Young Joe v. Old Joes

Press

Titans of the Press in the last century were Joseph Medill, publisher of the Chicago Tribune ("World's Greatest Newspaper"), and Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the lamented New York World. Both men left great wealth with which schools of journalism were established in their names: the Medill School at Northwestern University in Chicago; the Pulitzer School at Columbia in Manhattan. The Pulitzer School made news last fortnight by announcing that its course will be shortened next autumn from two years to one, that only graduate students will be admitted.

Besides their journalism schools, the two old Joes left behind two able young Joes. In St. Louis, Joseph Pulitzer Jr. runs the Post-Dispatch. In Manhattan, Grandson Joseph Medill Patterson has made a phenomenal success of the tabloid Daily News. Like many another practical newsman of this generation, "Joe" Patterson has little faith in schools of journalism. Last week, after reading the Pulitzer School's announcement, he filled the whole editorial column of his News with a piece entitled "On How Not to Teach Journalism." With it he printed a picture of Columbia's aging President Nicholas Murray ("Miraculous") Butler and the saucy caption: "Some ideas here for you, Doctor." Excerpts from the editorial:

"We consider [Columbia's action] a step in the right direction, but believe that course is still one year too long. The way to teach journalism, we think, is not to teach it at all as a special, separate college course. . . . We speak from a modicum of experience in this matter. The newspaper organization of which this paper is a part founded the Medill School of Journalism. . . . The Medill School . . . was founded with the idea of training youngsters to become newspaper men and women. Naturally, the newspaper founding the school expected to have first choice from the cream of each year's crop, and rosy visions were entertained of building up through the years something super-super in the way of newspaper organizations.

"It didn't work out that way. Better newspaper people were not produced by the Medill School. . . . What, then, does a reporter need? . . . He needs to know something about everything. . . . Wide historical reading. . . . He could do with a typewriter, and he ought to have a car. The car will enable him to travel . . . all over the country, asking for jobs on newspapers and being turned down. . . . He will acquire large wads of firsthand observation of newspapers, people, towns and open country. . . . He should eventually become able to get a job on a newspaper on the strength of credentials from some newspaper he never worked on, because he will gradually learn what convincing newspaper credentials look like. . . .

"We hope these winged words won't reach the Medill School of Journalism; but whether they do or not, we feel better for having unloaded them."

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