Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1893-09-13
EDITORIAL TRIALS.
A High School Graduates Idea OF
a Journalists Worries.
The Manifold Duties and the Varied Re-
quirements of the Man Who Runs
a Paper = The Struggle
for Glory.

for Glory.
At an English high school gradua-
ticn exercises in Boston the other day,
the following essay was read by Will
liam FL Blatt, aged seventeen:
1.-The Trials of Journalist pre-
sumptuous title this, | know, but /
have two arguments to offer in my de-
tense In the first place, a connection
for several months with paper of suf-
fcient circulation to maintain life
gives me authority to speak, and Sec
ondly, am living illustration of my
subject, for in me you behold the SUI
preme trial of all journalists-thei ndi-
vidual who thinks he knows it all, and
is willing to impart his information at
the slightest provocation- Not that his
counsels are valueless. With the
proper conditions any one of them
would lead a paper to success, but
those conditions are an editor with
twenty-five million dollars and a pa
tient and enthusiastic public. Having
noticed one of the qualities needed by
an editor to endure his trials, let me
consider few other requirements of
the man whom the general public pic
lures as person whose chief duties
are to WELD the scissors and the paste
brush, wear out an office chair behind
a door inscribed: "This is nv busy
day. and hurl paper weights and
curses at the printers devil. while his
only trial is to listen to the perpetra-
tons of spring poets In brief, the ed
itor of struggling paper (for that in
dividual being the martyr of Journal
ism 1 shall take him as its representa-
tive) must be printer, proof reader,
author, critic, politician, diplomat,
business man, hustler, scholar. ency-
clopedia and-but this will do for q
suggestion. Don't believe it? Let me
particularize.
'As a printer he must be able to ex-
anime the proofs and see if the willy
typesetter has not double loaded the
matter or measured the type with too
generous rule, and he must see that
the paper is produced in an artistic
form; as q writer he turns out those
jewels of eloquence and intellect
known as editorials; as diplomat he
must devise measures to lift his paper
into popularity and keep it propped
up; and of course he must be a careful
critic, separating the grain from the
chaff Sof literary work. He under
stands the art of craftsmanship, for
the people expect him to unite the
gordian knot of politics for them; and
he must have an enormous bump of
agressiveness, for who but he must
! champion the peoples cause? AS
proof reader he reviews his paper, con-
tanning from thirty-fve thousand to
one hundred and sixty thou
sand words, from beginning to
end, looking for the smallest
errors, and proof reading as those
who have tried it know, requires more
endurance than the geometry tests
from which we are about to escape
But pause here, for this list has al
ready assumed soporific proportions.
To sum up, the editor must have
money, experience, influence and
| brains, the meekness of Moses, the pa
thence of Job and the energy of a dy-
namo, and when he has done his best
he must bear the blame for the false
reports and bad English of his report
! ers. The mere mention of these quail
| ties is bad enough. But in order to
! appreciate them fully it is necessary
! for us to see them in action in the ed
| itor's sanctum, not the private Office of
a journalistic magnate, who can avail
himself of the equivalency of time and
money. but that of the editor of a pa
per with patent insides and circula-
ton of about fifty copies a week,
counting exchanges.
1.-THE life of such an unfortunate is
long and exquisite torture of bills,
complaints, refusals, book agents,
| spring poems, indignant citizens and
accidents, resulting in a perpetual
headache, rebellious digestion and
an intimate acquaintance with the
demon of insomnia. And the product
of all the pain and trouble is only a
newspaper worthless thing that
lives for a day, like May fly, and then
is lost and forgotten, leaving to it's au-
thor no fame, no reward but the price it
sells for; and what sum of money, how
ever large, is just recompense for artl
Poor unappreciated thingi Who when
he reads it will think of the trials that
were necessary to bring it out? Here's
the news of great fire. Who stops to
think that the man who wrote that
article braved danger and death to
serve the public? Here's an article by
the funny man. Would you laugh so
loudly if you knew that the man who
wrote that article was given a little
more space this week so that he
might earn more money to pay doc
tors bills? Here's an account of an
embezzler captured. You never knew
the pangs that the editor felt as he
read the words that ruined the name
and family of his best friends
Lets see what sort Of an editorial
menu has been served up to-day. Ali
Very spicy, that But the man who
wrote it hadn't slept a night for q
week and felt more like composing his
will This is the cost of our American
newspaper Is it too much, is it toe
little? 1t appeals to me es a great
{ price for a great thing. In return foI
{ self-sacrifce and undaunted labor we
have received the embodiment of ener
) gy, liberty, enterprise and originality
? in word, Americanism. | shall not
, enter into a eulogy of the American
newspaper. You need no one to tel
? you what it has done. 1t is the edu
Gator of our common people, the in
: SEPARATION of our youth, the censor OF
t our morals. Mercenary? Yes, it i:
/ mercenary, but the articles of the
r nameless authors who attack and de
4 stroy public abuses, guard our liberty
r and serve the nation, though writer
Y for money, are quite as full of true "a
a triotism as those bursts of eloquenct
: In legislative halls where the reward
r is that food of concentrated selfshnesl
glory"
AETER.DINNER WIT.