“An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.”
Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964)
Quoted in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0231071949 by Robert Andrews (1993)
"Newspaper editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff and then print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=w8_p1eGVj8gC&pg=PA568&lpg=PA568&dq=adlai+chaff#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false (variation)
"Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=OTi0DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA701&lpg=PA701&dq=print+the+chaff&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22print%20the%20chaff%22&f=false (variation)
"Journalists separate the wheat from the chaff... and then print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=5pXjFMzIUO8C&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=adlai+chaff&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false (variation) <!-- Extended context: "...reasoning well requires a good stock of background information. This certainly is true with regard to information -- news -- about what is going on in the world. The good news about the news is that there is more and better news out there [as of 2005] than ever before in history. The bad news about the news is that not all of the more is better. The trick is to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff and, thinking of the remark, above, by Adlai Stevenson, concentrating on the wheat. (Another bit of bad news is that masses of people pay more attention to news schlock than to news pearls.) ..." -->
This statement has also been attributed https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=adlai+chaff#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false to an earlier usage by Elbert Hubbard.
