Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-08-27
NEWSPAPER OF THE FUTURE.
whitelaw Reid's Talk to Young Men

Whitelaw Reid's Talk to Young Men
 About Journalism.
 It is safe to predict that the better class of daily newspapers and their readers may come to a mutual under standing that less quantity and better quality would be mutually advantag- eous. The Saturday Review once call ed Macaulay the father of picturesque reporters and Dickens has often been called their prince. No doubt these are ambitions models; but the press that sent MacGahan to a European war and Harding Davis and Bigelow to an American one, and has developed so many of our most popular authors from its ranks, can rise aboxe the pres ent wordy and tedious level of telling the news whenever the editors and their readers agree that it is desirable. In that direction lies one of the best hopes for the future of the best news papers. Fewer words, shorter stories, better told; fewer SIS a week reporters who only write by main strength and awKwardness, and more men who have learned the capacities of the English tongue; fewer men whose chief idea is to rake in all the rubbish they can and label it with startling headlines. and more men who know what is worth telling and know how to single it out from the mass of rubbish: fewer mere photographers in nonpareil whose sole idea is to set down in fine type every thing they see and more artists who sknow what to see and how to make. in words, a picture of it--that is the line of progress for an intelligent press, worthy of an intelligent community. But first of all, the public must make up it's mind that the merit of a paper, it's enterprise, it's resources and it's i'm portance are now determined by the number of pages-that paper is made out of cordwood and costs cents a pound; that type is set by steam and that white sheets can be run through printing machines in any big office at the rate of 100000 an hour. If the people continue to want quantity, as they certainly seem to do now, the quantity will no doubt continue to be printed-though Sheridan's ghost should hiss in every editors ear that easy printing. even more than easy writing, makes curst hard reading.
 TfsNs far these suggestions may have seemed to partake more of preaching than of prophecy. It is for the public quite as much as for the newspapers or for the young men who are now coming forward to make them. to de termine whether. when grouped. they portray at all the newspaper of the next quarter or half century. We shall have fewer sensa ational papers, and get the news told more as landscape is painted with some sense of persDective and some artistic omission of offensive or worthless objects whenever and as far as the public taste is well enough educated to prefer correct and v1- yacious style to ''blood and thunder written and printed as if with paint brush. We shall surely have shorter reports of many things if not also smaller paper. The notion that Sun- days paper must be ten times as Ag as Mondays will be mftigated. The first class daily paper of the future is not likely to come in the form of book or even pamphlet Whatever its form or quality or contents the peo- pie that read it will pay for it---it will not be an eleemosynary institution. chiefly conducted by the advertising business of the country for the benefit of anybody that will read. Its wealth and prosperity will be welcomed as gain and security for the whole con- munity It will indulge in no sham about being independent of business considerations. It will be best liked when its owners conduct it, and least when it's owners. engaged elsewhere, make their newspaper an investment as means of surreptitiously further ing private ends. It will not be in tensely individualized--will not be a one-man paper. It will support par ties as means to patriotic end, and religion as leading to the best life; but it will not be party organ or an or gan of the churches. It will deal with politics according to it's capacity; but not being edited by angels, it will make mistakes sometimes, and per haps have even the grace sometimes to acknowledge them.-New York Trib- une.