The Weekly Comet

But few are initiated into the secrets of newspaper making. The editor is, as it were the crank turner, and his assistants are the Automatons that dance at his pleasure. He bids one go to his attic and write a letter from the "East," or the "West," as the scene of interest may shift, and it is done. Very learned disquisitions are written by persons ignorant of the subject matter, and a "regular paid correspondent" in the metropolis, is some fellow who patronizes the five cent house, and gets his dinner thrown in gratis.

A correspondent of the New York Tribune talks after this fashion in reference to the matter. He apologises for not giving a description of Lake Champlain :

I consider it rather unfortunate that Lake Champlain has been considerably "done," because I passed through it by night, I could only give an imaginative description of it. This however, is not difficult. I may tell you in confidence that I once wrote an account of travels in Turkey for the North American Review, although my experience of Orientals was confined to the wooden Turks that stands opposite the doors of tobacconists stores, and I am now an Eastern correspondent of an important but disreputable daily paper in New York. You may have seen in its columns the other day an elaborate statement of the vast expense about to be entered into the Eastern correspondence. It will, no doubt, astonish you sir, when I inform you that I am that expense. I have no doubt but that I shall be able from my attic in the Bowery, to supply most important news from the seat of war.