Life — December 12, 1918 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“h Pe'e * Henry Ford to be an Editor O Vi. reads that Henry Ford is going to start a weekly paper Henry has the money, but where will he get the brains? He may have them himself. He is a very interesting man. His mind is an interesting mind. He has lots of jmayination, and is seldom sure beforehand that a thing hat he wants to do cannot be done, \ll these are important qualifications for a man who wants to start a weekly paper. And the money is important, and Henry has that. Maybe if he gave himself up to this re as he did to making the great Ford car he might way with it. But it will be a very hard matter to size. It takes real brains to start a paper that is any and more brains and long-continued application to sh it and keep it going. Henry doesn’t know how He might almost as well attempt to paint a pic- To be sure, if he wants a picture he can hire a ter, and if he wants a weekly paper he can hire editors. important papers have never been made in that wa! man who aspires to make a paper should hire every- whom he thinks will be useful to him, but the main he must do himself. He must hold the baby in his lap 1 feed it day by day with a spoon, giving it also what hment there may be in himself. Quantity production of reading matter begins and ends with printing presses. Editing is a form of art, and there is no such thing as quantity production of high art. You cannot put the forms of a paper on a carrier and have fellows drop in pictures, editorials, stories, poems and the other material as they pass. All you would get by that “1 MAVE A TERRIBLE PAIN IN MY STOMACH, DOCTOR.” WHEREABOUTS IS YOUR STOMACH—NORTH, SOUTH, EAST OR West?” HOW YOUR NEWSPAPER SEEMS NOW THAT THE WAR IS OVER method would be a jumble, and though you might repro- duce it by the million it would still be a jumble. But Henry is intelligent, and may realize these things, and if he gets a good enough editor, he may be able to make a worth-while paper. It must be interesting to be worth while, and if it is to be interesting he must catch interesting men to write it. Why doesn't he try to get I. W. Howe of Atchison! Mr. Howe is almost as ignorant of a whole lot of things as Henry himself is, but he is an incurably interesting writer. His mind is interesting. It is made that way, and the fact that he is likely to be wrong in his opinions on most subjects would not much affect his value to,Henry Ford's projected weekly. A Cruel Critic S00N after the Daily Trumpeter, complying with the government's request to conserve paper, came out printed on material very much thinner than what had ever before been used in its makeup, the editor received a message of appreciation that was decidedly distasteful to him. “Dear sir.” he read, “permit me to express my thank- fulness for the thinne: the paper now being used for your Trumpeter. This thinness was the only thing needed to enable me to call your sheet, with complete truthfulness, ‘a tissue of lies.’” S President Wilson the only American who can safe- guard American interests at the Peace Conference? Comicbooks.com