ARTICLES BY "SNYDER."

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 60, 29 October 1887, Page 3

ARTICLES BY "SNYDER."

TEE END OF A JOURNALIST’S CAREER HIS LAST RESOURCE. Fob thirty-three years I followed the calling of a Colonial journalist. Sometimes on a morning daily; at others on a daily evening. 1 have been on bi-weekiies and on tri-week-lies j on papers published only once a week, and sometimes only once a fortnight. I have edited religious journals, agricultural magazines, commercial gazettes, and society publications. How many varying shades of politics I have advocated, how many Ministries or Oppositions 1 have in my time opposed, or given my most cordial support to, or upon how many papers and journalistic enterprises I have been engaged, I really could not lay without more reckoning up than I care to go into. Of these many years the last six had been on the work of getting out daily morning issues in a big town. Then I thought I would have a good long holiday. I got an engagement on a paper not very long in existence which published twice a week It was in a pleasant Country town in the province of Auckland. The surrounding* charming, little evening parties, boating, invitations, moonlight ridings along a smooth, sandy, shell bestrewn beach. Scandal ad libitum, oysters through the colder months, and peaches through the summer, left nothing to be desired. In twelve months I had made many friends, and had increased thirteen pounds avoirdupois in flesh. Then it came to pass that one morning the proprietors called on me and said he thought he would do without an editor. He would edit the paper himself. He must admit he hadn’t been used to write for newspapers, but no man knew what he could do until he tried. He thought my writing was too milk-and-watery—l didn’t walk into people and show them up as I should do. “ There,” he said, “ there was the Atkinson Ministry.” Now, if you had gone on showing them up, the paper would get ever so much of the Government advertising as a reward for your letting them alone. That’s what they did to quiet the other papers who were walking into them. Then again, when the Grey Ministry came into office if you had only went for them it would have been the matter of a hundred pounds in my pocket. You, Mr Snyder, are troubled with too tender a conscience ; besides, there’s a want of consistency in your way of conducting a newspaper. Sometimes you write up something Ministers have done, while you condemn them for something else they have omitted to dp. This is what I suppose you call taking an impartial view of things ; but I find it doesn’t pay. I said, I was well aware it was a custom too much with editors and newspaper writers to lead their readers to believe that Ministers and their supporters were either wrong in all they did and there was no manner of good in them, or that they were all right and evil could not come ont of them. My experience had been that no set of Ministers were altogether corrupt, nor altogether pure and undefiled. By their words and deeds I judged them, and wrote accordingly. The proprietor said he dare say I was right in the abstract, but the thing for him to consider was, would it pay wages. If he couldn’t pay wages he must shut up shop, and he wasn't going to shut up shop if he could possibly help it. No, he thought he would edit the paper himself. He liked me as a man, but it appeared to him that I had an objection to slating people, and people knowing they wouldn’t be slated became indifferent to giving support to a paper. Legitimately conducted newspapers were like the legitimate drama ; thev were fast going out of fashion No one cared for Shakespeare now,excepting old fogies. People liked sensation pieces and Zavistowskie girls with snort skirts and wellturned legs, and women rope-dancers, and blue fire with slow music, followed by something short and comic with intervals for a liquor. The old style of newspaper editing would have to be done away with. He thought I was out of date and would recommend me to get the writing for an evangelical journal, if I thought I had vinegar and gall enough in me for the work, which he doubted. The worst, however, of evangelical journals was that the subscribers never paid and just because their names were on the books they appeared always under a belief, which there was no Knocking out of them, that they had no right to pay, for them, considering that if they attended the church the evangelical iournal represented it should be looked upon as good as a receipt. In something less than three weeks the proprietor editor had been highly successful. He had managed to set one half of the community at deadly enmity with the other half. He had walked into every society, sect, and institution which existed in . the town and throughout the districts. He accused the Municipal Councillors with robbing the ratepayers. He wanted to know what certain clergymen did with the money that was put into the plates after Sunday services. The Besident Magistrate was slated the lawyers practising in his Court were jumped upon. He charged the tradesmen of the plaee with using short weights and deficient measures. He enquired anxiously how young men in receipt of a hundred and fifty Siunds a year lived up to five hundred ow some married women he could mention, dressed so extravagantly, while their husbands were up to their eyes steeped in debt, the editor throwing out frightful hints as to how it was done. There were other things written and printed of a like disturbing nature. The town was in a ferment of rage

I never heard bo much malice expressed against any man in my life as there was against th'B e itor. But he ' didn’t seem to care about it one bit. He came out stronger each issue, telling his friends that his sensation articles were a good deal bette than witnessing a dog fight. Bnfrwhen those who had been in-

jured and insulted and their characters defamed held a meeting and agreed to

subscribe money towards starting an opposition paper, then the offending editor all nt once became very humble and apologetic and wrote articles weaker than the weakest of milk and water I had ever attempted to palm off to my readers. The principal shareholders in the proposed opposition newspaper made me the offer to become its editor, which I declined. I said to myself, thirty odd years of newspaper work should be looked upon as quite long enough in a man’s life. I would cut the business. There should be no more writing of newspaper articles for me. No more revising and condensing of reports; no more supervising reporters’ copy ; no more turning correspondents’ fetters into decent English : no more hunting for libels, which so often lie concealed where they would be least expected ; no more having to face men who wanted me to keep out matter which

ought to receive publicity, or to insert matter which, if I had permitted it, would have brought fine and imprisonment on the proprietor and publisher. No more late hours, no more reading of dirty proofs, or deciphering unintelligible manuscript; no more being driven to drink and desperation by filling up and inventing words left out in Press telegrams ; no more disputes with overseers about the “ making-up ” of the paper; no more never-ending rows with the young reader as to the grammatical construction of sentences, at which I always found that 1 was all in the wrong wherever syntax was the matter in dispute; no more being blackguarded for matter I had left over, which ought to have gone in ; or for matter gone in, which ought to have been left out; no more rascally little imps coming in and shouting for copy when there was no copy for them. No, come what might, I determined to cut newspaper work at once and for ever.

(to be continued.)