It was not so fifty years ago. These men, whose names have come down to us, were great editorial writers rather than great editors of the entire newspaper. Aside from the editorial page their editions were devoid of genius. The news columns were slovenly in appearance and dull in narration. They lacked the cunning of embellishment with the flavor of literature and the charm of fiction. The book reviews, the critical articles were excellent--but the editors daubed dullness over everything else. The newspaper of that day is not to be compared with the newspaper of to-day in general excellence.
The editorial pages and the criticisms, however, were of high excellence. It was a literary era and the literary impulse was a conspicuous factor in public thought. Marble, Dana, Bryant, Curtis and others made reputations for literary excellence in journalistic work that would not to-day attract so much attention; for literary excellence, while commended and appreciated, is not so much insisted on, encouraged, or taught, as it was forty years ago.
The foreign correspondence of that day as printed in the newspapers consisted largely of descriptions of scenery and revelations of the writers’ emotions while climbing to Alpine heights or floating by moonlight on the silent waters of Italian lakes. It was written mostly by staff members who were on vacation trips and who were inspired by the travel notes of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne that had obtained great attention. The journals of fifty years ago did not maintain regular correspondents abroad. All first class important papers to-day have representatives in the capitals of Europe, but they do not write descriptions of scenery. Some of the foreign correspondence of that day was very good, however, notably that of Bayard Taylor for the New York _Tribune_.
The most conspicuous difference between the newspapers of 1850 or 1860 and those of to-day is in the treatment of news. Very little space was given then to really important events. The national convention that nominated a candidate for the presidency was reported in two columns or so, whereas to-day from three to six pages are required. A bare half column was given to the stock market. The commercial markets were equally pinched; two or three pages of matter are now devoted to them. There was no real estate department. The court calendars were not printed for the lawyers, nor the list of buyers in town for the merchants; nor was there a sporting page, or a woman’s page, or a list of school teachers appointed, or of policemen transferred, or of firemen granted a leave of absence. The news was presented in the most perfunctory and routine fashion, with no attempt to make it attractive or interesting. News collecting had not been systematized or especially studied, as to-day. The Associated Press was in its infancy, devoting itself almost entirely to congress proceedings and to market reports. Raw reporters were permitted to intersperse their own comments through what they wrote and their conclusions received little revision or supervision. Every line in the modern newspaper is revised by a copy reader editor and not a suggestion of reportorial opinion is permitted. The edition of fifty years ago was more or less subject to haphazard inexactitude and casual error.