Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1910-04-29
EVERYBODY THINKS HE
CAN EDIT NEWSPAPER
Associated Press Greatest News Gath.
ering Organization in the World
Address BY Geo. AIDE.


was among the speakers at the joint
banquet in this city last night of the
Associated Press and the American
/ Newspaper Publishers Association
, delivering a brief address on Help
ing the Editor" Mr.. Ade said:
Mr.. Toastmaster and Gentlemen:
The Association Press is a great in
stitution. Around newspaper office
we always felt easy in our minds il
we knew that the Associated Press
was on the job. Ny out of town as
signments were usually given to me
in the following words: Send in a
good story-the Associated Press will
cover the fact
4 respect the Associated Press be-
cause it has nothing to do with the
Sunday supplement. The Associated
Press never sent in a heavy editorial
at 10 p. III. and marked it Must 1t
never ordered pictures TO go with the
stuff and it never came around the
next day to inquire why he had not
been played up. The Associated Press
bears the same relations to the mod
ern American newspaper that the sol
id business man does to the American
family. 1t stands in the back ground,
provides the wherewithal. keeps out
OF the spotlight, takes all the blame
and gets mighty little glory. 1t is
respected but not featured on the
front page. When there is a grand
jubilee, father and the Associated
Press are behind the potted palms
with the orchestra checking up the
expense
4 am glad to be here for several
reasons. Now that you may have for
gotten what you paid for it, | am will
ing to meet the gentlemen who bought
my merchandise. l sold you an as
sortment Of capital letters and a Job
lot of Chicago yernacular, and you
thought you were getting a new brand
Of humor. Very often l would weak
en- when it came to sign the vouchers.
Then | would read some of the other
syndicate stuff and take courage.
Every man who has not tried it
thinks that he can edit a newspaper.
write a comic opera and manage ho-
tel. | still believe that | know lot
about the hotel business.
When | went to Chicago to help
Victor f. Lawson uplift a community
that did not want to be uplifted, | no
ticed every day, in going to the roof
garden, largeSand we'll lighted apart
lnent iii which "a number OF noisy
gentlemen were seated at roll top
desks talking about circulation. Most
OF them were smoking and the more
they smoked the more enthusiastic
they became about the circulation. |
learned that these aristocrats of our
profession were what is known as the
business end of the paper About the
time we began to diagram the daily
murder they would put on their top
coats and dog skin gloves and saun-
ter over to the Auditorium hotel. In
those days if young man from
'cliNN w iSiC OuI III luE COl UelL CdIllS
to the office and applied for a job
he was asked if he had attended a
first-class western college. If he re-
piled Yes and could produce a letter
from the professor of English show
ing that he had written articles for
the college paper, he was put into the
editorial department at SIS a week. If
he could prove absolutely that he had
not attended any college, he was
assigned to the business department
at $40 a week.
Il learned upon investigation that
had made mistake in taking up the
literary end of the game, so [ re-
solved TO go in for advertising There
fore | became an author in the rare
fled atmosphere of dramatic art as
practiced today at two dollars a seat
or four dollars on the sidewalk | felt
that | am peculiarly qualified to dis
cuss American newspapers. | can
proceed with safety because if | say
anything uncomplimentary | have
scrap book to prove that they began it.
Everybody wants to help the edi-
tor. Not as regards cheaper wood
pulp or keeping down the pay roll, but
with suggestions for filling up the pa
per. Most people still believe that
every newspaper must hustle every
night to get enough copy to separate
the advertisements. Being post
graduate l know that you are compell-
ed to throw columns and columns of
stuff on the floor. Very often, in
glancing over long tariff editorial
| wonder what was thrown on the
floor, however, l am not here to up
set any traditions-merely to offer
few helpful hints.
In the first place the city newspa-
per of today as compared with the
Indiana newspaper of the seventies is
tame, invertebrate, colorless and apol-
ogetic. The first newspaper with
which I was associated came out every
Thursday from room over a hard
ware store.
"The fires of Civil War were still
smouldering, Indiana's chief occupa-
ton was politics. Nearly every man
was voting as he shot, and some of
them a good deal oftener. Our Office
equipment consisted of a Washington