p. 136 | Bad Editing by James White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 26, 1877

Bad Editing.

By James White

We have ever entertained the idea that religious newspapers could, and should be edited with all that care which editors bestow upon first-class secular weeklies and literary and scientific monthlies. Why should they not? There is no truth as important as Bible truth, and no subjects so elevating as the grand themes of duty here, and the reward hereafter.

But there is a drowsiness about Christian workers in our time which leads very many to do the work of the Lord carelessly, with a sort of Sunday-go-to-meeting laziness which stamps almost all our religious efforts and operations with imperfections. If the lawyer should do business in this way, he would find himself out of work. If the teacher should fall into this habit, he would be discharged. And should the clerk become easy, thoughtless and drowsy, he would find a position on the other side of the counter very soon.

But in matters of religion, the tender brotherhood (?) prevents the exercise of proper reproof and discipline, and the work of the Lord is done carelessly. Jeremiah says: “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently.” See marginal reading of chapter 48 : 10.

We are grieved to see some inexcusable omissions and blunders in late numbers of the Review and Herald. We commenced that paper in 1850, and for the long period of twenty-seven years have had more interest in it than in all things else beneath the sun, and we cannot bear to see a single line in our blessed old paper that is either senseless, or bears unmistakable marks of want of care. We confess inability to keep up interest in reading of bad weather, muddy roads, when the writer left his home, and one hundred and one such particulars that the general reader can have no interest in. Yet these do appear, more or less, each week.

It is the editor’s duty to keep such things out of the paper, either by condensing reports, or by casting them as a whole to the moles and the bats. If he will do this, he will teach his correspondents to be brief and to the point. But in Review for April 19, is a report from J. Lamont, headed “Kansas,” and neither county nor town is mentioned in it. A church of sixteen was organized. Where? In Kansas. The outside attendance was small. Where? In Kansas. The outside of this large State is Nebraska on the north, Missouri on the east, Indian Territory on the south, and Colorado on the west.

In the same column is a report of a good meeting in Connecticut, but the place is not given. And in the same issue is a grand good report from an able writer respecting the labors of one of our ministers and a church of forty Danes in Dakota; but neither town nor county are given.

We have often repeated the statement during the last ten years that it is a disgrace to Seventh-day Adventists to do a second-class job in anything. While we do stay in this world, we should take heed to the words of Paul, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” 1 Cor. 14 : 40. J. W.