The Mitchell capital. (Mitchell, Dakota [S.D.]) 1879-1918, 1909-07-29
NOT MUCH SPORT IN
L|CkIN' THE EDITOR
Texas Statesman Not the First
to Find Newspaper Man a
Living Boomerang.
prom the saturday Evening Post.

From the Saturday Evening Post.
Senator Bailey, OF Texas. tried to whip
q reporter. 1t wasn't much OF a fight, as
fight so. for Senator Clapp. Of Minnesota.
who is bigger than Bailey, held Bailey,
and one Of the capitol policemen held the
reporter. and neither one of the combat
ants landed a punch worth mentioning.
An umbrella was broken, and the third
commandment. s
Viewed from any senatorial angle 1t is
distinctly not worth while to whip or try
to whip a reporter or correspondent. There
are a good many men in the press gallery
at the capitol whom a good many sena-
tors might whip, II they extended them
selves, and a good many that no senator,
not even the ferocious Bailey, could whip.
But that isn't the point. The idea is that
no senator. even II he pounded a reporter
TO a pulp. would get anything out of 1t
aside from the joy OF battle, for, after
the senator had finished with the reporter,
1t would be discovered that the reporter
had Just begun with the senator.
Odd as 1t may seem to statesmen and
others who are accustomed to look on
reporters as pestiferous creatures WHO
always want to know what they shouldn't
know, and print it, and who rarely want
to print h the statesmen think IL the
proper pabulum for the people, reporters,
as a class, are near-human, and the most
clannish folks imaginable, in cases of this
kind. So when Senator Bailey had taken
his punch at the reporter, the reporter
punched Observation-Disclosures we'll as he
was able. Then he went to his typewriter
and punched a few times more. and the
result was that Senator Bailey got the
worst OF 1t, not only In the reporters
paper, but also in the pape OF, every other
reporter.
Fighting with a reporter is like fighting
witt a policeman. You do not get any
where. A man may beat a correspondent
for the time being, but after he has
satiated himself with that form OF amuse-
ment he mo tell his side Of the story
10 more than a hundred people in a day,
try as hard as he may. TIL reporter can
tell his side to a hundred thousand, and
he can rely on the other reporters In the
gallery to tell 1t to a few million more.
If Senator Bailey subscribes to a press
clipping bureau he will NOW how true
that statement is after the clippings
about his encounter are in.
Statesmen, when they are ~hot-headed
or new, and find something in the papers
that annoys them, often write to the edi-
tors OF the papers n demand the dis
charge OF the man who wrote the offend.
ing paragraph. They always do IL they
know the editor. Reporters are rarely dis
charged for such requests. The percent
Age is so small that the efforts of the
past 80 years may be said to be wasted.
Occasionally. a timid editor will discharge
q man; but II the statement Is true, as It
generally is. he will usually tell the ag-
Erieved statesman to go to Kalamazoo,
and the reporter will continue on the Job,
getting in his deadly ticks from time to
time. $50
There was an eminent lawmaker in the
New York city delegation a few years ago
who took offense at a story in a New
York paper sent over by the man who
that paper. 1t was q pleasant little story,
q Joke in fact, harmless and innocent.
But this particular lawmaNer thought it