newly settled towns, where the people
were too busy to care as much for the
antecedents as for the present act of
their neighbors. Among the latter
were many of the so-called 'charac-
tersn who, rather than the average,
very-day citizen, made for the West
its popular reputation, but not its real
character.
Many of these restless, erratic gen.
fuses drifted into journalism, and the
| frontier newspapers they made, often
written and printed under great diff
entities, possessed the merit OF having
| at least positive and unmistakable
| individuality. They were crude in
style and in moral tone as we'll as in
me echanical construction, it is true, for
the picket line of civilization is not
| generally in its surroundings and asso-
| Citations favorable to the attainment of
| literary excellence or nice ethical dis
| tinctions, although some of the editors
| were men of good education; but the
papers were made for a constituency
that was as peculiar in its tastes as it
was Independent in its habits Of
thought, and cared less for the form
than for the substance of what it had
to read.
| The frontier journal no longer ex-
| lists, except in u few remote points in
some of the territories to which the
railroads have not as yet penetrated,
but it has leftits impress upon the char
aeter of its more mature and polished
| successors.
The successful western newspaper
is, above all things, enlerprising,. and
this quality, now so wonderfully de-
veloped, is legacy from the pioneer
press The special telegraph wires of
to-day from Cincinnati and Chicago to
New York. Washington, and important
nearby cities had their prototypes in
the pony expresses and special messen-
gers of the pre-railroad and ante-tele-
graph times. And it required more
courage and pluck to send out the lat
ter than to put in the former.
This enterprise displayed itself in
many startling ways, as it docs to-day.
1t adapted itself to surrounding cir
cumstances. When Denver, in 1859,
was but a collection of tents, rude
shanties, and corrals on Cherry creek,
and the nearest United States post
Office was at Fort Laramie, 22o miles
away, when the mails arrived but once
or twice h month, and were uncertain
at that, and news from '.the States"
came only ut long and irregular inter-
walls, the editor of the Rocky Mountain
| NelCS was the one who sent meSSen-
ger to Fort Laramie to bring back, in
spite of the suffering and hardships
the journey entailed. Il mule-foad OF
letters and Eastern newspapers. And
his readers, with that generosity that
has always distinguished western news
paper constituencies, showed their ap-
preciation of his enterprise in a SUBJ
stahtial manner.
An implicit faith in the future great
ness of the country is rs characteristic
of the western journal of 1888 at it was
when the Omaha and Wisconsin edi.
tors were printing their rinitial numbers
on the bare prairie and in the woods,
before the first settlers had broken the
sod OF cleared sites for their cabins.
Tho founders of Il state or commune
ty generally have more to do with the
determination of its character than
any succeeding generation-some;i
than all of them; 81 too the founder 81
a newspaper and the character of the
/ people for whom it is first made gen.
orally make more lasting impression
upon it than any of its succeeding edi-
tors or readers. Nowhere has this truth
been more forcibly Illustrated than in
Ohio, where western journalism may
be said to have been born. The foun-
| 1ers of that state were not adventures,
restless, uneasy, chafng under the re-
stralnts of growing civilization, and
seeking the freedom and excitement of
pioneer life. They were New England
and Virginia gentlemen in the best
sense of the term. friends and comrades
of Washington in the Revolutionary
struggle, men of education and cui-
ture, whose purpose it was to found a
state in which religion, patriotism, in
teliigence, and industry should be the
corner-stones.- l.. White, in Harpers S
Magazine.
| Vanquished by a Dog.