THE HARVARD STUDENT IN JOURNALISM.

"Of all horned cattle the worst is a college graduate in a newspaper office." - HORACE GREELEY.

"When a Harvard student enters this office he will find posted over the door, Harvard Students and Loafers are warned from here." - Summer Song of the Reporters.

IT seems to be the popular impression that there is something in any college education, and particularly in a Harvard education, which prevents a graduate from becoming a successful editor. He may become a brilliant lawyer, a skilful physician, or a successful business man; but he can never become a great journalist.

Undoubtedly the prime requisites of a good editor are coolness, quickness, and impartiality; yet are not these qualities also required to make a man a good lawyer, physician, or business man? But behind the coolness and the quickness and the impartiality there must be some special knowledge, there must be a something on which these good qualities work. The aim of this article is to show that the training which one, by a selection of courses with journalism in view, may obtain at this College can be made to apply directly on one's future work.

Take, for instance, what is regarded as the mechanical part of newspaper work, - the preparation of telegraphic despatches. In this branch punctuation, capitalizing, paragraphing, and the art of clear expression are the first requisites; and when one has mastered these there is so little trouble with the technicalities of heading, etc., that one who has profited by his courses in themes can with a week's practice become a fair telegraphic editor.

Take, again, the reportorial department. The familiarity with many subjects and the ability to take up any subject, both of which things a college education teaches, are of the greatest value. Then, too, a college graduate generally has an idea of "what to leave in the ink-bottle," - a point which is coming to be better appreciated.

But the greatest value of a college course is felt in journalism proper, the editorial department. It is in this part of the work that the writing of themes and forensics will be found of material aid; for a large part of the editorials in the daily papers differ in no respect from the written work required from us. And when to the practice in writing we add that knowledge of European and United States history, of political economy, and of English literature, with which we may go from here so abundantly provided, no better foundation for a successful journalistic career can be asked.

The most serious obstacle in the graduate's path is the too common feeling that he has nothing more to learn. But this is a feeling by no means universal, and it is also one soon got rid of. If a college graduate enters a newspaper office with the idea in his head that he knows all about the business, he subjects himself to the same rebuffs as would meet him if he entered a dry-goods house with a like notion. But if he is willing to learn with patience the technicalities, and is willing to submit to those more experienced than himself, he will find that a college education will greatly aid him to rise in a profession whose heights must be gained by climbing, and whose approaches are often guarded by unlettered men who act with the true spirit of the dog in the manger.