For instance, Walker writes that "the system of having news stories which start on page one and then jump to page thirty-seven of the second section, causing the reader to maul and tear his paper and lose all interest by the time he finds the continuation, are an affront to the reader."
And he seeks to dispel a popular school of thought that all good newspapermen, like all good prizefighters, "come out of the gutter." This idea, says Walker, is as foolish as the corollary that no rich man's son has any business becoming a newspaperman.
Finally, the author concludes, racial inheritance "probably has little to do with journalistic expertness, and yet most men who have got ahead in American journalism have been of Irish, English or Scottish blood. There have been a few Germans, and fewer from Scandinavian countries. French blood? Sometimes, but not often. And a good Italian newspaperman is so rare that he belongs in the Smithsonian Institution. Jewish reporters are impossible to classify; some are cloddish, some brilliant, some level-headed, some itching with messianic afflictions, some profligate, and some close-fisted and scheming. One thing surely may be said about them: most Jews know enough not to drink too much.
"Of all reporters, the Irish, if they have a poetic streak in them and can stay reasonably sober, probably make the best."