It asks without hesitation that
the newspaper should take up its valuable space by printing hundreds and
often thousands of dollars' worth of political announcements in the
course of a protracted campaign, when it never would think of getting its
halls, its speakers, and its brass bands, free of expense. Churches, as
well as parties, expect this sort of charity. I have known rich churches,
to whose members it was a convenience to have their Sunday and other
services announced, withdraw the announcements when the editor declined
any longer to contribute a weekly fifty-cents' worth of space. No private
persons contribute so much to charity, in proportion to ability, as the
newspaper. Perhaps it will get credit for this in the next world: it
certainly never does in this.
The chief function of the newspaper is to collect and print the news.
Upon the kind of news that should be gathered and published, we shall
remark farther on. The second function is to elucidate the news, and
comment on it, and show its relations. A third function is to furnish
reading-matter to the general public.
Nothing is so difficult for the manager as to know what news is: the
instinct for it is a sort of sixth sense. To discern out of the mass of
materials collected not only what is most likely to interest the public,
but what phase and aspect of it will attract most attention, and the
relative importance of it; to tell the day before or at midnight what the
world will be talking about in the morning, and what it will want the
fullest details of, and to meet that want in advance,--requires a
peculiar talent.
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