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For Worse-and for Betterment ••• All ofthe practical activities ofthe school center around the University Missourian, a four-page daily evening newspaper published by students of the school under the supervision ofthe faculty. It is the laboratory product of the school-a daily measure ofthe practical work done in the classrooms. It is a commercial enterprise only to the extent that it solicits business-subscriptions and advertising-in order to pay expenses. -Promotional announcement, School of Journalism, 1910 9 Soon after he took over the Columbia Daily Tribune in 1905, Edwin Moss Watson joined his fellow Missouri Press Association members in the campaign to promote the creation ofa School ofJournalism at the state university. Though Watson's support was less exuberant than some, it was nevertheless genuine. In one editorial on the subject, he wrote: There is a tendency among old-fashioned newspaper men to sneer at colleges of journalism. Many people still adhere to the ancient theory that journalists, like poets, are born and not made, and to a certain extent that is true, but even a newspaper man who has been "born" can learn something if he is properly taught. I And when the school did open that September of 1908, Watson heralded the event in approving terms, praising especially the real-world journalistic training for the students to be afforded by the laboratory newspaper, the Daily Missourian: Experience in gathering facts and writing them out in readable style will be of value to every student who takes the work offered by the department, whether the student who takes the work later becomes proprietor of a metropolitan newspaper or not. The student's powers of observation will necessarily increase with such practice.2 I. Pike, Ed Watson, 124. This excellent work was written by a longtime Tribune staffer who knew Watson and Walter Williams well. 2. Ibid. 145 146 ACreed for My Profession Buttwo weeks later, as the full implications ofthe new paper's impact on the community were beginning to sink in, Ed Watson underwent an angry and total reversal. Now he saw the Daily Missourian in an entirely different light-as a business competitor that threatened to take away some of his income-and he was incensed. In the first of what would become a steady barrage of heated editorials on the subject, Watson fumed: The Missourian has a liberal advertising patronage, and is in the field for such business as generally comes to a newspaper. It is submitted that this is competition. The state pays for the paper, the printing, and employs the publishers. If students were merely trained in journalism, there could be no possible objection to the Missourian, but in all fairness should the state go into the newspaper business against private individuals?3 Watson's indignation resonated with other publishers in the state. The respected Ledger, in the nearby community of Mexico, joined in: The Ledger has always believed that a chair ofjournalism at Missouri University would not only add strength to the institution and prove of great benefit to the newspaper men of the state, but the management of the University Missourian should strenuously avoid competition with the local papers of Columbia. We feel confident that this will be the policy of Dean Williams and his associates.4 That same week, the Hannibal Journal and the Moberly Democrat said much the same thing: The Journal agrees with the Moberly Democrat that the state University Daily, supported at state expense, should not be brought in competition with other Columbia newspapers. The School of Journalism is all right, but it ought to be conducted so as not to come in competition with private enterprise.5 The powerful St. Louis Star, though favoring the concept of a journalism school, sided with those who thought the Missourian enjoyed an unfair commercial advantage: What right has the state to set up a business proposition in connection with a state educational institution, and in competition with citizens? The Missourian is a bright publication, but it has never been a newspaper in the real sense of the word, and a mistake was made when it endeavored to force its consideration on the people as such. Strictly on its merits as a newspaper it would not command much advertising patronage. As a paper put out by the State University in the Athens of Missouri, however, it commands consideration. There can be no doubt that there are not a few people in Columbia who contracted for advertising space because they...

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