San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1889-02-08
eA1eR TO BE JOURNALISTS.
Newspaper Offices Flooded with Requests
for a Chance to Draw a Blank.

newspaper omCes rlOOueu WIFI hcquesIs
for a Chance to Draw q Blank.
81 think every young man and young
woman in this town wants to go into jour
nalism."
The speaker was one Of the best known
managing editors in New York city, and he
passed his hand over his troubled brow as he
spoke.
II get about forty applications per day
from men and women who want to become
journalists, and the proprietor of this paper
gets twice as many more A young man
whom know to be making 500 per week
in the dry goods business came to me and
offered to work for S25 per week as a re-
porter 1t makes me a trifle weary. If these
young men and women knew how many
blanks there are in this lottery and how few
prizes drawn they would quit"
This managing editor was in a bad humor,
but he was all right as to facts There isn't
a newspaper Office in town that isn't flooded
with applications for work The prizes in
New York journalism are few. You are
reasonably sure of drawing blank pretty
nearly every time There are more than
1000 hard working newspaper men in New
York city. Outside of their own offices and
the New York Press club not two dozen OF
them are known to the general public. Those
who are well known outside of New York
could almost be counted upon the fingers of
single hand.
The men who have drawn prizes cannot
themselves tell you how they did it. All
they know is that they started at the bottom
and got there-somehow
This is not intended to encourage printers
devils to throw type around, but as an illus
tration.
Charles A. Dana is, perhaps, the most ia
nous Of the men who have drawn prizes As
editor of The Sun he draws a salary of S25, 0OC
per year, and from other sources his income is
swelled to about $50. per year, upon which
he manages to live very comfortably, aided by
a French cook, whose income income is big
ger than that of a congressman Dana started
ON The New York Tribune at salary of Sl2
per week. He started in a small way from a
town in the interior of Ohio. Joseph Pulitzer,
of The World, is said to clear 81 900 per day
He is not working journalist now, but not
many years ago he was an ordinary reporter
in st. Louis, and they say he was hustler,
too. Whitelaw Reid, as matter of form,
draws a salary Of some SIS, 900 per year from
The Tribune, but his income from his stock
in the paper Is several times this amount.
John A Cockerill is one of the working
managing editors and newspaper men, and
draws a salary of $4,000 per year from
The World, and has an interest in it
besides Cockerill was typo, and fought his
way up from the ranks Amos Cummings is
said to have an income of $4,000 per year.
He was a compositor and a private in the
Union army during the rebellion, and he,
too, came from the bottom up to where he is
now. Chester A. Lord the managing editor
Of The Sun, has salary of 1850 per year.
He started on a small paper in the interior of
this state, and had TO work hard for success.
But he is little known outside of New York.
George F. Spinney, as managing editor of
The New York Times, has a salary of about
$1,000 per year. But he has been a hard
working journalist all his life, and the salary
side of New York.
There are probably fifty or sixty men who
are simply writers, like Blakely Hall and
Julian Ralph, who earn anywhere from $50
to $3.50 per week, but, with the exception of
the men named, and four or five more, they
are never heard or spoken of except in their
own homes and circles.
At the Fifth Avenue hotel the other night
Archie Gunter, the author Of "Mr. Barnes,
of New York" was lion He was more
CoUrted than any one at the hotel, and most
of the young men around him are ambitious
to become journalists If they knew Of
CUTTERS. struggles up to the. time that he sue,