The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-05-12
York kWorld.)
CAddress Delivered Before the South ern Newspaper Publishers As
 sociation at Atlanta. Gal

| 6Address Delivered Before the South l ern Newspaper Pub1ishers' As 1 sociation at Atlanta. Ga-)
 Paraphrasing a little I might say that it is good business to have an ed- itoriaI ideal We sometimes get so radical in our views towards business l that we think it ought to be disinfect- ed at frequent intervals That ought not to. and I don't think it does apply to the newspaper business. I doubt if there is anything In the world of a commercial nature that has so little of the commercial in it's beginnings as the newspaper business. Primarily. the discoverers of printing had ideals They were not thinking of making l money when they put type and ink and paper together. They were only striving to develop a method whereby knowledge could be more readily diff fused to the world Before Faust and Guttenberg perfected their great in ventioi1, communication was by hand reproduction the books of the Bible had to be transcribed slowly by scriv- eners: the monks worked in their cells duplicating the ancient monuments of literature by hand. Much was handed down iby word of mouth.the Iliad lived for nearly three thousand years by being repeated. So that the printer was simply relieving a strain on the intellect by providing an easy method of conveying and retailing knowledge ssSo when the earlier printers came along and began establishing news papers, it was usually with the idea of advocating something that was worth wlli1e-some cause. some purpose. po- litical, moral or religious
 EARLY DAY NEwsPAPERs- The first daily newspaper was little strip printed by man in London. to replace the News Letter, he News Letter was written by hangers one in the coffee houses of England, sent to similar establishments throughout England, ana there retailed to the tdlers and otherwise in the coffee rooms. It was a slow way of spread ing Knowledge. Therefore the printer took to- printing these slips as an ad junct to his business, and in that way, lie bred newspapers You would be surprised to know the number of suc- cessfuI newspapers that exist ifl the United States today that were started merely because the job office was idle and the proprietor thought perhaps if the compositors were kept busy setting product out of it. The Brooklyn Eagle was founded by Isaac Van Anden. in order to keep his printers busy. and it has grown to be great, a successful, wonderful newspap CT.
 # The business office of the newspaper came about as a necessity growing out of the competition and conditions not because it was any factor in making. the paper any stronger or better When went on the Brooklyn Eagle in 1888, the paper had no advertising departn ent, 1t was farmed out. George Washington Reed had contract with the Eagle whereby he sold its busi- ness made his own terms with the advertisers and paid the paper a lump sum Horace Greeley never had a. business department, and never en- ioyed the just profits Of the New York Tribune in it's best days,
 FoRDss ARRANGEMENTS
 WITH GREE1zEY
 Gordon L. Ford had a similar ar rangement with the Tribune whereby he became rich and Greeley poor. As the editorials made the paper, Greeley found he had problems that he had to deal with, that were too great for him to handle. As his paper grew in circulation somebody had to get 1t out somebody had to distribut it., somebody had to collect bills and pay them, and that was not the editorial province: and yet, every paper that ever amounted to anything, you will find, was made by the editors
 Perhaps some gentlemen who are down stair think that the editors are of no particular account. enfreat them to get rid of such an idea They ought to be striving all the while to better their editorial staffs It is long distance still. in most offices. between down stairs and upstairs-I know that was the first editor on the Brooklyn Eagle who ever condeseended to dls-s cuss matters with the the people or the business office. The only theory the editors had of the business oH1ce was that 1t was a good place to go, when YOU wanted an advance on your salary, and they regarded the orderly conduct of business matters with con tempt and were very much disgusteds when system took place: but there have been a. great many successes without system, based upon ed1toT1ai merits.
 An editorial ideal cannot conflict with good business if the office is hon. estly and properly managed A man
 who starts out to sell his paper and to sell his editors, will in a little while, find he has nothing left to sell. Every once in a while I go to one of the higirbrow affairs and people get up and make. extraordinary statements about the newspaper business. A Few wears ago I investigated the subject and found nearly a thousand men who were grafti1lg off the newspaper bus-s in ess and giving it a, bad name. They were doing worse than that, they were selling us and we weren't getting the money They were replacing what is should have been honest and 1egiti- mate advertising and getting surrep- stitious opinions. Everybody who could hire one had a press agent. We were. seasy and our editors felt they were helping everybody along but we were tunconsciously doing a great deal to destroy the influence of the paper.
 think we, who are engaged in the newspaper business, and who do run papers properly, should put solemn front against this sort of representa- ton, and misrepresentation and al- ways make it clear that the newspaper