Condon globe. (Condon, Gilliam Co., Or.) 189?-1919, 1913-03-14

New York, evidently under
Gotham sense of what is what:
''In these days the world is
moving so fast that many things are
sticking TO the wheels of Progress
which would long since have dropped
off of their own weight if those wheels
had been moving slower. Among these
are editors.
''For many years the editor has
served a useful purpose. In fact, we
could hardly have done without, him.
He has persistently and with rare
courage stood between the public and
the Ultimate truth. This alone would
be enough to entitle him to immor-
tahty.
'fHe has kept US fully informed
about all the murders taking place
among our neighbors, and has kept us
as things go-fairly well satisfied
about their marital difficulties, their
quarrels and scandals; and there have
even been times (strange as this may
seem) when he has let us know about
changes in foreign governments and
countries. Not enough, perhaps for us
to tell how far wrong the last geog.
raPhy is, but enough to pique our curl
osity about it.
Gan these things, and more, can be
laid to the credit of the editor. But
even the most useful ones have their
day.
some of the most curious phenomena
about the editor of the present day is
the fact that he does not realize that
he is passing. The transition from
editor to advertising manager has been
SO gradual that he has scarcely no.
ticed it.
"This is intended by no means to
detract anything from the value of
periodical or daily literature. 1t has
long been recognized that the adver-
tisements are far more interesting
than the text, in most of our periodi-
Gals.
"With the gradual elimination of
the editor will come to the supreme
advertising head finer sense of re-
sponsibility. He will see more and
more that the best advertising is in
reality the best literature. He will no
longer exploit his advertised articles in
the way it is done at presently
eheaply asking people to buy them.
But these articles will be celebrated in
verse and story; their faults will be
satirized, their virtues brought out in
contrast.
"The epic of the future is in the
advertising pages. The editors obitu-
ary is already written"
Life is pleased to attempt to be
cynical in the words that have been
quoted. Judging from the general pol,
icy and makeup of the metropolitan
paper of today, however, Life is more
than half right. Time was when the
papers of the great cities had their
traditions, their ideals, their sense of
right and wrong, when editors thun-
dered their wrath or smiled their praise,
all irrespective of subsidy of any sort.
That day is gone. Life's structures
apply, in large way, to the great
newspapers of the country. Still, Life
is wrong about the passing of the edi-
tor. He will never pass. There are
in this country today hundreds of
thousands of honest, capable, fearless
editors, men who uphold the finest
traditions of their craft, men who say
what they mean and are sincere in
their efforts to make their people think
as is right. These men are at their
desks in the smaller cities, in the
towns and villages of the United
States. Day by day they work, with
the anonymous brilliance that is a
Yankee newspaper attribute, doing
what they can in the best way they
know. 1t is in this class that the
American editor is to live. The hope