Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1881 — Newspaper Writing. [ARTICLE]

Newspaper Writing.

flu majority of people imagine tort i it is toe simplest thing in the world ' to edit a newspaper. A man may have grave doubts about his talents for public speaking; may freely admit that h cannot turn a tune or recoghias one when turned by anvbod else; may confess that he is no poet, not much of a scholar, and nothing of an artist; but there is no creature so poor-spirited ss to avow his incapacity to edit a newspaper. On the contrary, this is work of which every man has a manifest call. No matter what his actual business may be—preacher, lawyer, physician, butcher, baker or candlestick maker—he has a secret foncy that if he only had a chanoe he oould make a newspaper a little spicier and livelier than any thing in the shape of a public journal that has ever come in his way. This is one of the most amusing and universal weaknesses of modern times. The number of people who are infected by it are known only to druggists and physicians. The drawers and waste baskets of every leading newspaper office in the country overflow with evidences of the ambition and harmless vanity of the vast public who seribble by stealth and patiently toil over realms of composition which nobody can be induced to print.

It must be admitted that there is something enticing and enviable in editorial life aa it appears to the outside world. The delight of getting into print for the first time is one of the keenest epjoyments. What, therefore, both men and women reason to themselves, must oe the Sleasures of that happy man who ally feasts tbe public*with his wisdom, and whose smallest scribbling finds its'way Into type without criticism or delay? But this reasoning is altogether unsound. The editor does not look at things exactly in the same roseate light. Tne bright colors Been by other eyes have Become to his a Uttle clouded. The freshness, the exquisite charm of Beeing his reflect ons in print has long since vanished. He writes sometimes painfully and under pressure, often harassed by a thousand petty vexations, ftnd not unfrequently with aching head and weary hand, His work S, of all work, the most wearying, the most exhausting both to body and mind. The call of copy is inexorable and cannot be refused. He must write; he must also endure the most oontemptible and continued criticisms.but bear patiently “to be esteemed dull when he can not be witty, and to be applauded for wit when he knows he lias been dull.” Every blockhead who buys his paper feels that he has purchased a right to dictate the manner in which it ihall be pond noted, to criticise sharply everything that appears In it, and to “elevate its tone” with his own carping incubrations, fairly written out and inclosed in a note for immediate *publieation, signed “A Subscriber,” “An Old Patron,” or “An Earnest Well Wisher.” If you were to ask this modest friend to cut you a coat, or measure you for a pair of boots, he would indignantly reply that that was not his trade; that he knew nothing about it, and would not; attempt it. But the diffidence which shrirks from the shears and coyly draws back from the awl and the lapstone boldly grasps the pen and undertakes to so Illuminate and instruct the world. Breeches and shoes require art, experience, reflection, in tneir making; politfesal essays flow spontaneous, from the most addled pate, or can be pumped out of it by sheer hand labor, without the vulgar appliances or study, thought and knowledge.