The Detroit times. [volume] (Detroit, Mich.) 1903-1920, 1912-07-24
KNOWLEDGE, JUDGMENT,
ACCURACY, QUICKNESSj KEY
TOSUCESS IN JOURNALISM
Director of Pulitzer School Tells
Prospective Pupils What
Is Needed
BIG FIELD OF ACTIVITY
Difficulty of Distinguishing the
True From the False in
Varying Accounts
BIG FIELD OF ACTIVITY

NEW YORK, July 23.-Dr. Talcott
Williams, director Of the new School
OF Journalism at Columbia. has given
an Illuminating picture OF the schools
purpose In the current issue OF the
Columbia university quarterly.
"Mr. Pulitzer, whose sheer genius
for the Journalism of the many has
never been exceeded, had been for 10
years In the battle OF daily journalism
and had become the proprietor OF a
newspaper when he deliberately ad-
dressed himself to hard reading in
the fields OF political economy and
political science. His own develop
ment. the development and changes
IN the New York World, led him, to-
ward the close OF his career to say
with president insight that the time
had come when there was body OF
knowledge, of definite training, and
Of acquired and recorded fact which
the journalist ought to know and
lo1rn In school, just as the growth
OF similar bodies of knowledge had
brought professional schools in other
callings.
Newspapers do not make events
and issues. Events and issues make
newspapers. The important thing
about newspaper man, when he sits
down to write report or an edi-
torial, Is not how he can write, but
what he knows He is practicing
an art, and the first quality OF ali art
Is that man shall have an aptitude
for that art. II this inspiration,
though II be but single vital drop.
be not in him he will struggle in vain
to become a Journalist because he Is
entering on one OF the great arts OF
expression-the capacity to focaliZe
the floating events of day, not with
reference to the future. but TO tomor-
row; to feel at midnight what men
by the hundred thousand will feel in
the brief moment they give to the
newspaper at that vivid instant be-
tween the rest OF the night and the
work Of the day.
knowledge Is Organized.
This daily knowledge now comes
70 the newspaper office not fortuitous-
ly. but organized. The business of
gathering the worlds news has been
put on as definite basis as the bust
ness Of furnishing food to a great
city. Accident has almost been elm
mated, and II for 4S hours the
knowledge OF great wreck in mid
ocean is held back a whole people
froths with Impotence
This food OF news in a city of the
first class would fill, II published
complete, anywhere from 60 to so
columns. The actual amount which
can be given to 1t by any ordinary
newspaper will run ffom 20 TO 40
columns Forty years ago a newspa-
per printed all the telegraph 1t got
and pretty nearly all the local news
II could gather. Today condensation
has to go on in both these fields at
& the scale OF always one in two or
three, and often one in five or six.
THE School OF Journalism has the
task of uniting the training in sbooks
which the journalist needs with prac-
tice In the technique OF his craft
which Is necessary to his professional
training. The young journalist must
be given knowledge in abundant por-
ton, and il must be knowledge suited
to his future work; but he must also
be taught how to write lucidly and
with force, how to gather news, and
how, above all things, TO be accurate.
THE newspaper is a daily scoff for
It's inaccuracy, but II is far more &C
curate than the world about it. The
variations from extract facts which
take place in newspaper reports,
hastily gathered by men questioning
willing and unwilling witnesses
one 10 as dangerous as the other-do
not vary from the truth as much as
testimony In court where witnesses
are all under oath, and the graft of
eliciting information by examination
has been settled and developed
through generations.
MIR. ulitzer wisely held that there
should be no collegiate tests for ad-
mission to the School of Journalism.
The development of the profession is
not yet ready for this, for one thing,
and for another in the practice OF an
art every year which separates man
from adolescence, diminishes his pow
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