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An Editor’s Hardest Work

1860s newsprint

The Constitutional [Alexandria, LA], October 27, 1860,

Every one who has had any experience in the newspaper business will heartily concur in the views presented by a Virginia paper, in the following article:

“Many people estimate the ability of a newspaper and the industry and talent of the editor, by the quantity of editorial matter it contains. It is comparatively an easy task for a frothy writer to pour out daily columns of words. His ideas may flow in one everlasting flood, and yet his paper be a meagre and poor concern. But what is the labor and toil of such a man, to that imposedon the judicious, informed editor, who exercises his vocation with an hourly consciousness of its responsibilities and duties to devote himself to the conduct of his paper with the same care and assiduity that a sensible lawyer bestows upon a suit, or a humane physician to a patient, without regard to show or display. Indeed it is but a small portion of the work. The industry is not even shown there. The care, the time employed in selecting is far the most important.

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