s
what stuff will sell, where he has taste and inspiring, effective
teaching power, a course in newspaper English may carry a man far in
acquiring command of his powers of expression to their profitable use.
These "courses in journalism" sometimes run for only a single
semester. Many run for the normal span of three hours a week through a
year. Sometimes there are two in succession, the second assuming the
task of teaching work which a newspaper beginner usually reaches in
from three to five years: the special article, the supplement, study
of a subject, the "feature" story, criticism, and the editorial. When
these courses are based on assignments which lead a man to go out and
get the facts on which he writes, they furnish a certain share of
training in the art of reporting. Where this is done in a college town
and a college community, however, the work is a far remove from that
where the reporter must dive and wrestle in the seething tide of a
great city, to return with news wrested from its native bed.

=Courses in "newspaper English"=

Newspaper English has its great and widest value to the man who wishes
to learn how he can affect the other man. A course in it is certain,
if the instruction is effective, to leave a student better able to
express himself in the normal needs of life. This work is taken by
many students as part of the effective training of college life, with
no expectation of entering active newspaper work. The demand for
publicity work in all business fields, and its value to the social
worker, the teacher, and the clergyman, lead others to this
specialized training. In at least one of our state universities, half
those who take the courses in journalism do not look to the newspaper
in the future. The curriculum is often so arranged that in a four-year
college course it will be practicable to combine these courses in
newspaper English with the parts of work offered, required for, or
preparatory to the three learned professions, social service,
business, and the applied sciences. Such an arrangement of studies
frankly recognizes the value in general education and after life of
training in the direct expression the newspaper uses. In no long time
every college will have at least one such course in its English
department.

But this course in direct writing stands alone, without any systematic
training in journalism; it should not be called a course in journalism
any more than a course in political s