The Scope of College Journalism.

Writers for college papers, like too many other writers, often go to work without in the least considering what they can do successfully. Few have minds filled for all kinds of composition. Yet unhappily most of us never seem fully to realize that we cannot make valuable contributions to every department of literature. We feel that whatever man has done, we can do, forgetting that we are not yet full grown men. We incline to the mistaken view that all the critical reviews, essays, stories, plays, poems, and what not, we write, must be worth printing. To be sure, it may be very good training to attempt a poem which proves to be anything but poetry; but to publish such a failure is foolish.

Let it be granted, then, to start with, that a man has a fair knowledge of the more mechanical side of writing, the question for him to settle is in what direction he shall turn his skill. If men carefully thought over this problem, the standard of work in our papers could be much raised.

As has often been said, the first essential for success is sincerity. By sincere writing I mean that into which you have put part of yourself. Like most short definitions, this one means both too much and too little. But when applied to particular cases, it will be limited, or stretched.

The kind of composition which we slight most, is that in which a number of related facts are gathered, and put into intelligible form. It is commonly said that the man who does this sort of work in an historical essay, or biographical sketch, shows neither thought nor originality. Yet such a statement is far from true. For it is no light matter to take a given number of facts about an affair of ordinary interest and so arrange them as to hold the attention of a reader. In one way, such is the task of an artist in making colors into a picture. The writer must see what is to be in the foreground, and what in the background, how his state-statements are to be grouped to show his meaning most forcibly. In short, he must have each part subordinate to the expression of the meaning of the whole. He must not only be able to see facts apart, but to perceive with equal chearness their relations to each other and to the whole. If he fails to understand all their relations plainly, his performance will be confused and uninteresting.

To beginners, then, writing on historical or similar topics is excellent practice. Doubtless in every year Harvard produces much fairly readable stuff of this kind. In these compositions the author has put enough thought to make the grouping of facts, which are not his own, still so much the expression of his mind, that the essay is sincere and of worth. Yet of such work we see too little in the college papers.

In critical essays, reviews, etc., a man draws his own conclusions from given data. Of course it is useful to us to form judgments, but our judgments are of small value to the public, - of less value than the simple facts upon which they are equally able to pass criticism. The opinions set forth in a review may be most sincere, yet if the writer has poor knowledge of his subject, a sincere opinion is of slight worth. But second-hand views are still more worthless. You bolt an idea whole; and without assimilating it, try to make believe that it is your own.

As we have too little skillful compilation and arrangement of facts, so we have too much crude, or borrowed literary criticism. College editors have too great faith in the opinions of themselves and of their friends. They should not so readily allow the publication of their own and others' immature and uninteresting remarks upon things, books and men.