came here for a two days’ session, but had such a good time we stayed a week. And it was a great week.”
Bar the Campfollowers
Years ago, a meeting of the State Editorial Association was likely to consist of about forty per cent of newspapermen and about sixty per cent of candidates for various offices, politicians, promoters and people with various axes to grind. It is a fact that under these circumstances many of the ablest editors in the state formed the habit of staying away from the meetings.
This year there came to Pendleton the finest representation of newspaper ability and influence ever gathered together in Oregon. One hundred per cent of those at tending were there legitimately. They were all editors and writers and their families with a few perfectly welcome agents of established supply houses.
The change is salutary. It has brought the strongest men in the state back into the association. It adds to the positive value of every meeting.
The new condition is due to several causes. For one thing, no one gets a place on the program in these days unless a committee is convinced that he has a subject on which he is better qualified to speak than anyone in the audience. The talks are based on successful experience. Another helpful factor has been C. L. Ireland’s proposition that membership vests in a publication and not in an individual. This tends to cut out the campfollower.
Most effective of all, however, is the policy initiated by Elbert Bede when he was president, and enforced with increasing strictness by E. E. Brodie in his two administrations, to the effect that the association shall endorse nobody for any office or in connection with any project.
This rule was most happily violated at La Grande when the association, working on his patriotism, virtually forced one of its loyal members, Bruce Dennis, to post pone his private plans and accept the directorship of the state defense league. The incident was dramatic and appealing, and the state is the better for E. B. Piper’s sudden inspiration that brought it about.
While every good rule is made to be occasionally broken, however, the annual meetings should be kept as an institution to which newspapermen go for the sole purpose of self enjoyment and self advancement, and the advancement of their profession.
Editor Wants Plate
Editor R. M. Standish, of the Eastern Clackamas News, of Estacada, writes Oregon Exchanges to point out that government and college publicity departments could get much more of their material over in the country press if they would send it out in plate form, rather than merely sending the copy and expecting the rural publisher to bear the cost of setting it up. He suggests that suitable plate could either be given or sold to the papers. The matter of expense lies at the root of this problem. The question is, whether sufficient saving could be made to the country publisher to justify the heavier expense to the institution supplying the plate. Furthermore, the editors would find more difficulty in applying their blue pencil to the plate than they do now to the printed matter with which their desks are flooded. Mr. Standish’s communication which is of considerable length is crowded out of this issue by editorial convention matter. It is hoped to publish it in a later number.
