The startling contrasts in America which suggested the title of the present volume are, of course, well in evidence in the American press.  Not only are there many papers which are eminently unobnoxious to the charges brought against the American press generally, but different parts of the same paper often seem as if they were products of totally different spheres (or, at any rate, hemispheres).  The “editorials,” or leaders, are sometimes couched in a form of which the scholarly restraint, chasteness of style, moral dignity, and intellectual force would do honour to the best possible of papers in the best possible of worlds, while several columns on the front page of the same issue are occupied by an illustrated account of a prize-fight, in which the most pointless and disgusting slang, such as “tapping his claret” and “bunging his peepers,” is used with blood-curdling frequency.

In a paper that lies before me as I write, something like a dozen columns are devoted to a detailed account of the great contest between John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett (Sept. 7, 1892), while the principal place on the editorial page (but only one column) is occupied by a well-written and most appreciative article on the Quaker poet Whittier, who had gone to his long home just about the time the pugilists were battering each other at New Orleans.[19]

It would give a false impression of American journalism as a whole if we left the question here.  While American newspapers certainly exemplify many of the worst sides of democracy and much of the rawness of a new country, it would be folly to deny that they also participate in the attendant virtues of both the one and the other.  The same inspiring sense of largeness and freedom that we meet in other American institutions is also represented in the press:  the same absence of slavish deference to effete authority, the same openness of opportunity, the same freshness of outlook, the same spontaneity of expression, the same readiness in windbag-piercing, the same admiration for talent in whatever field displayed.  The time-honoured alliance of dulness and respectability has had its decree nisi from the American press.  Several of our own journalists have had the wit to see and the energy to adopt the best feature of the American style; and the result has been a distinct advance in the raciness and readableness of some of our best-known journals.  The “Americanisation of the British press” is no bugbear to stand in awe of, if only it be carried on with good sense and discrimination.  We can most advantageously exchange lessons of sobriety and restraint for suggestions of candour, humour, and point; and America’s share in the form of the ideal English reading journal of the future will possibly not be the smaller.