II

THE TEACHING OF JOURNALISM

The education of the journalist or newspaper man has been brought into
being by the evolution of the newspaper during the last half century.
Addison's _Spectator_ two centuries ago counted almost wholly on the
original and individual expression of opinion. It had nothing beyond a
few advertisements. The news sheet of the day was as wholly personal,
a billboard of news and advertisements with contributed opinion in
signed articles. A century ago, nearly half the space in a daily went
to such communications. In the four-page and the eight-page newspaper
of sixty to eighty years ago, taking all forms of opinions,--leaders
contributed, political correspondence from capitals, state and
federal, and criticism,--about one fourth of the space went to
utterance editorial in character. The news filled as much more,
running to a larger or smaller share as advertisements varied. The
news was little edited. The telegraph down to 1880 was taken, not as
it came, but more nearly so than today. In an eight-page New York
paper between 1865 and 1875, a news editor with one assistant and a
city editor with one assistant easily handled city, telegraph, and
other copy. None of it had the intensive treatment of today. It was
not until 1875 that telegraph and news began to be sharply edited, the
New York Sun and the Springfield _Republican_ leading. Between 1875
and 1895, the daily paper doubled in size, and the Sunday paper
quadrupled and quintupled. The relative share taken by editorial and
critical matter remained about the same in amount, grew more varied in
character, but dropped from 25 per cent of the total space in a
four-page newspaper to 3 to 5 per cent in the dailies with sixteen to
twenty pages, and the news required from three to five times as many
persons to handle it. The circulation of individual papers in our
large cities doubled and quadrupled, and the weekly expenditure of a
New York paper rose from $10,000 a week to thrice that. These rough,
general statements, varying with different newspapers as well as issue
by issue in the same newspaper, represent a still greater change in
the character of the subjects covered.

When the newspaper was issued in communities, of a simple
organization, in production, transportation, and distribution, the
newspaper had some advertising, some news, and personal expression of
opinion--political-partisan for the most part, critical in small part.
This opi