The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the one
who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a
printer\'s devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to graduate
from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer take down
speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real reporter, with a
fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking acquaintance with all the
greatest men in the city, not even excepting Police Captains.
That is the old time journalist\'s idea of it. That is the way he was
trained, and that is why at the age of sixty he is still a reporter. If you
train up a youth in this way, he will go into reporting with too full a
knowledge of the newspaper business, with no illusions concerning it, and
with no ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen and justifiable impression
that he is not paid enough for what he does. And he will only do what he
is paid to do.