The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

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THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

this new journalism, the "journalism that did things,"
was doing the wrong thing; that it was breaking down
the magnificent structure that had been reared by himself and Greeley and Raymond and Bennett and Hurlbut. This group had been possessed of all the newspaper faculties and facilities. If yellow journalism had
been right, they would have raised it to its highest peak.
Dana, who knew better than any editor of his time what
the public wanted, could have produced a perfect yellow
Sun; but he chose to print a golden one. He wrought
more genuine journalistic advance than any other man
in history. As Mr. Mitchell wrote of him in McClure's
Magazine in October, 1894, three years before Mr.
Dana's death:
The revolution which his genius and invention have
wrought in the methods of practical journalism in
America during the past twenty-five years can be estimated only by newspaper-makers. His mind, always
original, and unblunted and unwearied at seventy-five,
has been a prolific source of new ideas in the art of
gathering, presenting, and discussing attractively the
news of the world.
He is a radical and unterrified innovator, caring not
a copper for tradition or precedent when a change of
method promises a. real improvement. Restlessness like
his, without his genius, discrimination, and honesty of
purpose, scatters and.loses itself in mere whimsicalities
or pettinesses; or else it deliberately degrades the newspaper upon which it is exercised.
To Mr. Dana's personal invention are due many, if
not most, of the broad changes which within a quarter
of a century have transformed journalism in this country. From his individual perception of the true philosophy of human interest, more than from any other
single source, have come the now general repudiation
of the old conventional standards of news importance;
the modern newspaper's appreciation of the news value
of the sentiment and humor of the daily life around us;