University Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1908-1916, 1908-10-06

people have really no preOccupations G.
matters; some who have. conceal them
Mr.. Harvey believes, and openly says In
believes, that journalism should be com
pletely and forever kept from the tain
of political ambition, whether through
the favor of prince or people, whethe
through the pride of appointment O1
the fattery of election. He holds that
the journalist should Ike Independent
not only of his own counting room, but
of his own reading public. He afirms
that though the journalist is probably
born rather than made, he is all the
better for being in the likeness of a
scholar and a gentleman after being
born, and that the shaping hand of the
university can be most usefully employed
in giving him moral and mental force.
He brushes aside the prevalent supersti-
tions in the way of his convictions, which
we have stated so briefly and barely,
and We think he will carry the readers,
as he seems to have carried the hearers,
of his lecture with him. He certainly
must do so where he has the advantage
of illustrating journalism, as it has been
in the past, from former journalistic
types and one must heartily wish him all
the help which the university can give
him in enforcing his positions regard
ing the journalism of the future. What
the university can do in broadening the
mind and deepening the conscience, it
will be welcomed in doing for the jour
nalist, as Mr.. Harvey imagines him, for
he totally rejects the notion that the
journalist is all the better without he
training which carefully di-
rected study gives men of other profes-
sions, and he refuses to accept the prac-
tical newspaper mems ideal that the
supreme duty is to make the
peoples pleasure his business, and his
final wisdom is to get the most money
out of it.
Riches Not The Goal.
Journalism is, of course, a financial
enterprise, a way of earning livelihood,
but so is medicine, so is law, so is liter
,ture, so is church, so is science, so is
The drama, so is war, even, but it is
7ery much more, as each of these call
ngs is very much more; and the jour-
lalist must have soul above the money
hat is in his newspaper, as the doctor,
awyer, author, scientist, actor and SOL !
lier must have soul above the money
hat is in the profession he lives by. |
n fact, the hard sayings which Mr.. Har
ey addressed to the youth of Yale Uni
ersity, if they took them to heart, could
ot have left them the hope of honor
r distinction in journalism, save upon
ONE such ground as these are won in
ther employees. None who heard him
ould have supposed, for instance, that
uccess, except of the basest sort, could
e achieved by a Democratic journalist
Tho wrote Republicanism, or the re-
erse. or by an editor who conducted a
ewspaper opposed to his own convic-
ons, though here and there a university
outh may have heard that such things
ave been. |
But probably the thoughts of those
ho listened to the Bromley lecturer
ere of a psychological rather than an
hical bent. Probably such of them {
) had notion of "going into journal I
m were asking themselves how much
ley were born fit for it, and how much ,
ley must yet be made fit for it. {
'ther than how far they could serve a t
gh and good end when they got into it. |
either such preliminary inquiry have i
'en out of place; their fitness for jour G
.lism was the first question which must t
answered for those wishing to achieve t
e noblest things in it: and we will own ?
at it is very attractive phase of 4
he whole question for the disinterested
server. OF recent years, not perhaps c
most recent, many university youths h
We gone into journalism out of the o
any more who have desired to do so, il
d if most of these may have halted C
tn their feet permanently on the low. e
rung of the ladder, where they were t
luired first to place them. that is no r.
'son for denying that some were des- "
led to mount it to the top. 1t is b
ite certain that such as have achieved a
is eminence were peculiarly and spec "
ly qualified for it, and it would be p
flying to ask, although we may never n
sitively know, how they were quail Il
l for it.