Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/368

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

city.


Nothing under the sun could make Dana move his paper from the orbit he had once outlined and he was most fertile in thinking up something new for his paper. It was, however, his mode of treatment rather than his news that made The Sun so distinctly a newspaper-man's paper. After assuming the .editorship of The Sun, Dana outlined in his first issue how the news would be treated in the future: "It will study condensation, clearness, point, and will endeavor to present its daily photograph of the world's doings in the most luminous and lively manner." This determination to tell the news "in the most luminous and lively manner" gave such a peculiar style to items in The Sun that it became possible to distinguish a story handled in Dana's way, whether it appeared in his own newspaper or in The Tombstone Epitaph. Dana applied the same mode of treatment to his edi- torials. In 1880 he referred to General Hancock, then a presi- dential candidate, as "a good man, weighing two hundred and forty pounds." It was Dana, and the men whom he trained, who gave the editorial essays of The Sun that distinctly literary charm which did much to soothe the anger aroused by the vituperative political squibs in neighboring columns. For the struggling poet of merit Dana always found a place in The Sun. No finer tribute was ever paid Dana in this connection than the one which came from the pen of Eugene Field.

FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

During the Franco-Prussian War, The New York Tribune spent unusually large sums in reporting that conflict. Practically no attention was paid to the cable tolls. Short as was this war, The Tribune paid for its telegraphic news $83,303.51; its addi- tional bill for this correspondence also paid in gold was $42,263.46. Such lavish expenditure was then unknown in jour- nalism, in spite of the expense to which papers had been put for correspondence during the War of the States. The Tribune rapidly achieved such a reputation for being first in war news that it disputed this field with The Herald. For the sake of comparison Whitelaw Reid furnished the following figures