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Contents.
PAGE 79 82 85 - Breach of Idiom. F. H.
- The Use and Abuse of Slang. Pitts Duffield.
- GEORGE EBERS'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. E. G. J.
87 - MR. IRVING'S VIEWS ON THE MODERN DRAMA. Elwyn A. Barron
90 - RECENT FICTION. William Morton Payne
92 - Doyle's The Refugees.—Crawford's Pietro Ghisleri.—Emily Hoppin's From Out of the Past.—Miss Elliott's John Paget.—Miss MeClelland's Broadoaks.—Miss Bell's The Love Affairs of an Old Maid.—Mrs. Catherwood's Old Kaskaskia.—Bangs's Toppleton's Client.—Kipling's Many Inventions.—Matthews's The Story of a Story.—Mrs. Deland's Mr. Tommy Dove.—Sullivan's Day and Night Stories.
95 - A new text-book of Biology.—Interpretations of Tennyson's Idylls of the King.—Lurid pictures of modern city life.—A new edition of Juvenal's Satires.—The seventh part of the "Great English Dictionary."—French dominion in the Valley of the Mississippi.—Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution.—The Establishment of the Anglican Church in America.
97 97 98
A NEWSPAPER SYMPOSIUM.
A group of articles upon the subject of American Journalism, published in the August "Forum," offers no little food for reflection. The continuous degradation of the American newspaper has long been admitted by all who are competent to express an opinion upon the subject; it would be difficult to-day to find an intelligent and disinterested observer who would make, otherwise than as a hypocritical pretence, the claim that our average newspaper is in any sense a leader of public opinion. Even those who, engaged in the " new journalism,' 7 attempt its defence, are growing bold enough to cast off the mask, and cynically to disavow all aims not comprised within such terms as "popularity," " commercial success," and " unprecedented circulation." Most of them are frank enough to admit that these considerations are the only ones to be seriously taken into account, and that the work of newspaper production is, like the work of the dealer in real-estate or of the stock-broker, essentially a form of money-getting. The fact is, of course, as all persons will admit whose moral perceptions are not hopelessly blunted, that the profession of the journalist carries with it certain inseparable responsibilities, and that to ignore these responsibilities, or to take refuge behind the fact that the law (that excellent but necessarily imperfect rule of conduct) does not enforce them, is simply to set morality at defiance. In all occupations, indeed, there are ethical as well as legal limitations upon freedom of action; but in the professions (and journalism surely ought to be numbered among them) the limitations imposed by ethics are peculiarly obvious and imperative. The aims of the newspaper, from the ethical standpoint, may for convenience be classified under three heads: 1. As a collector of news, pure and simple, its work should be done in the scientific spirit, placing accuracy of statement above all other considerations. . In its selection and arrangement of the news thus collected, it should have regard to real rather than sensational values; it should present its facts in their proper perspective (which is still, of course, a very different perspective from that required by permanent history); and it should carefully exclude, or at least minimize to the utmost, those facts which it cannot possibly benefit the public to know, or of which the knowledge is likely to vulgarize popular taste and lower popular standards of morality. . In its comment upon the happenings of the day or the week, it is bound to be honest, to stand for well-defined principles, to express the sincere convictions of its intellectual head and of those associated with him in the work.
