People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1897 — DEAN OF THE EDITORS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DEAN OF THE EDITORS

NEW TITLE BESTOWED ON CHARLES A. DANA. The Greatest Journalist Since Greeley’s Time —Would Not Cheapen the Btyle of the Sun —It* Old Bleal Only a Shadow of It* Former Belf.

v — HARLES A. DANA ff of the Sun is still If president of the 11 United Press, reWj maining like the i . white cap on a &IUW mountain after nearly all the other snow has melted away In spring sunshine. Mr. Dana is called “the

dean of American journalism,” and it may be truly said that it was he who lifted journalism to the dignity of a profession. There are those who attribute to his influence the fact that the newspaper writers have been enabled to earn salaries more or less commensurate with the intelligence and ability involved in their work. Mr. Dana is now 78 years old, and most of his long life has been spent in work connected with the writing and editing of newspapers. He worked with Horace Greeley on the Tribune and wa s paid S2O a week for work that he afterward avowed was worth four times the money. It was these early rebuffs that determined his career. He was not impressed w'ith the newspaper hack of the early days and he set to work to teach newspaper men the real meaning of their calling and to establish a code of journalistic ethics which will long survive him. He had the pleasure of repaying Greeley’s roughness by supporting him for the presidency of the United States. The date cf his real greatness in the newspaper field is that

on which he became the editor of the Sun, which has ever since been the favorite journal of newspaper men generally in America. For many years Mr. Dana has not been active in the management of his paper, although its conduct is animated by his ideas. He Is a benevolent man, fond of encouraging Utopian dreamers even if he does not believe in their philosophy, and, withal, is perhaps the most picturesque figure in newspaper literature of America, standing, as he does, between the old orthodox ideas and the new journalism of the day.

Joseph Medill, of the Chicago Tribune, was once a prominent aspirant for the deanery, but of late years the Tribune has fallen below the Standard of the Sun. Mr. Medill has retired from the duties of its chief editor.

CHARLES A. DANA.