THE

CHAPTER V.

THE OLD AND THE NEW JOURNALISM.

HE first editorial, beyond a paragraph, which appeared in the Daily Republican, April 24, 1844, was a vigorous protest against "The Annexation of Texas," for which a treaty had just been signed by President Tyler. With that annexation may be said to have begun the new era in American politics, in which the issue was directly tried between slavery and freedom, and at last between secession and union. In the second month of the paper's life, on May 27, 1844, it told of the first telegraphic dispatch between Washington and Baltimore. Thus it was at the very point of transition between the old and the new politics, and between the old and the new journalism, that Samuel Bowles began his career.

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In the great cities a new race of newspapers had un to supplant the older dynasty. The papers of the time had been in every sense heavy; big in size, high in price, dull, long-winded, intensely partisan, and mainly used as the instruments of the party chiefs. Of these journalists-represented by such names as the elder Blair, Gales and Seaton, Major Noah, Richard Haughton, and Colonel Greene Mr. Horace White says: "These men and their generation were given over to the 'leading article as the sole end and aim of journalism. They were a strong-limbed and hard-headed race, but they had

never learned that variety is the spice of life,' and 'brevity the soul of wit.' The railway had not reached out its arms, the telegraph had not spread its wings for them. They were ruled by their environment, and the journalism they produced consisted of a diurnal succession of essays more or less learned, and more or less bellicose, but as regular as the succession of day and night, or of seed-time and harvest."

But within a dozen years there had sprung up in New York the first of a new class of newspapers, such as the Sun, begun in 1833, and the Herald, in 1835. They were sold for one or two cents (the older papers were not sold by single copies, being sent only to regular subscribers); they aimed at news more than discussion; their style was lively and dashing; they were swift to seize and invent new methods in every direction; they brought steam into their press-rooms and organized special service by land and by water for getting the earliest information. They struck into many veins of social interest, - trade, religion, and personal gossip,- which the older papers had ignored. They discussed politics without asking orders from the chieftains at Washington and Albany It was in papers of this class that American journalism came of age. Hitherto the newspaper had been a minor and a servant. It had been an instrument to promote some other interest, generally that of a political party or a personal clique; controlled by the leaders of the clique or the party, and sustained by their patronage. In the new journalism the newspaper became its own master. It was an independent enterprise, as much so as a cotton mill or a cheese factory. So far as financial success was the object,- and such success was generally a main object, and always the necessary condition of any further achievement,- the resource was no longer subsidies from a political party, but the pay

ments of its buyers and advertisers. The buyers were to be won by giving people such a paper as they wanted. It was, in a sense, the discovery of James Gordon Bennett, his great contribution to the journalistic art,that what people most wanted in a newspaper, and were most willing to pay for, was news. Give news, and you gain subscribers; gain subscribers, and you will have advertisers; that is the formula of newspaper success.

In the new journalism this solid commercial fact of a successful business enterprise was the basis which the journalist might, if he pleased, use as a platform from which to say to the world his word of advice or exhortation, of preaching or scoffing. Thus there was born a new social power. The journalist might use his position for good or for evil, but henceforth his class must be reckoned with as a force not less distinct than the clergy or the law-makers.

The New York Herald was the first conspicuous example in America of the new journalism. Its sole object was money-making; its creed was expressed by the editor when he wrote, "We have never been in a minority, and we never shall be"; its political sympathies were generally Democratic; its temper was one of rollicking impudence; and it neither feared God nor regarded man. Its enterprise in news-gathering won popular favor, and drove its dull and respectable rivals either to imitation or to death. Its mocking temper and its open worship of material success shocked the moral sentiment of the community, and its reckless personalities showed at full height the virulence of a period of bitter partisanship and low culture. By its merits as a newspaper it won the reward it sought-wealth and notoriety.

In 1841, Horace Greeley established the New York Tribune. Mr. Greeley's characteristic and best ambition was to be a teacher of men. He was a sincere enthusiast

in social and political ideas, a master of pithy and eloquent speech to the common people, and he found in the newspaper his best instrument. The influence of the time, and the associates he found, gave prominence to the news element of the Tribune, but its especial service was as a social educator. He was an ardent politician, and his paper heartily supported the Whig and afterward the Republican party, though with a considerable degree of independence. But politics was not its exclusive field. Through its earlier years it gave more of education and leadership than any other American journal in literature, education, reform, and all the higher forms of social activity.

The journalistic features of the period just following the establishment of the Daily Republican were thus summed up by Mr. Bowles, thirty years later:

"American journalism was undergoing the greatest transformation and experiencing the deepest inspiration of its whole history. The telegraph and the Mexican war came in together; and the years '46–51 were the years of most marked growth known to America. It was something more than progress, it was revolution. Then the old Sun was in its best estate; then Mr. Bennett was in the prime of his vigorous intellect, and his enterprise and independence were at the height of their audacity. He had as first lieutenant, Mr. Frederic Hudson, the best organizer of a mere newspaper America has ever seen. Then Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana were harmoniously and vigorously giving the Tribune that scope of treatment and that intellectual depth and breadth which have never departed wholly from it, and which are perhaps the greatest gifts that any single journal has made to the journalism of the country. Then Mr. Raymond commenced the Times and won for it at once a prominent place among its rivals. And then began that horde of provincial daily journals, springing up like mushrooms all over the land. Hardly a town of 10,000 inhabitants but that essayed its diurnal issue in those fertile years."

It was in this field of provincial journalism that Mr. Bowles's work was done. Of the old-fashioned country newspaper he once wrote:

"News had grown old when it was published. The paper did the work of the chronicler or annalist merely, and was the historian of the past rather than a spectator and actor in the present. It was not upon the printed column that the events of the day struck the heart of the living age, and drew from it its sparks of fire. In those times that place of contact was found in the personal intercourse of men. News ran then along the street, from mouth to mouth; the gossiping neighbor carried it; the post-rider brought it into the groups gathered at the village store. By and by came the heavy gazette, not to make its impression but to record the fact. ... The journalism was yet to be created that should stand firmly in the possession of powers of its own; that should be concerned with the passing and not with the past; that should perfectly reflect its age, and yet should be itself no mere reflection; that should control what it seemed only to transcribe and narrate; that should teach without assuming the manners of an instructor, and should command the coming times with a voice that had still no sound but its echo of the present."

Among the country newspapers of its time, the Weekly Republican, before 1844, stood well. It had outlived and absorbed several rivals during its twenty years' existence, and thus had satisfied the test of the survival of the fittest. But one who now turns over its old files will find scanty material even for the chronicler or annalist. A file of the Weekly Republican for any of the years of its later history affords a most graphic and vivid weekto-week history of the period. These volumes will be a rich treasury to the future historian. But, between the years 1826 and 1844, the pages of the Republican throw little light upon the social life of the times. It has two chief staples-political discussions, and scraps of miscellaneous unassorted news. The politics are more vigorous