ter.
the monotony of frontier life , it is usually true, as the historian
of its early newspapers found in Illinois, that “ the remoteness of the event seemed to increase its importance, and one finds
more often an account of the hop yield in Silesia than of the wheat crop in Illinois. It was easier to reset items from the
eastern papers, when they arrived , than to gather facts and compose original matter .” 14 In this the beginning of the news
paper on a frontier settlement but duplicates the experience of early newspapers everywhere; the special eagerness has been for news from abroad and there has been no demand for local news. In reality, the reporter is here the victim of two antagonistic
instincts representing two clearly defined types of mind, - one type is specially interested in the things and events near at hand and the other is most interested in whatever is remote. It is the function of the newspaper , through the reporter, to attempt
to gratify both instincts, but the success is not always equally divided between the two and the reporter sometimes seems predestined to at least partial failure . The reporter may be handicapped by other conditions that he does not or can not control. One of these may be a large circle of acquaintances . While his intentions may be the best, he may unconsciously have his reports colored by a desire to spare the feelings of his friends or by a wish to promote their interests.15 Circulation is sometimes knowingly given to false statements,
as when detectives send word through the press that search for criminals has been abandoned and thus are enabled to secure them by putting them off their guard .
In some schools of journalism and in some textbooks on journal
ism a disproportionate amount of time and space may seem to 14 F . W . Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1874– 1879, p . 16 E . W . Townsend, “ The Reporter,” Bookman, August, 1904, 19 : 558 –
xxxiii. 572.
For the effect of the work of the reporter on the reporter himself, see the observations of N . Hapgood , who finds that the reporter tends to become
cynical. “ He cares for the outcome of nothing. He says to the politician , 'Go on and stir things up. I do not care what you do, so you do something. It is all good for me.' ” - “ The Reporter and Literature," Bookman, April, 1897, 5 : 119- 121. See also “ Confessions of a ' Literary Journalist,' " Bookman , December, 1907, 26 : 370
