ppenings, compiled often for the
pleasure and use of the compiler alone, sometimes for monarchs or
statesmen or friends; later to be circulated for the information of a
circle of readers, or distributed in copies to subscribers among the
public at large. These were the first newspapers. While we still in a
specific sense speak of daily newspapers as journals, the term is often
enlarged to comprise nearly all publications that are issued periodically
and distributed to subscribers.

A journalist is one whose business is publishing a journal (or more than
one), or editing a journal, or writing for journals, especially a person
who is regularly employed in some responsible directing or creative work
on a journal, as a publisher, editor, writer, reporter, critic, etc. This
use of the word is comparatively modern, and it is commonly restricted to
persons connected with daily or weekly newspapers. Many older newspaper
men scout it, preferring to be known as publishers, editors, writers, or
contributors. Journalism, however, is a word that is needed for its
comprehensiveness. It includes the theory, the business, and the art of
producing newspapers in all departments of the work. Hence, any school of
professional journalism must be presumed to comprise in its scope and
detail of instruction the knowledge that is essential to the making and
conduct of newspapers. It must have for its aim the ideal newspaper which
is ideally perfect in every department.

Journalism, so far as it is more than mere reporting and mere money
making, so far as it undertakes to frame and guide opinion, to educate the
thought and instruct the conscience of the community, by editorial
comment, interpretation and homily, based on the news, is under obligation
to the community to be truthful, sincere, and uncorrupted; to enlighten
the understanding, not to darken counsel; to uphold justice and honor with
unfailing resolution, to champion morality and the public welfare with
intelligent zeal, to expose wrong and antagonize it with unflinching
courage. If journalism has any mission in the world besides and beyond the
dissemination of news, it is a mission of maintaining a high standard of
thought and life in the community it serves, strengthening all its forces
that make for righteousness and beauty and fair growth.

This is not solely, nor peculiarly, the office of what is called the
editorial page. To be most influential, it must be a consistent expressi