Illinois newspaper directory. History of the Illinois press association

Illinois Newspaper Directory and HistoryDefining it this way, it was quite natural that he should always be able to recognizenews when he saw it—in the columns of his exchanges, but seldom when he ran upagainst it unexpectedly on the street. Quite naturally too, he sought it most frequentlywhere he was best able to recognize it, and, therefore, his scissors were always busy."While he was yet a freshman and in after years, too, for that matter— Jonathanhad some special training in the Correspondence School of Journalism, which, by the way,is not such an innovation as many suppose. In fact, he owed some of his best elementarylessons to the system. At first he saw only the disagreeable feature of receiving, withgreat regularity and distressing frequency, postal cards inscribed with — 'Please stopmy paper.' The bad taste of putting that on a postal card did not so much impresshim as did the amazing lack of appreciation on the part of his subscribers. Sometimesthey were so extremely impolite as to omit the prefatory 'Please.' The thinggrated harshly upon his nervous system. It seemed to him that he had a missionto perform in educating these uncouth, uncultured and unappreciative villagers up tohis own level. It did not occur to him that this was part of his own educationthat these barbarians were trying to pound into his own untutored mind how torun a newspaper. And they were doing it in the most practical, sensible way, too. Thiswas the original application of the correspondence school methods."This particular lesson had to be drummed into him in a variety of ways. It cameto him accidently that old Mrs. Brown liked his paper because it was such a convenientsize for her pantry shelves, and that Squire Jones was a subscriber for the reason thatit didn't take long to read the sheet. He found that it wasn't difficult to keep thesubscription list going by accepting payment in crooked cord wood and windfall apples,or by extending unlimited credit. The financial problem seemed always a tender subject,and any reference to it was fraught with peril, perhaps fatalities, to the paper's list offaithful supporters."Little by little, Jonathan absorbed the lesson. Finally one of the 'stop-my-paper'postals drove it home and clinched it. 'I am taking more papers than I can afford;please stop yours,' wrote the subscriber. Jonathan studied it between the lines, andwondered why his paper had been selected for the slaughter. He had not far to go toreach the logical conclusion that he had not made his paper indispensible, as, evidently,some other editor had."That was the beginning of Jonathan's active career as a student in the School ofJournalism. Thenceforth he studied, and planned, and strove, and lived to make hispaper an indispensible necessity in the homes of the people, extending out in a circle aswide as it was practicable for him to reach. As a part of his evolution, he developeda nose for news, and the length of his scissors-blades ceased to be the measure of thatcommodity."Jonathan also took frequent lessons in another branch of the CorrespondenceSchool— that conducted by the foreign advertising agent—and he found these equallyvaluable when he got far enough along to appreciate them. He fell an easy prey, at thefirst monthly examination, to the trick problems in accumulative top o' column space,and the test contracts, written in the original Greek, in which quantity was to be figuredby arithmetical progression, and the compensation expressed in decimal fractions. Whenhe discovered that he had been 'gold-bricked' he decided that all advertising agents areconfidence men, and he vented upon all, without partiality or discrimination, his supremecontempt for the whole tribe. For the most part, their propositions and overtures wereconsigned to the silent oblivion of the waste basket. Sometimes, as the humor seized him,he replied in ironical politeness or insulting brusqueness. He was surprised to find that,160