NEWSPAPER EDITORS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 77, 17 October 1874, Page 11

NEWSPAPER EDITORS.

The first and prime requisite in an editor is political intelligence. This is distinct from political information. It bears the same relation to politics as artistic perception does to art;, which is very different, I need not say, from acquaintance with the history of painting, its technicalities and cant. Political intelligence is thatfaculty which enables a man to sea events and policies in just relative importance to the times in which he lives, to feel with accuracy the popular pulse, to know what is practicable and what is not, to nicely apprise the effects that will be produced by any given step, and even by the tone in which it is discussed ; it is antithetic alike of the small intelligence of sharp men who judge every question witb off-hand dogmatism, from the standpoint of a narrow experience and defective sympathy, and of the wild haste with which stro.ig minds, wanting in penetrating insight, mistake transitory phenomena for manifestations of enduring force. Even Genius, as was seen in the case of Dickens and the • Daily News,' will not make up for the want of this strong, sobering gift ; and where men of great reputation |in literature and as political thinkers have taken the editorship of a paper, it has been proved, by lamentab'o failure, how impossible it is to dispense with this rare faculty. Discomforture and loss have followed so unerringly and speedily the appointment of specialists to edit newspapers, that it liaa passed into a commonplace remark that to choose a man who should resort to inspiration, not to those great practical questions in which the foundations of States are laid, but to doctrinal dreamings of dilettantism, is to foredoom the journalistic venture before it is born. Of course it follows that, in order to preserve journalistic individuality, the editor, so far as the conduct of the paper is concerned, must sink his own. Nothing is more dangerous to newspaper success than to allow small personal passions to interfere with its management. Notwithstanding what has been said about tbe importance of the editorial columns, a newspaper is above everything else a newspaper. All the news of the past twenty-four hours should be found within its pnges. To lag behind, to allow oneself to be anticipated, is fatal j and is exclude news on the ground of private pique, or to permit private friendship to flood the ■columns with matter of doubtful interest, and to the exclusion of news, is equally suicidal. The public soon see whether a paper is making, without looking to the right or tJ the left, for a mark held well in view, or whether it is subordinate to the whims of an irrepressible egotism — whether it is, in fact, an organ of opinion and news, or only •» cage where some lively squirrel disports in the happy but delusive ■conviction that the world has nothing to do but to contemplate and admire his movements. There never has been a journalistic success under any conditions which would test principle of management, but it will be found, on examining the steps by which large circulation and great influence have been attained, that personal passions have been kept aside, while the policy of the paper has flown on strong and unreturning, in accordance with definite views which may have been — from the points cf view of political philosophy — wise or unwise, but which in immediate purpose and ultimate aim were unmistakeable. — ■* Canadian Monthly.'