Article November 2, 1912 Issue

WORK OF THE DAILY NEWSPAPER

ALICE PILSBRY.

THE right work for the daily newspaper, in the body politic, is educative and uplifting, and the press at large is slowly coming to a more general recognition of this fact. It has been claimed that the object of the daily paper is merely to reflect or give expression to public opinion, but is this strictly true? Has not the daily proved instead to have been an instrument used to mold public opinion? What other means of speaking to large numbers of people is so far-reaching as the daily paper? With its message it enters immediately into the current of human thought, either to pollute or purify. How many men or women arrive at a decision on a subject they are not fully conversant with, only after they have gained the requisite information from their daily paper? And when public opinion trembles in the balance in some crisis, through what medium can it most quickly be focused and guided? Through what but the daily newspaper? and to the extent that the paper lends itself to the truth or the error on the question at issue, does it not become morally responsible for the outcome?

Upon the field of journalism where humanity has groped, vainly endeavoring to untangle and understand the intricacies of mortal phenomena, The Christian Science Monitor appears as the pioneer of higher ideals which are destined to exert directly and indirectly an incalculable influence, and at this clarion call of the ages to clean thinking, we lift our eyes to the heights, knowing that the day of salvation is at hand. The Monitor in its every department is cosmopolitan in the best meaning of the term. Daily there passes before its readers the pageant of world events. It takes rank at once with the best in library and school, because it gives clean, concise, and authentic information of "history in the making," of politics, commerce, discoveries, inventions, art, music, the drama, athletics, etc. Freed from daily contemplation of the petty and evil, and strengthened with this wide clear view of things constructive, men's thoughts are lifted, broadened, and gain poise, becoming, as a writer has said, "orderly, consecutive, systematic, law-abiding."

One can well believe that from a similar vantage-ground of trained and elevated thought Abraham Lincoln dispassionately regarded the "silent battle-field" whereon momentous spiritual forces are unceasingly being manifested, and was fitted to "hear a word behind [him], saying, This is the way, walk ye in it." Are we, citizens of this great country, living up to the high privilege accorded us of supplying our own thought daily with clean wholesome news and excluding all else? Are we fully aware of what our Monitor is saying, in words "he that runs may read," and to what extent this affects our loved ones, our neighbor, and all humanity?

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