Publish no jokes on women or girls. Even if a man is an opponent of this paper give him a square deal with the news. The integrity of our news columns is above all quarrels.”
Another provision in our office rules requires that we publish all cases, civil or criminal, arising in the circuit court. We do not necessarily scandalize cases and we make it a policy not to scandalize divorce cases. However, we do not sup press cases for anyone and thereby follow a policy of treating all people alike, be they rich or poor, influential or other wise.
The motto of our news room is found in the words of Othello:
“Nothing extenuate; set down naught in malice.”
WRITING OF EDITORIAL, WITH SPECIAL APPLICATION TO COUNTRY FIELD
By M. LYLE SPENCER
Dean School of Journalism, University of Washington
[Dr. Matthew Lyle Spencer, dean of the School of Journalism of the University of Washington, speaking from a viewpoint gained from years of work in connection with editorial pages, emphasized the importance of editorial writing and sought in the changed times a reason for a decline in the editorial influence of the papers today as compared with those of the days of Greeley, Dana, and Watterson. Dean Spencer’s address, including also a list of twelve do’. and don’t’s in force on the Montesano Vidette, an influential newspaper of southwestern Washington with which the Dean is connected, is here given in part.]
THE days of high prestige for the
editorial, and of its unsurpassed
power, ran from 1850 to 1865. Those
were days of great problems—the Missouri Compromise of 1850, the Kansas
Nebraska bill of 1854, the birth of the
Republican party, and the “know-nothing” party. . . .
In such times of high crises, readers turn to the editorial page. In days of no crisis, they turn away from the editorial page. Today there is no crisis as the average reader regards it. In those days the newspapers of the nation were still national in scope. The nation had not grown to the point where Greeley, Raymond, Thurlow Weed wielded their tremendous power. Greeley wrote for 55, 000 daily and 250,000 weekly, scattered over what was at that time the govern ing portion of the nation. . . . It is a far call from the editorial in those days of its power to the editorial and its power today. From the first place in the newspaper, the editorial is now almost third. [Here Mr. Spencer cited a number of instances of the newspapers’ failure to wield political influence, notably in municipal campaigns in Seattle, Chicago, and New York, where candidates for mayor meagerly supported by the press carried off the election.]
The fall of the editorial from power is partly due to the failure to keep up education, partly due to the emphasis on news, and partly due to the growth of the country, making it impossible for the newspapers to be national any more. . . .
After paying a tribute to the Portland Oregonian as an exception to the general rule of declining editorial influence, Mr. Spencer proceeded to his twelve do’s and don’t’s:
1. Have an editorial column. It is the one page where you have an opportunity to be unique, in these days when the papers are much standardized, with their comic strips and their syndicate material.
2. Make the editorial column flexible. It may be objected that we have to have
