Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1901-02-02
Judged by its NewSDaperS.

The JOURNAL really does not desire to
tire its readers with discussion of the
| comparative dement's of anti-merit news
| papers.
Nor does it wish to open IL debate of
the merits of merit newspapers.
An article appeared last week, how
ever, i'll the Carroll Md Rrcord, reprint
ed from the Great Falls (MontanO Trib-
Unc, whose claim to abbreviated publ
cation here the JOURNAL cannot resist,
and it is reproduced below.
In passing it should be stated that the
Record is published i'll town Of about
700 population, but it is richly decorated
by apparently the advertisement of every
merchant, tradesmam and mechanic in
the place.
Outside of this cheerful reflex of the
towns business the Rrcord is in itself a
mirror of the qualities of an up-todate,
enterprising and cultivated constituency.
The TrjbHnc said:
A town is judged very much by the char
acter of the newspapers published within its
borders. There are thousands of men and
women who see the newspapers of Great
Falls who have never seen the town.
So it is the civilized world over. Such peo-
pie know nothing of the town but what they
learn from its newspapers. If these papers
impress it favorably a good opinion of the
town is formed. This impression, whatever
it may be, is circulated wherever the people
who have it happen to go. So it is that a
town becomes known by the character Of its
newspapers.
Every word undeniably true.
And the JOURNAL is and has been all
along so profoundly impressed with this
fact that it regards every copy of the
Frostburg Forum that goes where the
place is not otherwise known as about
the most damaging homemade testi-
monial to the towns importance, magni-
tude, activity and intelligence the people
who support it could send out.
There is no other way of looking at
this matter. There is no middle ground
| to stand upon. The Forum is the index
i'll many families, the more the worse, to
| the towns education and cultivation. 1t
is weekly demonstration of the fallacy
that men who have no foundation i'll
letters-who, if their lives were at stake,
could not teach the elements of language
i'll school, can yet mount the tripod and
play tutor to m" pcopIe of Frostburg
People, how do you like that picture :?
| When the JOURNAL asks that question
it does not address those who preicnd to
have the towns credit at heart
1t asks those who have interests here,
whose livelihood is here, who have sons
and daughters with Frostburg future
before them-how do you like the Forum
as a reflection of the towns spelling,
syntax, bOtchwork Typography and utter
restitution, week after week, of Il line of
sense beyond mere commonplace gossip?
Does all that represent 90" and yonr
enlightenment?
Not bit of it.
Usually the presentment is, as it should
be, more comedy than the original of the
picture. Yours is more uncomely-far
more SO.
Lastly, it is all innocent enough to take
the trash read and laugh at it derisive-
ly, but people who do not know you read
with different eyes; read it seriously
as duplication of the cult of which you
and your family are a fraction; read it
with the sound conviction that the pupil
! is not superior to his illiterate teacher