It is sufficient briefly to say here, that it is
exactly the responsibility of every other person in society,--the full
responsibility of his opportunity. He has voluntarily taken a position in
which he can do a great deal of good or a great deal of evil, and he,
should be held and judged by his opportunity: it is greater than that of
the preacher, the teacher, the congressman, the physician. He occupies
the loftiest pulpit; he is in his teacher's desk seven days in the week;
his voice can be heard farther than that of the most lusty fog-horn
politician; and often, I am sorry to say, his columns outshine the
shelves of the druggist in display of proprietary medicines. Nothing else
ever invented has the public attention as the newspaper has, or is an
influence so constant and universal. It is this large opportunity that
has given the impression that the newspaper is a public rather than a
private enterprise.
It was a nebulous but suggestive remark that the newspaper occupies the
borderland between literature and common sense. Literature it certainly
is not, and in the popular apprehension it seems often too erratic and
variable to be credited with the balance-wheel of sense; but it must have
something of the charm of the one, and the steadiness and sagacity of the
other, or it will fail to please.
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