In 1878–79 he edited the daily Nowiny (News);[1] when in 1882 it was bought by financier Stanisław Kronenberg, its new owner, purportedly on Świętochowski's recommendation, entrusted the editorship to Bolesław Prus.

He would recall in his Pamiętnik (Memoirs): During my two-month journey, [Władysław] Smoleński stood in for me in editing Prawda; and, in writing columns—[Bolesław] Prus, with whom, after the fading of the memory of [our] polemical skirmishes of the "Young Press" period, I shared a renewed mutual sympathy.

[1] From 1912 until his death in 1938, Świętochowski lived in Gołotczyzna, a village 67 kilometers north of Warsaw, where he established intimate intellectual and personal ties with Aleksandra Bąkowska.

[1] Czesław Miłosz describes him: "A brilliant man, a sharp, even violent, polemicist against the conservatives, accused by his adversaries of haughtiness... he edited the periodical Truth (Prawda), signing his articles 'Truth's [Apostle].

[5][Nevertheless, w]hile his literary creations have not withstood the test of time and are not among the living artistic works of Polish literature, he will remain in Polish culture the personality that most fully embodied the ideals of the age, the activist and journalist most representative of the period, "the Pope of Warsaw progressivism," a tireless opponent of superstition and stupidity, the unmasker of patriotic and religious cant.