The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1897-12-15
THE YOUNG JOURNALIST.

quently assailed. In these Islands at
the present moment there are those,
who think that it is something of
slur to belong to the up-to-date jour
nalism of the United States; those
who would like to return to the hand
tisements on the parish pump, and
thought it had made a scoop when it
reported that Deacon Jones had
bought Parson Browns handcart. 1t
was a valuable kind of a sheet for
those whoobjected to criticism because
their own self-importance resented it,
for it did not dare to whisper a word
of censure,. commended the pastors
sermon, thought the judge the wisest
of men, and throbbed with passion ov-
er am old ladies' tea. But even in
those times the germ was there. There
were men who dared to criticize, who
pricked the bubble of self-importance
and showed what a miserably fat
thing it was, who said the pastor was
prosy and the judge self-sutficient
old fool, and those men had a hard
time of it in their day, they were the
fore-runners of that journalism which
is the credit of the world at the pres
ent day, and to which in times of
trouble people turn in order to have
their wrongs righted, or at least set
forward in terms which will help
their cause.
Where would a community be with
out its newspapers. How many wrongs
does not newspaper take up, for no
personal gain to itself, but simply for
the justice of the cause, and how
many men and women has the news
paper shielded from calumny, and
positive harm.
But the main point of this article
is to show what the up-to-date, train
ed young journalist of the United
States is. He is well educated. Ten
TO one he has passed through college,
or he has had such high school
course as would fit him to pass
through college. He is gentleman
who is at home in a drawing room, or
can make his way amog the purlieus
of the city. He quickly acquires the
power of sizing up men, and can as
readily get the meat out of the wordy
phrases of pompous ass, as he can
expand the crude sentences of the I'M
educated gamin of the gutter
1t is these young men that support
the journalism of the present and will
make the journalism of the future.
They aim at brilliancy, and their ell
ders urge them to that effort. They
tell the news as it is to be found. If
a mistake of an initial be made in re-
porting name, or a circumstance is
reported as occurring at the north
side of the street when it occurred on
the south, the main facts are there,
and it is, after all, with the main
facts that the public cares to deal.
Moreover it is their business and aim
to tell the news in bright and pict-
uresque way, and men will read what
is bright and picturesque. Any one
can say the ploughman went home,
but it took Gray's genius to put it:
"The plowman homeward plods his
weary way" Oragain any one could say
the owl is cold, but it took Keats to
say, "The owl for all his feathers was
a-cold." The common soldier is very
rough and tumble sort of individual,
but Kipling can draw him true, to life,
with his rough words interlarded with
bright thoughts.
This is what modern journalism
aims at. 1t is as great an art to tell
the story of a runaway, or a suicide,
or to give a report of statesman's
views, as it is to paint genre picture
or write dialect poem, and the man
who cannot understand this shows
himself to be so utterly behind the
times that he had better get off the
coach and get into a mental hospital.
Long after those who object to up-to-
date journalism, because it does not
fit in with their antediluvean ideas,
shall have been shelved, the journalist
will be sailing on the fair wind of pro-
gress to the harbor of success.