The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

THE REIGN OF DANA

~155

All the goodness of a good egg cannot make up for
the badness of a bad one.
If you find you have been wrong, don't fear to say
so.
These maxims did not convey the mysterious prescription with which Dana revived American journalism
from that trance in which it had forgotten that everybody
is human and that the English language is alive and fluid.
If there had been rules by which a living newspaper
could be made from men and ink and wood pulp, Dana
would have known them; but there were none, nor are
there now. E. P. Mitchell, who knew Dana better than
any other man knew him, said in an address at the
Pulitzer School of Journalism a few years ago:
Mr. Dana used to lecture on journalism sometimes,
when he was invited, but in the bottom of my heart
I don't believe he had any theories of journalism
other than common sense and free play for individual
talent when discovered and available. And I do
remember distinctly that when he sent Mr. Joseph
Pulitzer, then fresh from St. Louis, on to Washington
to report in semi-editorial correspondence the critical
stage of the electoral controversy of 1876 Mr. Dana
did not think it necessary to instruct that correspondent to assimilate his style to the Sun's methods
and traditions. Never was a job of momentous
journalistic importance better done in the absence
of plain sailing directions; but that, perhaps, was due
partly to the fact that Mr. Pulitzer was somewhat
of an individualist himself.
For the ancient common law of journalism, as derived from England, and perhaps before that from

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