The village editor usually is deep in local politics. Quite as much as any one else does he help to name the town officers, the county rulers, the man to the legislature, the congressman. Frequently, indeed, he is called to these posts or to the higher honors of the State. He sits on governing boards and he is a delegate to all sorts of conventions. He is big in public affairs.
This kind of newspaper life is entirely different from that of the city. It is a life that may be made exceedingly attractive and that may be enjoyed to the uttermost because of its independence, its great influence, its close intimacy with the people and its opportunities for wholesome service. What the editor writes is read by everybody, the children as well, and we all know how a child is influenced by what it reads.
Some one has said of the village editor: “He comes pretty near being the boss of the entire town.”
“I had rather be the editor of a daily in a small city than hold any other newspaper post,” remarked a journalist who had tried almost every kind of newspaper work--and many will agree with him. Increased facilities for gathering news and information and the wonderful improvement in printing office mechanism permit the making of a complete newspaper almost anywhere. The small cities may have just as good a daily sheet as the big ones if the owners care to pay the price of producing it. The news associations and the telegraph companies deliver news simultaneously in all parts of the country. The newspaper in the remote Northwest or the extreme South gets the same telegraphic news as is furnished to New York City or to New England.
Any editor may supplement his news service with syndicate articles--by which is meant, articles written in New York, Washington, the State Capital, or anywhere, and duplicated to any number of newspapers. Syndicate service has come to be an important feature of American journalism. Its use saves the editor time, trouble, and expense. A few syndicates in New York and Washington send special news by wire but most of the matter goes by mail. It consists largely of articles on national topics, social topics, business, the theaters, music, art, and sports. At this writing a syndicate is sending from New York a service of excellent editorial articles on general topics. All sorts of feature matter also may be had: the medical column, the cookery department, the fashion show, the question and answer diversion, the short daily or weekly story of fiction, a daily cartoon or a comic strip or cut. Entire pages of matter are offered on every imaginable topic for use in Saturday and Sunday edition supplements. They include even the comic pictorial broadsides in vivid color. Several of the big metropolitan sheets sell their miscellaneous Sunday features entire and some of them furnish a special news service intended to supplement the news associations’ report. This news service and Sunday syndicate service sent from the big newspapers furnish the identical articles that appear in the papers from whose offices they are sent. By their use the out of town editor may go a great way toward reproducing the big city sheet. All of this kind of matter is offered at ridiculously low prices, the profit to the producer being, of course, in its repeated duplication.