ON MAKING A NEWSPAPER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 880, 18 August 1910, Page 4

ON MAKING A NEWSPAPER.

Men who make newspapers sometimes believe that their profession is an exacting one They are wrong. It is the simplest calling. Making a newspaper is an easy trick. Anybody can do it. A lawyer with only a diploma and a brass sign, who would lose a suit even if the other side were ready to confess judgment, will tell you how to run a newspaper. A physician who would send his patient to the morgue before the prescription had been filled will know all the fine points of making a newspaper. An actor who never earned any other plaudits than a soft tomato will give instruction in handling the world’s news. Any old lady who knows enough to get off a street car backwards has positive opinions on the press. Even a society person who never paid anything but a call or made anything but a visit, or did anything but a tailor, knows how stupid those men are who write “stories,” edit "copy,” wrestle with “ heads ” that won’t fit, and get the paper out on time. One reason for the uuiversalitv of perfection in this trade, among those who did not work at it, is that everybody has been employed in it. It is a most unusual thing to meet a man who, when the occasion seems ripe, will not say, "I used to be a newspaper man myself.” Every time a man works his country editor for a puff on the strength of a big pumpkin he graduates in journalism, and when he writes a communication on both sides of the paper to the editor he becomes a thirty-third degree member of the Tribe of Scribe.