I adored him. I would have written anything he asked me to write. I got up the very best article I could and published it, and was told afterward that it was fine.
Another thing that interested me about newspaper work was its pagan or unmoral character, as contrasted with the heavy religionistic and moralistic point of view seemingly prevailing in the editorial office proper (the editorial page, of course), as well as the world outside. While the editorial office might be preparing the most flowery moralistic or religionistic editorials regarding the worth of man, the value of progress, character, religion, morality, the sanctity of the home, charity and the like, the business office and news rooms were concerned with no such fine theories. The business office was all business, with little or no thought of anything save success, and in the city news room the mask was off and life was handled in a rough-and-ready manner, without gloves and in a catch-as-catch-can fashion. Pretense did not go here. Innate honesty on the part of any one was not probable. Charity was a business with something in it for somebody. Morality was in the main for public consumption only. “Get the news! Get the news!”—that was the great cry in the city editorial room. “Don’t worry much over how you get it, but get it, and don’t come back without it! Don’t fall down! Don’t let the other newspapers skin us—that is, if you value your job! And write—and write well. If any other paper writes it better than you do you’re beaten and might as well resign.” The public must be entertained by the writing of reporters.
But the methods and the effrontery and the callousness necessary at times for the gathering of news—what a shock even though one realized that it was conditional with life itself! At most times one needed to be hard, cold, jesuitical. For instance, one of the problems that troubled me most, and to which there was no solution save to act jesuitically or get out, was how to get the facts from a man or woman suspected of some misdeed or error without letting him know that you were so doing. In the main, if you wanted facts of any kind, especially in connection with the suspected, you did not dare tell them that you came as an enemy or were bent on exposing them. One had to approach all, even the worst and most degraded, as a friend and pretend an interest, perhaps even a sympathy one did not feel, to apply the oil of flattery to the soul. To do less than this was to lose the news, and while a city editor might readily forgive any form of trickery he would never forgive failure. Cheat and win and you were all right; be honest and lose and you were fired. To appear wise when you were ignorant, dull when you were not, disinterested when you were interested, brutal or severe when you might be just the reverse—these were the essential tricks of the trade.