326 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the reader gets facts — what men said and did — while in the editorials he gets exaggeration, misconstruction, malice, violent rhetoric. Alas! in the case of many American papers it cannot truthfully be said that the news columns exhibit any tendency to the "legitimate." Whatever the question may be — direct pri- maries, graft, municipal charters, corporate franchises, what not — the news columns are as melodramatic as the editorials. We have portraits of villains and of saints; we find incorruptible virtue battling with brazen knavery and low cunning. The cor- respondents and reporters are expected, encouraged, instructed to "editorialize," to pass judgment, to draw freely on their imagina- tion, mind-reading powers, vocabulary of invective and lauda- tion. Indeed, the distinction between news and editorials has ceased to possess any meaning for most of the newspapers, not excepting those who call themselves "independent."
Now, nothing is more vicious and at the same time more utterly gratuitous and inefficient than this destruction of the news value of the so-called "news columns." Let the editor say what he pleases in the proper place; let the correspondent or reporter give his personal impression of the atmosphere of a fight or situa- tion; but, first and last, let the reporter report. What did this man say in his speech or interview ? What did that man do on a certain occasion, and what was his own explanation of the act? Denounce, scoff, sneer, moralize, exhort — but let all this be separ- ated from the "news," Readers would deeply appreciate this and pay more attention to the editor's opinions, for his scrupulous handling of the facts would inspire confidence in his sincerity. Thus, alike from the viewpoint of newspaper influence and from that of proper discharge of the primary function of a modern paper, the result of the separation would be vastly increased efficiency.
This naturally brings me to the vices of the editorial page. There are those who hold that the editorial page has steadily de- teriorated and — largely for that reason — lost its authority and importance. "Who reads editorials?" it is cynically asked, even in the western storm-centers of political and social agitation. And it is pointed out that editors themselves tacitly recognize
