JOURNALISM AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 46, 18 November 1893, Page 412

JOURNALISM AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN.

A PAPER by Mrs Emily Crawford, the Paris correspondent of the Daily News and Truth, on ‘Journalism as a Profession for Women,’ was read last week by her son, Mr G. Crawford, at the Lucerne Conference. The lecturer said : * A disadvantage of professional journalism is that one is never master of one’s own time. This cannot be too well remembered by those who think of embracing the profession. You ask me, is journalism a profession for women ’ Does it offer a good market for the literary wares which clever

women are best qualified to offer? Are the conditions of journalistic life straining to the strong and overstraining to the weak ? It is impossible to doubt that women write well. It may be said that when they are able to write they have in a greater degree than men the faculty of endowing the page with life. Second and third-rate women writers in the past have shown faults of taste and of judgment, a cramped style, and the feebleness of thought which comes of a narrow range of personal experience, but few of them can be classed among the Dryasdusts whom, of all others, the editor should keep out of his newspaper. The best instance of the

FEMININE CAPACITY FOR JOURNALISM is ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ That book was journalism in this way : The author was inspired as she was writing it by events that were going forward. I beard Mrs Stowe say that the newspapers kept her heart breaking and blood boiling while she wrote ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin ’ for an obscure New England paper. She wrote as if she were doing a leading article, for an immediate effect, and she produced it. In Russia even, because ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ carried away the Grand Duchess Helena and the late Tzarina, seif emancipation preceded slave liberation in the United States. Journalism seems the easiest of professions, and a rush is made towards it for this reason. I often receive applications from relatives of persons who niay be classed as failures, asking me to get some ‘ light Press work for them.’ There is no such thing that I know of. All newspaper work puts a strain upon the worker. What appear to outsiders the light wares of the Press are the ones that cause the most labour to the contributors who furnish them. The first requirement, then,

IS HEALTH AND A RICH RESERVE OF STRENGTH. But elasticity will not suffice ; you must have staying power and enough philosophy to see carefully-prepared articles rejected because some big and unexpected event has suddenly taken place elsewhere. When I was more of a novice I used to spend wretched hours between the moment the hurried article was sent off and that of its return in print. What gladness on finding it had the honours of a prominent heading or leaded type, and of flattering comment in a leading article or summary 1 Shorthand is a useful accomplishment to pressmen and women engaged in secretary’s work, but it seems to me that its day in the other departments is on the decline. But if lam not sure about shorthand, I say to all, ‘ Learn typewriting ;’ there is no better friend to the journalist and printer than the typewriter, which is invaluable to those who have few opportunities of correcting their proofs. MORE TYPE-WRITERS AND FEWER PIANOS.

To be a great journalist yon must be a great reader of books. Converse with these silent friends. None the less the great school for the journalist is life, and the great secret of success perseverance. Nothing that concerns the world to know of should be rejected as common or unclean. As there should be no weed for the botanist, no dirt for the chemist, so there should be nothing common or unclean for the journalist.