The United Co-operative/Volume 1/Number 2/A Criticism of Amateur Journalism

The publishing of little journals by amateurs, such as we have in the United Amateur Press Association, cannot be too highly commended. In this age of commercialism and materialism, a sincere effort for the cultivation of literary taste and expression affords proof that man indeed does not live by bread alone. Too much praise cannot be given to those ​stalwarts who have kept the flame, feeble at times, burning and cheering.

Yet amateur journalism, from its very nature, is prone to drift into ruts. Curiously enough, these ruts are not so much mistakes in technique as they are misconceptions of what amateur journalism should mean. None of us are lacking in magazines and books of the conventional sort; all of us are lacking in personal messages such as personally edited little publications should bring. Amateur journals should not attempt to compete with professional writers of the objective school. They should supply what the news-stands and libraries lack—personal, subjective contact with contemporaries who are experiencing daily much the same thoughts and feelings as the reader.

Subjective journalism, expressing the moods and hobbies of the writer, can be carried too far. Personally I get a bit bored by ultra-patriotic or ultra-religious writings of people who specialise in these excesses. The important point is to combine a human subjectivity with enough of the universal or objective element to interest and lead the readers.

The classical style ,which some amateurs cultivate, tends in my own opinion to be too objective, too esoteric, too restrained. It is too similar to what can be found in any classical library, and lacks Americanism (which Emerson pleaded for) and application to present needs. By no means do I agree with the conceited modernist, H. G. Wells, who argues that all books over fifteen years old should be burned; but I have a measured sympathy with a criticism of his in “Joan and Peter,” where he condemns the old-style colleges for neglecting to keep in touch with modern life, instead of being entirely engrossed in such problems as the Greek fig trade of the fifth century B. C.

Classicism should not be belittled lightly. It represents a high-minded refuge, almost a religion (as an Oxford professor recently explained), to which the noble thinkers of centuries have resorted for spiritual comfort and philosophy. But while Emerson was strongly influenced by it, Abraham Lincoln was not; and even Woodrow Wilson quotes more from Edmund Burke and Walter Bagehot and Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith than from Greeks or Romans.

Amateur journalism should include more of the modern, more of the present and future, more of the personal and subjective, more of the human and American.