Author emphasizes intellectual curiosity as a striking characteristic of the effective agricultural college editor. Among other cited credentials: agricultural college education, newspaper training and practical farm experience.
Supports training of agriculture students in news-writing, and argues that they also should be trained in public speaking. Also: "it would seem that agricultural students should by all means know or learn how to make a living with their hands on land before they take up news-writing and public speaking. Our national literacy of the head is far greater than our literacy of the human hand. We cannot take much of a hand in nation-building from the ground up unless we have trained hands, even in this machine age."
Presentation by R. W. Trullinger, chief of the office of experiment stations and assistant research administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, at 1950 AAACE conference. Calls for AAACE to become a stronger professional organization and urges development of strong agricultural journalism training programs. "Has your group gone on record urging the Association to increase opportunities for professional agricultural journalism?" "There must be a basic reason why the editorial departments are so frequently assigned quarters in the basement or attic; why the editor so often has to take on nondescript chores ranging from the duties of janitor to teaching English."
