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The National Interest
An Inky Wretch: The Outrageous Genius of Marchamont Nedham
by Paul A. Rahe
. . . Marchamont Nedham was willing to engage in chicanery on a scale that few journalists today would have the wit to imagine. But if he was ready to turn coat in a trice, that is what his tumultuous times required of a hired hand intent on surreptitiously nudging the nascent British "public" in a secular, republican direction. If the world’s first great journalist was promiscuous in his partisanship, it was in part because he was true to his principles. Nedham always knew what he was about and was unsurpassedly clever in concealing it as he moved from patron to benefactor to protector and back again. . . .
No one reading the gazettes with which Nedham was associated ever expected an impartial representation of events. But they did expect to be engaged seriously at an intellectual level appropriate to the subject, and they were.
What distinguishes Howell Raines from Marchamont Nedham, therefore, is less a matter of journalistic integrity or partisanship than a question of competence. Had a journal with the reputation of the New York Times existed in his day, and had he been given its command, Nedham would have had the wit to recognize its value. He would have taken care to preserve the franchise and would never have squandered an authority it had taken generations to accumulate. He was sly enough to be able to foresee that, in abandoning the appearance of impartiality and in turning itself into the vehicle of a political sect, such a journal would be jettisoning its effectiveness as a partisan tool. The temptation for an abuse of trust attendant on the possession of a power seemingly unchecked is no doubt great—but, as Nedham would have understood, resisting that temptation is prerequisite for persuasion. Perhaps the inky wretches of our own day will at some point come to recognize this. But, alas, not yet.