Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_, says: “The result of any newspaper enterprise depends upon the character of the man who engages in it--his capacity to discern correctly and to adapt his paper to the wants and needs of the audience it is meant to serve.”
Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York _Tribune_, and now Minister to France, says: “Every great newspaper represents an intellectual, a moral and a material growth--the accretion of successive efforts from year to year--until it has become an institution and a power. It is the voice of the power that the twenty or thirty years of honest dealing with the public and just discussion of current questions have given.”
Horace Greeley, the founder of Mr. Reid’s paper, said truthfully that “The office of a newspaper is first to give the history of its time, and afterward to deduce such theories or truths from it as shall be of universal application.” Can any mere peddler of news and scandals, or any man whose sole gratification is a desire to see his own impressions in print, live up to this standard?
Conscience, application and money, as well as intellect, is necessary to the successful management of a newspaper. George W. Childs, editor of the Philadelphia _Ledger_, snatched the sympathies of all decent members of the editorial fraternity when he said: “Few persons who peruse the morning papers think of the amount of capital invested, the labor involved, and the care and anxiety incident to the preparation of the sheet which is served so regularly.” Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York _Sun_, says: “The legal responsibility of newspapers is a reality, but their moral responsibility is greater and more important.” E. L. Godkin, editor of the New York _Evening Post_, says: “News is an impalpable thing--an airy abstraction; to make it a merchantable commodity, somebody has to collect it, condense it, and clothe it in language, and its quality depends upon the character of the men employed in doing this.”
George William Curtis, editor of _Harper’s Weekly_, admitting the tremendous influence of the press, voices the sentiment of successful editors everywhere when he says: “If the newspaper is the school of the people, and if upon popular education and intelligence the success and prosperity of popular government depends, there is no function in society which requires more conscience as well as ability.”