JOURNALISM
(See also Authorship, Critics, News)
I would * * * earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.
They consume a considerable quantity of our
paper manufacture, employ our artisans in printing, and find business for great numbers of indigent persons.
Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar.
First of all, as they are instruments of ambition.
A man that is by no means big enough for the
Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
The great art in writing advertisements is
the finding out a proper_method to catch the
reader's eye; without which a good thing may
pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.
Ask how to live? Write, write, write, anything;
The world's a fine believing world, write news.
[The opposition Press] which is in the hands
of malecontents who have failed in their career.
Hear, land o' cakes, and brither Scots,
Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat's;
If there's a hole in a' your coats,
I rede you tent it:
A chiel's amang you taking notes,
And, faith, he'll prent it.
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine.
The editor sat in his sanctum, his countenance
furrowed with care,
His mind at the bottom of business, his feet at
the top of a chair,
His chair-arm an elbow supporting, his right
hand upholding his head,
His eyes on his dusty old table, with different
documents spread.
A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up.
Great is journalism. Is not every able editor
a ruler of the world, being the persuader of it?
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
A parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the Twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
Only a newspaper! Quick read, quick lost,
Who sums the treasure that it carries hence?
Torn, trampled under feet, who counts thy cost,
Star-eyed intelligence?
To serve thy generation, this thy fate:
"Written in water," swiftly fades thy name;
But he who loves his kind does, first and late,
A work too great for fame.
I believe it has been said that one copy of the
Times contains more useful information than
the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
Did Charity prevail, the press would prove
A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,
Thou God of our idolatry, the Press.
*****
Like Eden's dead probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
