Lewiston evening teller. [volume] (Lewiston, Idaho) 1903-1911, 1906-09-06
WHAT'S NEWS AND WHAT ISN'T?
Some Newspaper Critics Think They
Know But They Don't.

once more, as per every so often, the
editor of one of those publications
whose province is to print fiction and
feature articles and incidentally to
distribute praise or blame among the
various departments of the world, has
broken into a pathetic lament over
the "paucity of real news" in the daily
press, says the st. Paul Pioneer Press
This time the Saturday Evening Post
Is made the unfortunate medium of
expression. The writer explains at
some length what, in his opinion. isn't
news, and then, without stopping to
elucidate the positive side of the
question, closes his brief lamentation
with the declaration that If the papers
would throw away what they now
print and print what they now throw
away, the reading public would be
greatly edited and benefited thereby.
Well, perhaps he has struck it right.
At any rate. he has said something.
which. although 1t has been often said
before, never has been answered-pos-
sibly because there are so many other
people who know how to run news
papers better than those In the BUSH
ness that the newspaper craft hates
to expose it's own inferiority. But he
has failed at the point wherein his pre-
decessors at this anvil have failed, in
not giving us definition Of what
news Is. He says that the papers
make these things news by printing
them, but he does not go back of that
and explain that the readers of the
papers acted first in demanding that
they be printed. But as far as giving
definition is concerned, he does not
even quote the old and graceless axi-
ON, Names is news"
But supposing. just for argument,
that the Pioneer Press were to print.
some morning. all that 1t ordinarily
throws away, and throw away all that
1t ordinarily prints. What would the
readers see In the papers that came
to their doors? Some minor details
of the Russian affair-three killed
here. two there and four yonder:
great excitement among peasants at
attempted assassina-
ton of police captain at some Polish
frontier town, etc., etc.. etc. Some de-
tails Of the daily life Of Evelyn Nesbit
Thaw; how often she visited the
prison to see her husband, and the
fact that crowd saw her do 1t. A
couple OF dozen murders Of people in
distant 80 = j
ever heard; ditto violent deaths. dit
to losses by fires. An occasional case
too foul to be printed. and sometimes
libelous even If true. which 1t may not
be. Three line accounts of the meet
ing OF the California Dentists asso.
citation and other bodies of equal in
terest to the reader. And In addition
to all these carefully compiled sta
tistical account OF prices Of stocks
and bonds In Russia. France. Ger
many, Holland and England, notes OF
he Liverpool wool market, and New
orleans cotton. the daily report of the
United States treasury, and any
iuantity Of contradictions corrections.
and KILLED. bulletin.
treating Of the subjects which he
would find covered in the papers OF
ne day which were wise enough TO
print what the public wants.
We have no desire to quarrel with
he gentleman who wrote the editorI-
u IN the Saturday Evening Post, but
we do wish that some Of these fellows
Who feel so amply equipped to dictate
o the news editors Of the daily papers
'ouid be made to handle the stuff
themselves once, that they might