The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1913-02-07
Making a Newspaper.

Making Newspaper.
Horace Greeley was once moved to
observe that while the world contain
ed a reasonable proportion of men ut
terly incapable of making successes
of their own business or of doing any
thing else with the intelligence and
energy necessary to bring 1t to a sat
isfactory completion, there was not
one so poor and feeble that he didn't
feel he could take charge of any
newspaper and make much better
journal of it. What was true in
Greeley's day is true now. One of
the national exercises consists in
wondering how the-paper could have
forgotten " put such and such a
thing or how any reporter could be
so stupid as to say this thing
was that way when anybody ought to
know it was entirely different.
There was once a Connecticut edi-
tor who became distracted by reason
of the ministrations of a female tenn
perance worker. She continually be-
sought him to print columns of argu-
mentative matter which he did not
consider had proper place in his
news pages. In despair he told her
that he lacked the necessary space,
whereupon she sat down and spent
two hours explaining TO him how ma
terially he could improve his publica-
ton by eliminating the prize fighting
and murder information in which no.
body was interested and substituting
good temperance news"
The editor spent the next week
keeping an accurate record of the adj
vice and criticism which came to him.
At the end he found that If he had
been responsive to all of 1t he would
have eliminated on criticism every
line in his paper. He could not have
replaced it with anything else be-
cause his volunteer advisers and
critics were miles from agreement
among themselves. So nowadays he
keeps right on in the old fashioned
way guessing to the best of his
ability.
The newspaper publisher prints
daily evidence for a gigantic jury. He
long ago gave up any fantastic no
ton of getting that jury into unity OF
opinion. He has trouble enough in
printing the evidence at all He has
even given up expecting the average
reporter to possess as much technical
knowledge and interest in steam
boats, women's gowns, machinery,
social customs, politics, pure food,
war. the stock markets, uplift work,
court procedure, aeroplanes, railroad
rates, medicine, religious observanees
music, art and barroom gossip as
would a congregation of enthusiastic
experts in these various lines. He is
even convinced that linotype opera
tor may err in composition without
being either an imbecile or a scound-
rel. He sometimes goes so far as to
condone the iniquities of proofread-
ers. But he is shamefully conscious
that he is unique in these things.
Take the case of paper such as
the Times. On Monday, the Times
published exclusive OF advertising
matter some 80 columns of printed
composition. That means total of
over 100000 words. The average pop
ular novel of popular size contains
somewhere in the neighborhood of so,
600 words. Novels are always writ
ten by geniuses, who take months for
the job. Yet we have occasionally
discovered errors in novels. Mr..
Shaw perpetrates such anachronisms
as peopling Vermont in Revolut-
ionary days with Presbyterians. Mr..
Marriott has constructed obviously
impossible steamships In one of
Mr.. Chambers great works We were
startled to find the hero suddenly
identified as "DauPpL$6793R? ??".
In a written effort twice the size of
the average novel put together at ex-
press speed and bound TO be In the
hands of its readers at an early hour
each afternoon we should naturally
expect wholesale blundering-if we
hadn't learned from experience that
except in marvellously small quanti-
ties it can be avoided.
The benighted individuals who
write the daily news for the press
write about a multiplicity of things.
With not one of these are they as ia
miliar as those intimately connected
with il. Nine times out of ten they do
not feel the slightest personal inter
est. Yet accuracy and even atmos-
phere of a sort are expected of them.
They get a surprising amount OF
INDEPENDENTLY when the necessi-
ty of speed in the getting is consider
ed. And then the printers put il in
to type and the presses roll il of
and John Jones, who has been compii
mented. is inclined to felicitate his
town on the possession Of such an en-
lightened palladium Of liberty, and
Bill wilkins. whose mother-in-law's
middle initial has been linotyped into
error, wonders why the common
wealth doesn't take better care Of its
mental detectives.
We relate this little tale not In any
spirit Of defense or even in sorrow.
but merely in.order that the laity
may intelligently Join us in marvell-
ing al the daily miracle which takes
place in the Office Of every news
paper.-Hartford Times.