Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/533



These are but slight intimations that, in homely phrase, the shoe must fit the foot. If the causes for such elements of un authoritativeness as are now found in the press can be fairly well

located, it seems reasonable to believe that they may be removed

by applying a remedy to suit the case. Granting freedom of the press to a previously shackled press would seem to hold out little hope for improving the work of careless reporters. The establish ment of schools of journalism would seem an ineffective way of

coping with office mismanagement. Campaigns for honest ad vertising do much to raise the ethical standards of the press, but

they do not necessarily improve the intellectual standards of newspaper readers. The endowed newspaper would not in and of itself remove the evils arising from press competition. All blanket arraignments of the press are arrows sped at a venture. All panaceas applied to the press are as futile as are the patentmedi cines denounced in its columns. The development of the periodical press has everywhere partly

caused ,partly resulted from, a change in thementalattitudeof its readers. To the universal demand for news has been added the

demand on the part of a limited but constantly increasing number

of readers that newsmust be authoritative. The historian in his use of the press must therefore recognize the differences in the

press that have resulted from its own evolution. If the demand for news has apparently been constant from the beginning of

time, the demand that what is presented as news shall be au thoritative has had an ever -widening angle. Many of the question

able characteristics of the press are disappearing and it seems possible to accept the verdict of Bliss Perry when he says, “ No

one can watch the development of our current journalism without becoming aware that this sense of responsibility to the public is raising the whole level of the American press .”

In the final

analysis, it is not what direct information the newspaper gives , but what the newspaper is, that determines its authoritativeness in the eyes of the historian.