Making of a Journalist

Julian Ralph wrote descriptive articles for the New York Sun. These accounts and articles were considered examples of literary journalism at the time. Before getting picked up by Charles A Dana to work for the New York Sun, he worked at New Jersey Standard, the World at New York City and the Daily Graphic. Ralph was a reporter and a writer and published several books, including travelogues, which were extraordinarily vivid and picturesque. To Julian Ralph there was no question but that success as a newspaperman depended upon one’s being born to it, upon one’s having a natural gift or fitness for the work. Of his own calling he had no doubt, as he indicated in recounting an anecdote from his days as a reporter for the New York Sun. Sent to a suburb of New York City to find a person, he sought help from a German cobbler at work in his shop:

“I beg your pardon, but I am a reporter of the Sun-”
“Well, well,” the cobbler replied in a soothing way, “you cannot help dot.”

Ralph recalled that the comment astonished him. “I could not help being a reporter, and I knew it. I had always believed I was born to be one, but who could have supposed a cobbler could have discovered all that by merely glancing at me. Ralph’s the Making of a Journalist has remained a classic introduction to the trade and craft of journalism.