Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1888 — Bill Nye on Journalism. [ARTICLE]

Bill Nye on Journalism.

I am glad to know Cornell University is to establish a department of journalism. I have always claimed that journalism could be taught in universities and colleges just as successfully as any other athletic exercise. Of course you cannot teach a boy how to jerk a giant journal frota the crutches of decay and make it a robust anil ripsnorting shaper and trimmer of public opinion, in whose counting-room people will walk all over each other in their mad efforts to insert advertisements. You cannot teach this in a school any more than you can teach a boy how to discover the open jxdar sea, but you can teacli him the rudiments and save _ him a good deal of time experimenting with himself.

Boys spend small fortunes and the best years of their lives in learning the simplest truths in relation to journalism. We grope on blindly, learning this year, perhaps, how to distinguish an italic shooting-stick when we see it, or how to eradicate type lice from a standing galley, learning next year how to sustain life on an annual pass and a sample early-rose potato weighing four pounds and measuring eleven inches in circumference. This is a slow and tedious way to obtain journalistic training. If this can be avoided or abbreviated it will be a great boon. The life of the journalist is a hard one, and, although it is not so trying as the life of the newspaper man, it is full of trial and perplexities. If newspaper men and journalists did not stand by each other I do not know what joy they would have. Kindness for each other, gentleness and generosity, even in their rivalry, characterize the conduct of a large number of them. I shall never forget my first opportunity to do a kind act for a newspaper man, nor with what pleasure I availed myself of it, though he was my rival, especially in the publication of large and spirited equestrian handbills and posters. He also printed a rival paper and assailed me most bitterly from time to time. His name was Lorenzo Dow Pease, and we had carried on an acrimonious warfare for two years. He had said that I was a reformed Prohibitionist and that I had left a neglected wife in every State in the Union. I had stated that he would give better satisfaction if he would wear his brains breaded. Then he had said something else that was personal, and it had gone on so for sorye time. We devoted fifteen minutes each day to the management of our respective papers, and the balance of the day in doing each other up in a way to please our subscribers: One evening Lorenzo Dow Pease came into my office and said he wanted to see me personally. I said that would suit me exactly, and that if he had asked to see me in any other wav I did not know how I could have arranged it. He said he meant that he would like to see me by myself. I therefore discharged the force, turned out the dog, and we had the office to ourselves. I could see that he was in trouble, for every little while he would brush away a tear in an underhanded kind of way and swallow a large, imaginary mass 6f something. I asked Lorenzo why he felt so depressed and he said: “William, I have came here for a favor. ” He always said “I have came,” for he was a self-made man and hadn’t done a good job, either. “I have came here for a favor. I wrote a reply to your venomous attack of today and I expected to publish it tomorrow in my paper, but to tell yon the truth, we are out of paper. At least, we have a few bundles at the freight office, but they have taken to send it C. O. D., and I haven’t the means just at hand to take it out. Now, as a brother in the great and glorious order erf journalism, would it be too much for you to loan me a couple of bundles of paper to do me till I get my pay for some equestrian bills struck off Friday and just as good as the wheat?”'

“How long would a couple of bundles last you?” I asked as I looked out at the window' and wondered if he would reveal his circulation. “Five issues and a little over,” he said, filling his pipe from a small box on the desk. “But you could cut oft'your exchanges, and then it would last longer,” I remarked. “Yes, but only, for one additional issue. lam axious to appear to-mor-row, because my subscribers will be looking for a reply to what you said about me this morning. You stated that I was ‘a journalistic bacteria looking for something to infect,’ and while I did not come here to get you to retract I would like it as a favor if you would loan me enough white paper to set myself straight before my subscribers.” “Well, why don’t you go and tell them about it? It wouldn’t take long,” I said in a jocund way, slapping Lorenzo on the back. But he did not laugh. I then told him that we only had paper enough to last us till our next bill came, and so I could not possibly loan any, but that if he would write a caustic reply to my editorial I would print it for him. He caught me in his arms, and then for a moment his head was pillowed on my breast. Then he sat down and wrote the following card: Editor of The Boomerang: Will you allow me through your columns to state that in your issue of yesterday you did me a great injustice by referring to me as a journalistic bacteria looking for something to infect; also as a lop-oared germ of contagion, and warning people to vaccinate in order to prevent my spread? I denounce the whole article as a malicious falsehood, and state that if you will only give me a chance I will light you on sight. All I ask is that you will wait till I can overtake you, and I am able and willing to knock great chunks off the universe with you, Ido not ask any favors of an editor who misleads his

subscribers and intentionally misunderstands his correspondents; a man who advises an anxious inquirer who wants to know “how to get a cheap baby buggy” to leave the child at a cheap hotel; a man who assumes to wear brains, but who really thinks with a fungus growth: a man the bleak and barren exterior of whose head is only equaled by its bald and echoing exterior. Lorenzo Dow Pease. I looked it over, and as there did not seem to be anything personal in it I told him I would print it for him with pleasure. He then asked that I would, as a further favor, refrain from putting any advertising marks on it, and that I would make it follow pure reading matter, which I did. I leaded the card and printed it with a simple word of introduction, in which I said that I took pleasure in printing it, inasmuch as Mr. Pease could not get his paper out of the express office for a few days. It was a kindness to him and did not hurt my paper in the end. There are many reasons why the establishment of a department of journalism at Cornell will be a good move, and I believe that while it will not take the place of actual experience it will shorten the apprenticeship of a young newspaper man, and the fatigue of starting the amateur of journalism will be divided between tHe managing editor and the tutor. It will also give the aspiring sons of wealthy parents a chance to toy with journalism without interfering with those who are actually engaged in it.