The Newtown bee., 1892-04-08
The Newspaper Man as a Confdant

That newspapers print all that they hear is a supposition entertained by the people who bring what they think is news to newspaper offices. That news papers print nothing that they hear from irresponsible sources, without investiga tion, is the truth known to all trained newspaper men. That they do not print all they know is known also to all train ed newspaper men. That they do not print more than from one tenth to one half of what they know is the truth.
 The stock in trade of every solidly es- tablished newspaper is the news it does not print. In other words, confidence is the source of every piece of really valu- able news; and to maintain that confi- dence and obtain that news the newspa per man must sacrifice vast amount of readily printable and vastly readable matter, the publication of which would cut him off from his sources of supply.
 This is the reason why the newspaper man is the best confidant in the world. He cannot betray confidence in type, for fear of cutting off future supplies of
 
 news. He cannot betray them in speech, for fear that some one else will betray them in type and thereby expose him to the reproacheS both of the source of his news and the source of his income. If the theory be not conclusive, let me call a witness, a man who for dozen years has been connected with the administra- tf rf in of tIo cities. His language was: II have al- ways taken newspaper men into my con- fidence and l have been betrayed but once.''
 In that dozen years, that man had seen and talked to a dozen newspaper men a day. The confidence to which he admit ted them was the most salable and the most printable imaginable. The emi- hence of his position made the mention of his name in print a finger board which would halt the attention of the most careless newspaper reader. The nature of it would make any secret he could re- veal of startling interest. He had prob ably never laid the injunction of secrecy on any one of the men to whom he talk ed. They intuitively understood what was for print and what was not; and but one of them had broken faith. In that dozen years, that man had seen a 100 lawyers break faith with everything in heaven and earth but their clients inter- ests. He had seen doctors by the dozen prostitute knowledge and perVert science to save the lives and liberties of wretches with ''position'' to shield them or with money to pay an ''expert's" fee. He had come into contact scores of times with that curious obliquity of vision ot the clergy which prevented them so often from observing the age and condition of persons joined by them in wedlock that a remedy had to be applied by statute in their State, to the profitable scandalizing of the cloth of New Jersey. Yet he had observed only a single dishonorable act ion on the part of the newspaper craft. This certainly was not because the news paper men were less full of human frail- ty than their brethren of the professions which are called learned. It was simply because those men who were tempted to betray his confidence could not afford to do so.-[A. E. Watrous in Lippincott's. Simple and fresh and fair from Winters close
 emerging,
 As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics,
 had ever been,
 Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass
 innocent, golden. calm as the dawn, The Springs first dandelion show it's trustfu1
 tace.--IWalt Whitman.