Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1885 — BILL NYE OS JOURNALISM. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BILL NYE OS JOURNALISM.

The Distinguished Ex-Postmaster Gives His “Views” to tho Wisconsin Editors, at i Their Convention. Mb. Pbesident and Gentlemen of the Press of Wisconsin: I am sure that when you so kindly invited me to address you to-day you l did not anticipate a lavish display of genius and gestures. I accepted the invitation because it afforded me an opportunity to meet you and to get acquainted with you and tell you personally that fpr years I have been a constant reader of your valuable paper and Flike itYou are running it just as I like to. see a newspaper run. I need not elaborate upon the wonderful growth of the press in our country, or refer to the great rower which t journalism wields in the development of the new world. I need not ladle out sta-

tistics to show you how the newspaper has encroached upon the field of oratory and how the pale and silent man, while others sleep, compiles the universal history of a day and tells his mighty audience what he thinks about it, before he goes to bed. Of couise this is but the opinion of one man; but who has a better opportunity to judge than he who sits with his finger on the electric pulse of the world, judging the actions of humanity at so much per judge, invariably in advance? I need not tell you all this, for you certainly know it if you read your paper, and I hope you do. A man ought to read his own paper, even if he cannot indorse all its sentiments. So necessary has the profession of journalism become to the progress and education of our country that the matter of establishing schools where young men maybe fitted for an active newspaper life has attracted much attention and discussion. It has been demonstrated that our colleges do not fit a young man to walk at once into the active management of a paper. He should at least know the diffei-ence between a vile contemporary aud a Gothic scoop. It is difficult to map out a proper course for the student in a school of journalism, there are so many things connected with the profession which the editor and his staff should know, and know hard. The newspaper of to-day is a library. It is an encyclopedia, a poem, a biography, a history, a prophecy, a directory, a time-table, a romance, a cook-book, a guide, a horoscope,an art critic, a political resume, a ground plan of the civilized world, a low-priced multum in parvo. It is a sermon, a song, a circus, an obituary, a picnic, a shipwreck, a symphony in solid brevier, a medley of life and death, a grand aggregation of man’s glory and his shame. It is, in short, a bird’s-eye view of all the magnanimity and meanness, the joys and griefs, the births and deaths, the pride and poverty of the world, and all for two cents^sometimes. I could tell you some more things that the newspaper of to-day is, if you had time to stay here, and your business would not suffer ha your absence. Among others, it is a long-felt want, a nine-column paper in a five-column town, a lying sheet, a feeble effort, a financial problem, a tottering wreck, a political tool, and a Sheriff’s sale. If I were to suggest a curriculum for the young man who wished to take a regular course in a school of journalism, preferring that to the actual experience, I would say to him, devote the first two years to meditation and prayer. This wi:l prepare the young editor for the surprise and consequent temptation to profanity which in a few years he may experience when he finds that the name of the Deity in his doubleleaded editorial is spelled with a little “g, ” aiid the peroration of the article is locked up between a death notice and the advertisement of a patent mustache coaxer, which is to follow pure reading matter every day in the week, and occupy top of column on Sunday ts. The ensuing five years should be devoted to the peculiar orthography of the English language. Then put in three years with the dumbbells, sand-bags, slungr shots, and tomahawk. In my own journalistic experience I have found more cause for regret over my neglect of this branch than anything else. I usually keep on my desk, during a heated campaign, a large paper-weight weighing three or four pounds, and in several instances I have found that I could feed that to a constant reader of my valuable paper instead of a retraction. Fewer people lick the editor though now than did so in years gone by. Many people—iff the last two y’earß—have gone across the street to lick the editor and never returned. They intended to come right back in a few moments, but they are now in a land where a change of heart and a l.palm-leaf fan is all they need. Fower people are robbing the editor nowadays, too, I notice with much pleasure. Only a short time ago I noticed that a burglar succeeded in breaking into the residence of a Dakota journalist, and after a long, hard straggle, the editor succeeded in robbing him. After the primary course, mapped out already. an intermediate course of ten years should be given to learning the typographical art, so that when visitors come in and ask the editor all about the office, he can tell them of the mysteries of making a paper, and how delinquent subscribers have frequently been killed by a w“ell-directed blow of a printer's towel. Five years should be devoted to a study of the art of proof-reading. In that length of time the young journalist can himself to such a degree that it will take another five years for the printer to understand his corrections and marginal notes. Fifteen years should then be devoted to the study of Americap politics, especially civil-service reform, looking at it from a nop-partisan standpoint. If possible, the last five years should be spent abroad. London is the place to go if yon wish to get a clean, concise view of American politics, and Chicago and Milwaukee would be a good place for' the young journalist to go and study the political outldok in England. The student should then take a medical find surgical course, so that he may be able to attend to contusions, fractures, and so forth, which may occur to himself or the party who comes to his office for a retraction and ’by a mistake gets his spinal colamn double--1 leaded. | Ten years should then be given the study of law. No thorough, metropolitan editor wants to enter upon the duties of his profession without knowing the difference be-

tween a writ of mandamns and other styles of profanity. He should thoroughly understand the .entire system of American jurisprudence, so that in case a certiorari should break out ip his neighborhood he would know jusf what to do for it. The student will, by this time, begin to see what is required of him, and eater with great zeal upon the further study of his profession. He will now enter upon a theological course of ten years afid fit himself thoroughly to speak intelligently of the various creeds and religions of the world. Ignorance on ; the pu t of an editor is almost a crime, and when he closes a powerful editorial with the familiar quotation, “It is the early bird that gets the worm,” and attributes it to St. Paul instead of to Deuteronomy, it makes me blush for the profession. ' The last ten years may be profitably devoted to the acquisition pf a practical knowledge of cutting cord-wood, baking beans, making shirts, lecturing, turning double hand-springs, being shot out of a catapult at a ciicus, learning how to make a good adhesive paste that will not sour in hot weather, grinding scissors, punctuation, capitalization, condemnation, syntax, plain sewing, music and dancing, sculping, etiquette, prosody, how to win the affections of the opposite sex 'hnd evade a malignant case or breach of promise, the ten commandments, every man his own tutor on the flute, croquet, rules of the prizering, rhetoric, parlor magic, calisthenics, penmanship, how to turn a jack from the bottom of the pack without getting shot, civil engineer&g, decorative art, calcimining, bicycling, base-ball, hydraulics, botany, poker, international law, high-low-jack, drawing and painting, faro, vocal music, driving .breaking team, fifteen-ball pool, how to remove grease-spots from last year’s pantaloons, horsemanship, coupling freight-cars, riding on a rail, riding on a pass, feeding a threshing maehins, how to wean a calf from the parent stem, teaching school, bull-whacking, plastering, waltzing, vaccination, autopsy, how to win the affections of your wife’s mother, every man his own washerwoman, or how to wash underclothes so that they will not shrink, etc., etc., etc. .

But time forbids anything like a thorough list of what a young naan should study in order to fully understand all that he may he called upon to express an opinion about in his actual experience as a journalist. There are a thousand little matters which every editor should know, such, for instance, as the construction of roller composition. Many newspaper men can write a good editorial on Asiatic cholera, but their roller composition is not fit to eat. With the course of study that I have mapped out, the young student would emerge from the college of journalism at the age of 95 or 96, ready to take off his coat and write an article on almost any subject. He would be a little giddy at first, and the office boy would have to see that he went to bed at a proper hour each night, but aside from that he would be a good man to feed a waste-paper basket Actual experience is the best teacher in his peculiarly trying profession. I hope some day to attenda 'press convention where the order of exercises will consist of fiveminute experiences from each one present. It would be worth li-tening to. My own experience was a little peculiar. It was my intention first to practice law, when I went to the Ilockv Mountains, although I had been warned by the authorities not to do so. Still, I did practice in a surreptitious kind of a way and might have been practicingyetif myclient hadn't died. When you have become attached to a client and respect and like him, and then when, without warning, like a bolt of electricity from a clear sky, he suddenly dies and takes the bread right out of your mouth, it is rough. Then I tried the practice of criminal law, but my client got into the penitentiary, where he was no use to me financially or politically. Finally, when the Judge was in a hurry he would appoint me to defend the pauper criminals. They all went to the penitentiary, until people got to criticising the Judge, and finally they told him that it was a shame to appoint me to defend an innocent man. My first experience in journalism was in a Western town, in which I was a total stranger. I "went there with thirty-five cents, but I had it concealed in the lining of my clothes, so that no one would have suspected it if they met me. I had no friends, and I noticed that when I got off the train the band was not there to meet me. I entered the town just os any other American citizen would. I had not fully decided whether to become a stage robber ora lecturer on phrenology. At that time I got a chance to work on a morning paper. It used to go to press before dark, so I always had my evenings to myself, and I always liked that part of it firsLrate. I worked on that paper a year, add might have continued if the proprietor had not changed it to an evening paper. Then a company incorporated itself and started a paper, of which I took charge. The paper was published in the loft of a liverystable, That is the reason they called 4t a stock company. You could come up thp stairs into the office, or you could twist the tale of the iron-gray mule and take the elevator.

It wasn’t much of a paper, but it cost $16,000 a year to run it, and it came out six days in the week no matter what the weather was. We took the Associated Press news by telegraph part of the time and part of the time we relied on a copy of the Cheyenne morning papers, which we got of the conductor ou the early freight. We got a great many special telegrams from Washington in that way, and when the freight train got in late, I had to guess at what’Congress was doing, and fix up a column of telegraph the best I could. There was a rival evening paper there, and sometimes it would send a smart boy down to the train and get a hold of our special telegrams, and sometimes the conductor would go away on a picnic and take our Cheyenne paper with him. All these things are annoymg to a man who is trying to supply a long-felt want. There was one conductor in particular who used to go away into the foot-hills shooting sage-hens and ta!-.e our cablegrams with him. This threw too much strain on me. I could guess at what Congress was doing and make up a pretty readable report, but foreign powers and reichstags and crowned heads and dynasties always mix ,-d me up. ■You can lpok over what Co gress d d last year and give a pretty good guess at what it will do this year, but yon can't rely on a dynasty or an effete monarchy in a Lad st ite of preservation. It may go into executive session or it may go into bankruptcy. Still, at one time we used’to have considerable local news to fill .up with. The North and Middle Parks for a while used to help us out when the' mining camps were new. Those were the days when it was considered perfectly proper to kill off the Board of Supervisors if their action was distasteful. At that time anew camp generally located a cemetery and wiote an obituary; then the bots would start out to find a man whose name would thyme with the rest of the verse. Those were the days when the cemeteries of Colorado were still in their Infancy and the song of the sixshooter was heard in the land. Sometimes the Indian*? Wonld„send us in an item. It was most generally in the obituary line. With the Sipux on the north and the peaseful Utes oni the south, vye were pretty sure of-some kind of news during the summer. The parks used to be occupied* by white men winters aod Indians summers. Summer was really the pleasant-

esttimetogo Iqjo the parks, but the Indians bad been in the habit of going there at that s:ason, and they were so clannish that the white men couldn’t have much fun with them, so they decided that they would not go there in the summer. . Several of 6or best subscribers were killed by the peaceful ('ten. There Were two daily and three weekly papers published in Laramie City at that time. ' There were between 2,000 and 3,(lot) people, and’our local circulation ran from 150 to 250, counting deadheads. In our prospectus we stated that we would spare no expense whatever in ransacking the universe for fresh news, but there were times when it was all Ve could do to get our paper out on time. Out of the express office I mean. r One of the rival editors used to write his editorials for the paper in the evening, jerk the Washington hand-press to work them off, go home aud wrestle with juvenile colic in his family until daylight, and then deliver his papers on the street. It is not surprising that the great mental strain in« L

cident to this life made an old man of him and gave a tinge of extreme sadness to the funny column of his paper. • \ In an unguarded moment this man wrote an editorial once that got all his. subsorib- • ers mad at him, and the same afternoon he came around nnd wanted to sell his paper to us for SIO,OOO. I told him that the whole outfit was not worth 10,000 dents. “I know that,” said he, “but it is not the material I am talking about. It is the goodwill of the paper. ” We had a rising young horse-thief in Wyoming, in those days, who got intojail by some freak of justice, and it was so odd for a horse-thief to get into jail that I alluded to it editorially. This horse-thief had di-tinguished himself from the common vulgar horse-thieves of his time by wearing a large mouth, a kind of full dress, eight-day mouth. He very rarely smiled, but when he did he had to hold the top of his head on with both hands. I remember that I spoke of this in the paper, forgetting that he might criticise me when he got out of jail. When he did get out ftgain, he stated that he would shoot me on sight, but friends advised me not to have his b'ood on my hands, and I took their advice, so I havefl't got a particle of his bloqd ou either of my hands. For two or three months I didn’t know but he would drop into the office any minute and criticise me, but one day a friend told me that he had been hanged in Montana. Then I began to mingle in society again, and didn’t have to get in my coal with a double-barrll shotgun any more. After that I was always conservative in relation to horsethieves until we got the report of the vigieance committee.

BILL NYE.