the great metropolitan dailies , outside of this relatively small class of newspapers no paper can carry on all of the activities enumerated , or even more than a small part of them . The historian , in his use of the newspaper in reconstructing the past must test the papers used for their completeness as well as for their authoritativeness, and must submit the great daily of a large city to one set of tests and the weekly paper of a small
village to quite other tests .
Different tests must also be applied to the general newspaper
that reaches a wide and diversified constituency , and to the organ of a special political party , religious faith , or industry. Different tests must be applied to the various parts of the same newspaper, as well as to the samenewspaper at different stages
of its history. Different tests must be applied to the newspapers of different countries. The words newspaper, periodical, and press are often used
interchangeably, as indeed is the case in this discussion of the subject, yet it must again be remembered that the frequency or the infrequency of the appearance of a periodical gives it certain characteristics that modify at different times and in various ways its use as historicalmaterial.102 It is also essential to discriminate clearly between journalism , the technical process by which articles for the press are produced, and the press, the completed product of this process . The historian must concern himself
primarily with the press, rather than with journalism . The question presented to the historian is therefore a two
fold one. The first concerns the authoritativeness of the material
found in its pages ; the second concerns the value of all this material, both authoritative and unauthoritative, in any at tempted reconstruction of the past. What principles can be deduced that will guide the historian in his use of periodicals ;
what guarantees does the press carry in itself that will absolve the historian from the necessity of investigating the truth of every statement made by the newspaper ; how far can he accept at its face value the material presented in the reputable press ; 102 “ The prospectus of The Nation laid stress upon the advantages of a weekly over a daily newspaper in respect of leisure for ascertainment of
the facts and deliberation in comment." — Wendell Phillips Garrison, cited
by Gustav Pollak, Fifty Years of American Idealism , p . 58.
