mind at rest. The newspaper publishes them under a sense of
responsibility for its statements. It is not by any means always correct;
but I know that it is the aim of most newspapers to discharge this
important public function faithfully. When this country had few
newspapers it was ten times more the prey of false reports and delusions
than it is now.

Reporting requires as high ability as editorial writing; perhaps of a
different kind, though in the history of American journalism the best
reporters have often become the best editors. Talent of this kind must be
adequately paid; and it happens that in America the reporting field is so
vast that few journals can afford to make the reporting department
correspond in ability to the editorial, and I doubt if the importance of
doing so is yet fully realized. An intelligent and representative
synopsis of a lecture or other public performance is rare. The ability to
grasp a speaker's meaning, or to follow a long discourse, and reproduce
either in spirit, and fairly, in a short space, is not common. When the
public which has been present reads the inaccurate report, it loses
confidence in the newspaper.

Its confidence is again undermined when it learns that an "interview"
which it has read with interest was manufactured; that the report of the
movements and sayings of a distinguished stranger was a pure piece of
ingenious invention; that a thrilling adventure alongshore, or in a
balloon, or in a horse-car, was what is called a sensational article,
concocted by some brilliant genius, and spun out by the yard according to
his necessities. These reports are entertaining, and often more readable
than anything else in the newspaper; and, if they were put into a
department with an appropriate heading, the public would be less
suspicious that all the news in the journal was colored and heightened by
a lively imagination.

Intelligent and honest reporting of whatever interests the public is the
sound basis of all journalism. And yet so careless have editors been of
all this that a reporter has been sent to attend the sessions of a
philological convention who had not the least linguistic knowledge,
having always been employed on marine disasters. Another reporter, who
was assigned to inform the public of the results of a difficult
archeological investigation, frankly confessed his inability to
understand what was going on; for his ordinary business, he said, was
cattle. A story is