THE FOURTH ESTATE AT YALE

It is a praiseworthy step on the part of Paul Block, owner of several newspapers, and a master in the art of advertising, to endow courses for lectures in journalism at Yale. President Angell, outlining the instruction, to be given there, has said that they "will endeavor to interpret the press in its-relation to the political, economic and broad cultural development of the country; they will not be directed toward vocational journalism."

It is as much in its negative proposal as in its program to interpret the press and its relationships that the Yale plan deserves commendation. Vocational journalism, as practiced in some two hundred colleges and universities of the United States, is remarkable chiefly for its failure to produce graduates who are ready for active journalistic work.

Eeach year new hordes of candidates for the Fourth Estate, backed by their Pulitzer diplomas, expect their newspaper training in college to admit them without question to the offices of metropolitan journals. And each year editors find that the vocational journalism their reporters have learned does little more than give them something else to unlearn before they can begin the acquisition of news writing ability.

If the Yale course does no more than relate the power of the press to the broad aspects of contemporary life with which it is concerned, it will achieve much. Let newspaper offices teach their men and women what they need to know the college can play a part far more important in the enlightment of its traders.