of the publishers and he was constantly annoyed throughout the presidential campaign of 1848 by the efforts made to bridle his pen. The Republican was reputed to be an anti-slavery paper, but its owners were more timid than its editor and hence this led to the wish to temper the outspoken, vigorous utterances of its courageous editor.[1] More than one instance, however, has been found where so-called disagreements between owners and editors have in reality been not disagreements as to policy, but incompatibility of temperament.[2]
Walt Whitman refers to "rows with the boss"—a leader in the "regular" Democratic organization,—but his recent editors find that "Whitman stood his ground, not only refusing to write what he did not believe but declining to refrain from expressing his strongly held convictions."[3] He remained on the Brooklyn Daily Eagle nearly two years , but left apparently owing to disagreements with the owner and proprietor on the question of the extension of slavery into the recently acquired territories.
So widely has it been assumed, and with apparent reason, that the owner of a paper attempts to control its editorial policy that assurances to the contrary have almost the appearance of ostentatious protests. When the London Echo changed owners, the statement was quickly made that "although Baron Grant was a Conservative in politics, he made no attempt to alter the Radical principles of The Echo."[4] James Grant gave nearly a chapter to "the unpleasant position of editors with newspaper proprietors and committees of management"[5] which Thomas Frost characterized as "rather ludicrous," saying that his experiences have not made him acquainted with "those extreme strains upon the consciences of leader-writers" and that he had been very little interfered with by the proprietors or chief editors of the papers
- ↑ "Warrington" Pen-Portraits, pp. 39–41.
- ↑ This seems to have been the case while Carl Schurz and E. L. Godkin were associated on the New York Evening Post, 1881–83.
Somewhat similar incompatibility between John Walter and Delane led to the vesting of full editorial control in Delane.
- ↑ C. Rodgers and J. Black, eds., The Gathering of the Forces, by Walt Whitman, I, xxx.
- ↑ J. C. Francis, Notes by the Way, p. 30.
- ↑ The Newspaper Press, II, chap. XVII.
