Illinois newspaper directory. History of the Illinois press association

Illinois Newspaper Directory and Historypoems from B. F. Taylor and Emily Huntington Miller and Mrs. Bradwell and half adozen others, until your records are a repository of 'polite literature,' as well as practicalbusiness information."The fact that Illinois now has, according to Newspaper Annuals, nearly 1,100daily, tri-weekly, semi-weekly and weekly papers, to say nothing of monthly and otherpublications, appearing less frequently than once a week-— -against the five papersreported in 1824, and the fourteen reported in 18 34, is an indication of the growth ofthe State in this respect. This growth has not been in numbers alone. The paperof today not only has better material and larger resources now than it had fifty yearsago, but its range of possible achievement has been vastly extended by the introductionof the telegraph, improved means of communication, etc. There is scarcely a weeklypaper in the State, today, which does not possess an opulence of resources, which themost prosperous metropolitan paper, west of the Alleghanies, could not boast of fiftyyears ago."The charge that the press has deteriorated in moral tone, in these later years, is,I think, a mistake. While it is more enterprising and more pushing in the collection ofnews than it was in the early history of the country—and this is the natural resultof improved instrumentalities and the stimulus afforded by sharp competition—there isno paper of today that will compare, in venomous vituperation, with the PhiladelphiaAurora, in its assaults upon the 'Father of His Country,' about the close of the lastcentury. It is too late in the day to discuss the question of the 'freedom of the press.'Our only duty is to estimate its beneficent results. The historian, Macaulay, speakingof the emancipation of the press, in England, says:" 'From the day on which the emancipation of our literature was accomplished,the purification of our literature began. That purification was effected, not by theintervention of senates or magistrates, but by the opinion of the great body ofeducated Englishmen before whom good and evil were set, and who were left freeto make their choice. During a hundred and sixty years, the liberty of our presshas been constantly becoming more and more entire; and during those hundredand sixty years the restraint imposed on writers, by the general feeling of readers,has been constantly becoming more and more strict.'"What is here declared of the freedom of the press in England, is even more conspicuouslytrue of America, the home of a free and untrammeled press. Mr. Bryce, theobservant English author of 'The American Commonwealth,' pays the following tributeto the enterprise of the American Press. He says:" 'Newspapers are powerful in three ways—as narrators, as advocates and as:;weathercocks. *'In the first of these regards, the American press is the mostactive in the world. Nothing escapes it which can attract any class of readers.'"As to the third, Mr. Bryce does not express an opinion concerning the Americanpress, but it no doubt furnishes some very good specimens of the 'weathercock.' Hisjust conclusion is, that, while the tendency to exaggerate affects the worth of the pressas a historical record, there is possibly more good than harm done by the high pressureat which the newspaper business is carried on in America."There is another view of the editor's profession, however, which, while scarcelyso complimentary, has more than a modicum of truth. A popular magazine writer hasrecently said:" 'Of the journalist it may be said with truth, he writes in water. Howeverjudicious, however eloquent, however pregnant his composition, it is at onceswallowed up by envious oblivion. It produces its impression instantaneously. It islike a note of music, heard and gone forever. And the successful journalist is he100