Page:Oregon Exchanges volume 7.djvu/85



Vol. 7

[Delivered before Sixth Annual Newspaper Conference at University of Oregon, February 15.]

PART five, point 24, of the Oregon Journalistic Code of Ethics affirms: “We will not permit, unless in excep tional cases, the publishing of news and editorial matter not prepared by our selves or our staff, believing that orig inal matter is the best answer to the peril of propaganda.” This declaration was adopted in the let ter but never in the spirit. It is honored not in observance but in breach. Jour nalism is honey-combed with press agentism. The name of the press-agent is legion. His activities are multitudin ous. He is an institution in the general scheme of publicity. As a type and as an average he does not lack respect ability. The newspapers accept the press agent. They, with miscellaneous med iums of publicity, are responsible for him. He could not exist without the ac ceptance and tacit approval of the news papers. The ranks of press-agentism are re cruited largely from among active news paper men and women who assume out side publicity work in order to supple ment their incomes. If newspapers made a rigid rule that they would use only original matter, if they followed this rule to its logical cli max and printed nothing they had not dug up for themselves, the news gather ing staffs of the newspapers would need be increased from two to three times the present number. If newspaper writers were refused the privilege of acting as press agents in their own time, it would be necessary for their pay to be double if they were not to live below the level of day laborers or country preachers. Two illustrations will suffice. For preparation of copy in a special edition of a newspaper, a writer received twenty cents a column inch. The advertising solicitor who secured the advertisements of advertisers who insisted their copy would have little value unless “next to reading matter” received $1.25 a column inch commission for his work. Between the news writer and the advertising solicitor as to mental training and genu ine resourcefulness there could be little comparison. But, nevertheless, the writer whose work gave the edition its value and its justification got less than one sixth as much per inch as the advertising solicitor who was not even burdened with the preparation of copy, but who in