CHAPTER the Twenty-Seventh.
The Profession of Journalism--Newspapers and Editors in America--Bennett, Greeley and Raymond--Forney and Dana--The Education of a Journalist I The American newspaper has had, even in my time, three separate and distinct epochs; the thick-and-thin, more or less servile party organ; the personal, one-man-controlled, rather blatant and would-be independent; and the timorous, corporation, or family-owned billboard of such news as the ever-increasing censorship of a constantly centralizing Federal Government will allow.
This latter appears to be its present state.

Neither its individuality nor its self-exploitation, scarcely its grandiose pretension, remains.
There continues to be printed in large type an amount of shallow stuff that would not be missed if it were omitted altogether.

But, except as a bulletin of yesterday's doings, limited, the daily newspaper counts for little, the single advantage of the editor--in case there is an editor--that is, one clothed with supervising authority who "edits"-- being that he reaches the public with his lucubrations first, the sanctity that once hedged the editorial "we" long since departed.
The editor dies, even as the actor, and leaves no copy.

Editorial reputations have been as ephemeral as the publications which gave them contemporary importance.

Without going as far back as the Freneaus and the Callenders, who recalls the names of Mordecai Mannasseh Noah, of Edwin Crosswell and of James Watson Webb?
In their day and generation they were influential and distinguished journalists.