THE REWARDS OF JOURNALISM—CHIEFLY FOUND IN CONGENIAL EMPLOYMENT—COMMUNITY SERVICE
A broader comprehension than that reflected by mere pecuniary results is necessary to a proper estimate of the rewards of journalism. Great pecuniary success has come to a few metropolitan newspaper owners, moderate success to many owners in other cities; but the number of successful owners is very small compared with the thousands, in number, of journalists who are working for salary only—the men who represent the journalism of the day.
It is difficult to compare the rewards of journalism with those of any other business or profession. If we consider the pecuniary rewards the comparison certainly must be unfavorable. Let us see:—
Many successful lawyers have incomes from fifty thousand dollars upward, a year. Many physicians and many surgeons make fifty thousand dollars or more by the practice of their profession. There are oculists and artists who make thirty thousand plus. Our prize operatic singers have soared to two hundred thousand. The presidents of banks, railroad companies, insurance145 companies, steel companies, copper companies—men who have achieved high success in their business—commonly enough have salaries of from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars a year and every opportunity to double the sum if they choose to live up to their privileges. These are the prizes of the calling to the most successful men in it; and in a way they measure the success of the men who have won them.
But there are few prizes in the newspaper business. Nothing like these big salaries is paid to the men who achieve supreme journalistic success. In New York City for instance—and New York is the best newspaper city in the world, pays the biggest salaries, and offers the best journalistic advantages and chances—possibly ten editors have twenty-five thousand dollars a year. One brilliant editor has much more than this sum for the reason that his contract with the owner—made when the sheet’s circulation was small—was based on the number of papers to be sold. The circulation increased to phenomenal figures and so did the editor’s pay. Of the seven thousand newspaper editors and writers in New York City, a number not exceeding twenty have salaries of more than twenty thousand dollars; yet those who have achieved genuine success in the business—success that is relatively as great as that of the bank presidents and professional men mentioned above—may be numbered by the hundred. Newspaper salaries are very much larger than they were forty years ago, double as much in some departments, yet, despite this, the pecuniary rewards146 have no comparison with those of many other professions or businesses.
Since this book’s intent is to tell the young man just what journalism offers we may say that in New York City, at this writing (1922) the salaries of editors in chief, for morning and evening newspapers, range from fifteen thousand to thirty-five thousand dollars; those of managing editors from eight thousand to thirty thousand dollars; city editors, four thousand to ten thousand dollars; copy readers, two thousand to four thousand dollars; dramatic and music critics, four thousand to seven thousand five hundred dollars; staff writers on finance and politics, four thousand to eight thousand dollars; reporters, one thousand to seven thousand dollars.
These then are the pecuniary rewards of the business to the men who do not achieve ownership. In other cities they are much smaller; in the small cities not more than half so much.
Prices paid for newspaper work differ materially in different offices. For reasons of policy or poverty some pay much less than others. The higher sums just mentioned go to the few only, for it should remain in mind that there is one editor in chief only, one managing editor, one city editor, one dramatic critic on each sheet, and the daily newspapers under consideration number twelve or fourteen only in the metropolitan district. Three quarters of the newspaper workers on these journals earn less than four thousand dollars each a year. The man who earns five thousand dollars147 a year in a New York office is rated as highly successful and desirable, and usually his services are in demand in other offices—for good men in journalism are exceedingly scarce.
To the youngster just entering the business these newspaper salaries may look attractive; indeed one of the magnets of the calling is the fact that from the first the beginner is paid fifteen or twenty dollars a week, or enough to live on. Physicians and lawyers frequently make comparatively nothing for a year or two after they begin. And many newspaper men seem satisfied to work along through life on what they can get. In all offices may be seen the pathetic spectacle of men with silvered locks who have sat at the same desk for more than a third of a century.
Newspaper work is fascinating, yet it is sadly ephemeral. In the big city the life of the newspaper is six hours; in the small city less than twenty-four. The morning newspaper lasts until toward noon; the evening sheet ceases to thrill at bed time. Dawn brings a new edition and yesterday’s is forgotten forever. The bright sayings of the editor amuse and interest for the moment but they do not live. They are not of a nature to make a lasting impression or reward.
Greeley is remembered as a vigorous abolitionist and temperance advocate and a virile writer on national topics, but to-day his writings are unsought save by a few students of journalism and a few historians of Civil War times. That William Cullen Bryant was a great editor is almost forgotten; but his fame as a148 poet lasts. Samuel Bowles and Murat Halsted and Joseph Medill and other great editors of the Civil War period had nation-wide reputations as upholders of Lincoln and as champions of the union cause. They are absolutely unread to-day. Dana, whose splendid scholarship, whose familiarity with all literature, whose marvelous memory and whose stupendous reservoir of information must have insured him lasting fame had he devoted himself to the making of books, was so fascinated and so incessantly busy with the making of newspapers that he attempted little that might interest future generations. He must have attained the heights of literary reputation had he undertaken authorship. Eugene Field toiled in routine newspaper work for twenty years; his fame rests in his verses. Nobody remembers John Hay as a hard-working journalist, yet he was one, and a good one, too. He will not be forgotten as a statesman and a poet. Walt Whitman’s many years of editorship seldom are recalled: his poetry lives. Who knows that Edgar Allen Poe was an editor from 1835 to 1847; who does not know “The Raven?” Noah Webster was one of the founders and editors of American Minerva in 1793. John G. Whittier was an editor until he abandoned journalism for authorship. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for periodicals from 1857 until 1891. Thomas Jefferson founded the National Gazette in 1791. James Anthony Froude was a newspaper writer. William D. Howells began his career as an editor. These men must have done fine newspaper work, but little record of it remains.
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In France, just at the close of the World War, nearly all the members of the government had been writers for the newspapers. They will be remembered as statesmen, not as editors. Of them Mr. Stéphane Lauzanne, the editor of le Matin, says:
Mr. Raymond Poincaré, the President, formerly wrote articles that were remarkable for their clearness, lucidity, and argumentation on the greatest economical and political problems that ever agitated France. Mr. Georges Clémenceau, Premier, has always been looked upon as the first newspaper man in France, the pride of the French press, for as a matter of fact, he has been the guiding spirit and active head of several important newspapers, creating them, making them up, editing them and inspiring them—in a word, setting his mark upon them. Mr. Stephen Pichon, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, is also a newspaper man. For a long time he was on the staff of Justice and afterward publisher of le Petit Journal. Other members of the French Cabinet, Mr. Lafferre, Secretary of Public Education; Mr. Klotz, Secretary of Finance; Mr. Georges Leygues, Secretary of the Navy; have also written in the great dailies of Paris and Mr. J. M. Dumesnil, Under-Secretary of State for Aviation, was at the beginning of his career a brilliant and active reporter.
No, newspaper articles, sparkling and spectacular as many of them are, must be recognized as ephemeral. The editor has no time for leisurely work. He rarely studies a single subject long enough or intensely enough to become profoundly authoritative on that subject. He goes on through life informing, elucidating, explaining, protesting, analyzing, until overtaken by the infirmities of years he passes from view. In a hazy sort of a way it is said of him that he was a great editor,150 but all that he wrote for his newspaper is forgotten. He leaves little for future generations to ponder over.
Alas! It is a sickening, saddening thought that the newspaper is for the moment only and that the editor who leaves behind him a lasting record of greatness has gained it through some other line of endeavor.
To the ambitious man the average newspaper salary means little. Any possible savings from it must be insufficient to make him especially prosperous. They do not insure against a pinch in old age or against misfortune. They do not permit of the accumulation of much property or capital. They furnish a feeble inspiration to the ambition that seeks the comfort of leisurely life, the stimulation of extended travel, or the luxury of intellectual repose and freedom from physical exertion that every one hopes may bless his declining years.
And if these conditions be true of metropolitan workers, how much the more must they befit the writers for newspapers in the smaller cities and villages. It is not the ideal of the American boy either in country or city to live forever in a rented house or on a small salary, or, indeed, to live the simple life. The small-city journalism offers little else than these if the young man cannot become a newspaper owner. To the man who owns his sheet the rewards are more abundant. But ownership involves the possession of capital and usually the young man just through with student life has no capital except his brains. In other callings the capital of brains commands success, notably in151 the law, in medicine, in engineering, in architecture, but in the newspaper business, while brains are absolutely essential they advance the young man only so far, give but feeble reward, unless reinforced with capital with which to buy a newspaper property. It surely is a discouraging feature of the calling that, however intellectual or learned a man may be, he rarely achieves more than moderate pecuniary success, as long as he remains an employee.
In the big cities the big properties have a money valuation measured by millions of dollars. They are owned generally by very rich men or families and ownership rarely changes. To possess one of them has been the ardent and unaccomplished ambition of thousands of men: capitalists, statesmen, reformers, philanthropists, cranks. The chance of the young journalist getting one is infinitesimal. And in the small city the pric............