THE NEWSPAPER

THE
HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

A COMPREHENSIVE SERIES OF NEW
AND SPECIALLY WRITTEN BOOKS

EDITORS:

Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.

The Rt. Hon. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.

Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.

Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.

256 pages. In cloth binding.

HISTORY

3. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Hilaire Belloc, M.A. (Maps.)

4. A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE. By G. H. Perris.

13. MEDIÆVAL EUROPE. By H. W. C. Davis, M.A. (With Maps.)

14. THE PAPACY AND MODERN TIMES (1303–1870). By William Barry, D.D.

23. HISTORY OF OUR TIME (1885–1913). By G. P. Gooch, M.A.

25. THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA. By H. A. Giles, LL.D., Professor of Chinese at Cambridge.

29. THE DAWN OF HISTORY. By J. L. Myres, M.A., F.S.A.

33. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Prof. A. F. Pollard.

34. CANADA. By A. G. Bradley.

37. PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF INDIA. By Sir T. W. Holderness, G.C.B.

42. ROME. By W. Warde Fowler, M.A.

48. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. By F. L. Paxson.

51. WARFARE IN ENGLAND. By Hilaire Belloc, M.A.

55. MASTER MARINERS. By J. R. Spears.

61. NAPOLEON. By the Rt. Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, M.A.

66. THE NAVY AND SEA POWER. By David Hannay.

71. GERMANY OF TO-DAY. By Charles Tower.

82. PREHISTORIC BRITAIN. By Robert Munro, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E. (Illustrated.)

97. THE ANCIENT EAST. By D. G. Hogarth, M.A. (Maps.)

98. WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. By Prof. T. C. Smith, M.A.

100. HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. By Prof. R. S. Rait.

101. BELGIUM. By R. C. K. Ensor. (Maps.)

105. POLAND. By Prof. W. Alison Phillips. (With Maps.)

107. SERBIA. By L. F. Waring.

108. OUR FORERUNNERS. By M. C. Burkitt, M.A., F.S.A. (Illustrated.)

113. WALES. By W. Watkin Davies, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.

114. EGYPT. By Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, M.A., Litt.D., F.S.A.

118. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. By Norman H. Baynes.

125. ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS AND STUARTS. By Keith Feiling, M.A.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

15. MOHAMMEDANISM. By Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M.A., D.Litt.

40. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.

47. BUDDHISM. By Mrs Rhys Davids, M.A.

50. NONCONFORMITY: ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. By Principal W. B. Selbie, M.A.

54. ETHICS. By G. E. Moore, M.A.

56. THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Prof. B. W. Bacon, LL.D., D.D.

60. MISSIONS: THEIR RISE AND DEVELOPMENT. By Mrs Creighton.

68. COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter, D.Litt.

74. A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. By J. B. Bury, Litt.D., LL.D.

84. LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Prof. George Moore, D.D., LL.D.

90. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. By Canon E. W. Watson.

94. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By Canon R. H. Charles, D.D., D.Litt.

102. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By Clement C. J. Webb.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

1. PARLIAMENT. Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir Courtenay P. Ilbert, G.C.B., K.C.S.I.

6. IRISH NATIONALITY. By Mrs J. R. Green.

10. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. By J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P.

11. CONSERVATISM. By Lord Hugh Cecil, M.A., M.P.

21. LIBERALISM. By L. T. Hobhouse, M.A.

30. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW. By W. M. Geldart, M.A., B.C.L.

38. THE SCHOOL: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF EDUCATION. By J. J. Findlay, M.A., Ph.D.

81. PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE. By E. N. Bennett, M.A.

83. COMMON-SENSE IN LAW. By Prof. Sir P. Vinogradoff, D.C.L.

96. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM BACON TO HALIFAX. By G. P. Gooch, M.A.

104. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM SPENCER TO THE PRESENT DAY. By Ernest Barker, M.A.

106. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: THE UTILITARIANS FROM BENTHAM TO J. S. MILL. By W. L. Davidson, M.A., LL.D.

121. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM LOCKE TO BENTHAM. By Harold J. Laski.

ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS

5. THE STOCK EXCHANGE. By F. W. Hirst, Editor of The Economist.

16. THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH. By J. A. Hobson, M.A.

24. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY. By D. H. Macgregor, M.A.

26. AGRICULTURE. By Prof. W. Somerville, F.L.S.

59. POLITICAL ECONOMY. By Sir S. J. Chapman, K.C.B.

69. THE NEWSPAPER. By G. Binney Dibblee, M.A. (Illustrated.) The best account extant of the organisation of the newspaper press, at home and abroad.

80. CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING. By Aneurin Williams.

85. UNEMPLOYMENT. By Prof. A. C. Pigou, M.A.

109. COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY. By Marion I. Newbigin, D.Sc.

117. ADVERTISING. By Sir Charles Higham.

121. BANKING. By Walter Leaf, D.Litt.

GEOGRAPHY

7. MODERN GEOGRAPHY. By Marion I. Newbigin, D.Sc.

8. POLAR EXPLORATION. By Dr W. S. Bruce, F.R.S.E., Leader of the Scotia Expedition. (With Maps.)

12. THE OPENING-UP OF AFRICA. By Sir H. H. Johnston, G.C.M.G., F.Z.S. (With Maps.)

36. CLIMATE AND WEATHER. By Prof. H. N. Dickson, D.Sc.Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E. (With Diagrams.)

53. THE MAKING OF THE EARTH. By Prof. J. W. Gregory, F.R.S. (With 38 Maps and Figures.)

88. THE GROWTH OF EUROPE. By Prof. Grenville Cole. (Illustrated.)

91. THE ALPS. By Arnold Lunn. (Illustrated.)

92. CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. By Prof. W. R. Shepherd. (Maps.)

101. BELGIUM. By R. C. K. Ensor. (Maps.)

105. POLAND. By Prof. W. Alison Phillips. (With Maps.)

107. SERBIA. By L. F. Waring.

113. WALES. By W. Watkin Davies, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.

114. EGYPT. By Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, M.A., Litt.D., F.S.A.

118. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. By Norman H. Baynes.

LITERATURE

2. SHAKESPEARE. By John Masefield.

25. THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA. By H. A. Giles, LL.D., Professor of Chinese at Cambridge.

27. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN. By G. H. Mair, M.A.

35. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE. By G. L. Strachey.

43. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIÆVAL. By Prof. W. P. Ker, M.A.

45. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By L. Pearsall Smith, M.A.

52. GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA. By Prof. J. Erskine and Prof. W. P. Trent.

64. DR JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE. By John Bailey, M.A.

65. THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY. By Prof. J. G. Robertson, M.A., Ph.D.

70. THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE. By G. K. Chesterton.

73. THE WRITING OF ENGLISH. By W. T. Brewster, A.M., Professor of English in Columbia University.

76. EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE. By Gilbert Murray, D.Litt., LL.D.

77. SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE. By H. N. Brailsford.

87. CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. By Grace E. Hadow.

89. WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE. By A. Clutton Brock.

95. ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. By J. M. Robertson, M.P.

99. AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By Hon. Maurice Baring.

103. MILTON. By John Bailey, M.A.

111. PATRIOTISM IN LITERATURE. By John Drinkwater, M.A.

SCIENCE

9. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS. By Dr D. H. Scott, M.A., F.R.S. (Illustrated.)

17. HEALTH AND DISEASE. By W. Leslie Mackenzie, M.D.

18. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS. By A. N. Whitehead, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Diagrams.)

19. THE ANIMAL WORLD. By Prof. F. W. Gamble, F.R.S. With Introduction by Sir Oliver Lodge. (Many Illustrations.)

20. EVOLUTION. By Prof. J. A. Thomson, M.A., and Prof. P. Geddes.

22. CRIME AND INSANITY. By Dr C. A. Mercier.

28. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. By Sir W. F. Barrett, F.R.S.

31. ASTRONOMY. By A. R. Hinks, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory.

32. INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE. By Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, M.A.

41. ANTHROPOLOGY. By R. R. Marett, M.A.

44. PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY. By Prof. J. G. McKendrick, M.D.

46. MATTER AND ENERGY. By F. Soddy, M.A., F.R.S.

49. PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR. By Prof. W. McDougall, F.R.S., M.B.

57. THE HUMAN BODY. By Prof. Sir A. Keith, M.D., LL.D. (Illustrated.)

58. ELECTRICITY. By Gisbert Kapp, D.Eng. (Illustrated.)

62. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. By Dr Benjamin Moore, Professor of Bio-Chemistry, University College, Liverpool.

67. CHEMISTRY. By Raphael Meldola, F.R.S.

72. PLANT LIFE. By Prof. J. B. Farmer, D.Sc., F.R.S. (Illustrated.)

78. THE OCEAN. A General Account of the Science of the Sea. By Sir John Murray, K.C.B., F.R.S. (Colour Plates and other Illustrations.)

79. NERVES. By Prof. D. Fraser Harris, M.D., D.Sc. (Illustrated.)

86. SEX. By Prof. Patrick Geddes and Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, LL.D.

110. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HEREDITY. By Prof. E. W. MacBride, M.A., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S. (Illustrated.)

115. BIOLOGY. By Prof. Patrick Geddes and Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., LL.D. (Illustrated.)

116. BACTERIOLOGY. By Prof. Carl H. Browning. (Illustrated.)

119. MICROSCOPY. By Robert M. Neill. (Illustrated.)

120. EUGENICS. By A. M. Carr-Saunders.

122. GAS AND GASES. By Prof. R. M. Caven. (Illustrated.)

126. TREES. By Dr Macgregor Skene.

127. MOTORS AND MOTORING. By E. T. Brown. (Illustrated.)

ART

39. ARCHITECTURE. By Prof. W. R. Lethaby. (Illustrated.)

63. PAINTERS AND PAINTING. By Sir Frederick Wedmore. (With 16 half-tone Illustrations.) From the Primitives to the Impressionists.

75. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. By Jane E. Harrison, LL.D., D.Litt.

93. THE RENAISSANCE. By Edith Sichel.

112. MUSIC. By Sir W. H. Hadow.

123. DRAMA. By Ashley Dukes.

Many other volumes in preparation.

LONDON: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, LTD.

And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls.

HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

THE NEWSPAPER

BY

G. BINNEY DIBBLEE, M.A.

LATE FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD

London
WILLIAMS & NORGATE

HENRY HOLT & Co., New York
Canada: WM. BRIGGS, Toronto
India: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, Ltd.

HOME
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
OF
MODERN KNOWLEDGE

Editors:

HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.

PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LITT., LL.D., F.B.A.

PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.

PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. (Columbia University, U.S.A.)

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

THE BRITISH TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE

The Newspaper Duty Stamps.

• The Newspaper Duty Stamps were imposed in 1712.
• The Newspaper Duty Stamps were repealed in 1855.
• The Advertisement Duty of 3s. 6d. was imposed in 1712.
• The Advertisement Duty of 1s. 6d. was imposed in 1833.
• The Advertisement Duty was repealed in 1853.
• The Paper Duty was repealed in 1861.

THE
NEWSPAPER

BY
G. BINNEY DIBBLEE, M.A.
Late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

PRINTED BY
THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED
LONDON AND NORWICH

CONTENTS

THE NEWSPAPER

CHAPTER I
THE FUNCTION OF A NEWSPAPER

So common an object as a newspaper is seldom the subject of serious reflection. If any one of us should stop to consider what it is and why it is made, it is odds that he would think chiefly of one aspect of it to the general exclusion of the others. The curious man might reflect in surprise on the vast amount of mere reading matter turned out regularly every morning with perhaps only half a dozen literal mistakes, on the variety of typesetting and the amount of printing, often more than sufficient to make a large sized book. The manufacturer would direct his imagination to the efficient machinery necessary to produce perhaps 3,000 copies a minute or to the practised organization, able to distribute them, as fast as they are printed. The business man would think chiefly of a newspaper, as a vehicle for prices and a medium for advertising. Cooks, butlers, clerks and governesses look upon it as a daily registry office. The solicitor sells houses and lands through it. Housewives through it sometimes buy their soaps and more often their hats. Actors, singers, authors, artists and musicians each read their special column and wonder when the editor intends to engage some one really acquainted with the only subject worth reading. The politician will read its leading articles with smirking assent or explosive repudiation. Last of all comes the general reader and he asks nothing more of his newspaper than all the news of everywhere, collected at great cost, transcribed with finished skill and presented to him in just the way which pleases and flatters him most. All of them have on their lips the daily threat of giving up the paper, if they are not scrupulously satisfied.

In writing about “the newspaper” it seems to me most useful to the greatest number of readers to dwell much less on those sides of a newspaper, which are most familiar to all of us, however interesting in itself everything connected with the editorial conduct of a paper may be, than on the central entity behind them, which makes the public functions possible and actual. In other words I shall write chiefly of what most people seldom or never see and but little of all those aspects of any newspaper, which every reader is accustomed to judge for himself. To do otherwise would require an encyclopædia to hold the mere bulk of material and would also bring oneself flat against the serried ranks of fixed opinions. Every one is quite sure that he knows “what he wants” and “what he wants” is always “the best” for him. To lay down the law therefore on matters which are the subject of common opinion is a danger to be evaded whenever possible and I propose only to deal very slightly with what is generally known as “the press” and for the larger part of my space shall try to explain the mechanism, which industriously collects, enshrines in print and tirelessly circulates all the material, whether news or literary, to every attainable corner of the country and also the organism, which by serving the business needs of its community, acquires the immense revenues, which alone make the continued existence of the other possible.

A newspaper is of all modern private institutions the most comprehensive in function and complicated in principle. Perhaps the only thing at all comparable to it in these respects is a ship. A ship, engaged on a voyage, almost equals the triple life of a newspaper, because it is for the time being a place of residence, a means of travel and a conveyor of traffic. But voyages are short and discontinuous with one another, while the existence of a newspaper is organically continuous from the issue of the first number to bankruptcy and very often even afterwards. In every case, the newspaper is a vehicle for the satisfaction of human wants and that in three diverse ways; but the odd thing is that none of these ways, although they actually in practice overlap, are essentially related to one another. The newspaper is primarily a collector and distributor of news and in this function has long ago beaten every possible rival out of the field. Secondarily it is a vehicle of opinion and in virtue of this capacity it often becomes the prey of the mighty or the victim of the long purse; but still it continues to draw from its other functions and powers a capacity for resistance to outside pressure, which guarantees to it more independence than sometimes appears on the surface. Lastly it serves as the great introducer of business from one trader to another. It has been estimated, that the annual amount spent on advertising in general is not less than £600,000,000 in civilized countries and it would be safe to say, that probably something like one half of this amount passes into the treasuries of journals and other periodicals, all or nearly all of which fulfil in one way or another the functions of a newspaper for their special circles of readers. It is the existence of this colossal revenue, more than double the annual budget of the United Kingdom, which makes possible the costly task of collecting and transmitting the news of the world from all places to all other places at once. It is a commonplace that the small amount paid by each reader for the purchase of his paper, whatever it may be, would be very far from defraying the expenses of providing him with all that he will find in it.

Let us examine these functions of a newspaper separately. By far the most important and exacting task, which falls to its lot, is the provision of a daily—or weekly as the case may be—supply of news and that not of any news nor of enough news but of all the news. The distinction is of immense practical importance because it trebles the difficulty imposed on the conductors of a newspaper. The outsider, who as a general rule consults only a small part of the reading matter provided for him, sometimes finds in any issue very little that immediately interests him and a vast deal that does not. He therefore commonly receives the impression of a large amount of space regularly wasted. Very few readers are aware of the simple truth that, of what may be called pure news matter, almost every issue has had at least as much “copy” provided for it and rejected as appears in the paper. The practical task of the editors and sub-editors in making up their daily issues consists not in scraping together material for the printer but in rejecting it. Of an evening paper with its successive editions this is even more true, many a report or “story” appearing in the early morning and being cut down or “killed” before nightfall. The great responsibility assumed by all editors, to which they are very seldom unfaithful, is the provision of all news, everything printable that has happened close to rail or wire or not kept secret by governments or private parties. There is only one excuse for leaving out any item of news and that is that more important news has claimed precedence of it and crowded it out.

It is evident therefore that the collection of news is strictly speaking extra-editorial or, to be more precise, it is under the general but not the immediate direction of the editor. It is an elaborate and almost automatic system, consisting partly of a world-wide organization for general news, which works for the common benefit of a large number of papers, and partly of a particular corps attached to each individual newspaper. It is the special function of this private organization to secure, if possible, exclusive news for its own paper and at any rate to emphasize and pay particular attention to that class of news, which each paper considers its own strong point. Yet while it is true that this duplicate and to some extent self-overlapping system fulfils the fundamental duty of every paper, which can be called in any sense a newspaper, it is not that side of newspaper life, which arouses the greatest amount of attention from outside, at any rate in this country, nor does it absorb the greatest amount of energy and talent within. The sensational part of journalism is the control of opinion.

It is usual in speaking of the editorial side of a paper for nearly everyone, who is not within the narrow ring of professionals, to mean the latter function of the paper and not the mere collection and reproduction of news. This is true not only of periodicals and weeklies but also of the great morning dailies, which are by far the most influential part of that institution, which we casually refer to as “the press.” Here is where power is presumed to reside. Whether it be politics or art or finance, everyone, who wants anything important done to influence the general public, feels that it is here that the first and most valiant effort must be made. The press must be got at and persuaded or bullied into taking what is the only possible point of view, as each individual sees it for himself. And as there are always dozens and perhaps hundreds struggling more or less successfully to get to the one central point, where opinion is supposed to be controlled, the illusion is set up that here is where events are being guided, whereas they are only being agitated. The efforts and influences generally balance themselves so evenly that the net result is generally independent of any single personality. What governs all these efforts in the end is the interest, which the general reader will take in the particular matter in question and by the general reader, I mean in this connection, those particular readers, who habitually look out for any special news or discussion on any named subject. The power, which a newspaper has of taking a subject from one plane of interest to another and thus widening the number of those to whom a special matter will appeal, is nearly always determined by an editorial estimate of the amount of interest it will arouse, which is not strictly speaking an analysis of its real importance but a prevision of the psychology of the majority of readers, who will judge it next day.

Although to many of us the power of the press presents itself, perhaps mistakenly, as largely an illusion, it cannot be denied that here lies the romantic interest of the newspaper world to nine men out of ten. Those, who, like musical or dramatic artists, habitually come before the public, are apt to be obsessed by the importance of what is said or done by the press; authors, politicians and prominent citizens are not above actively canvassing it; even royalty and the state government are careful to give it whatever guidance will be tolerated. Dear to the imagination also of the occasional visitor to a newspaper office are the inconceivable complications of one subject tumbling over another at the last moment in competition, to find out which of the two should be crowded out. Let me quote in illustration of this tossed and wayward charm of self-important confusion a brilliant description of an editorial room at the last moment from a recent work of fiction.[1]

[1] C. E. Montague: A Hind Let Loose.

“Brumby’s editorial room was fit to visit the dreams of a dramatist. Used as a scene, whole ranges of characters could have popped in and out of it all night, and nobody run into any one else till the good of the play required. For its walls were mainly door; for dooring’s sake Wellington, Canning, Dizzy himself (after Millais) were skied; doors to right of him, doors to left of him, at one hand a row of bell-buttons, close as on a page’s bosom, at the other a serried squad of mouths of speaking-tubes, Brumby sat like a brain centre in a nervous system—the simile is his; at least he borrowed it first—feeling at all the threads and living along each line.

“All the evening all the forces of the press, now centripetal and now centrifugal, drew in upon this core to take direction or were sped outwards from it, aimed and animated. To and from the central, octagonal, skylighted room were sucked in or radiated forth each by his proper door, along the spoke-like corridors, the office messengers with ‘copy,’ proofs, letters and telegrams; the foreman shirt-sleeved from the composing-room, asking the size of to-morrow’s paper; the publisher, not yet perspiring, to know how much per cent. Lord Allbury’s speech, the thing of to-night, should add on to the parcels for the outer towns; sub-editors doubting how much to make of some not very well-born rumour of a row inside the Cabinet, or if it might be libel, though it were true, to say a borough treasurer had turned invisible since Thursday; the porter from the lift bringing in callers’ cards—the Manager, Theatre Royal—would not detain the editor one instant; writer of a letter—turnstiles needed on trams—would the editor see him, simply for five minutes—reform vital; small deputation from Hospital Friday Committee—had not liked to give him the trouble beforehand to make an appointment; bankrupt of some hours’ standing—just two words about to-morrow’s report—could nothing be done about the judge’s conduct—method of choosing official receivers, too, thoroughly faulty. Thence would the war correspondent post, at Brumby’s bidding, over land and ocean without rest, bent to sweeten the sacred home life of the Warden’s readers with all the heroic pleasures of war, unalloyed by groin wounds or enteric. To this call at the heart of the hive the reporter, home from some delicate quest, would come to lay up in the charge of the queen-bee that most perfect flavoured news, which you could never put in the paper.”

There is no word here which is not true description, both in letter and in spirit, capable of being annually multiplied by the number of week-days in the year, except Christmas Day in some offices. Of all this our presumed visitor might see one quarter and understand but the half of that; yet it is all Fleet Street to a cup of coffee at 1 a.m., that what he did see and understand would dazzle and intoxicate him. He would not know, that for every one professionally concerned in the furious hive all this bustle had long ago become mere routine, that everything had its method of being tested and that while almost nothing was left to chance, intelligence had not often very much more to say in the matter. Every kind of difficulty had occurred a hundred times before; every decision given was an old one, that had been taken before the oldest compositor was born; there was only one thing that changed and kept changing and remained the perpetual preoccupation of workers, little and big—he himself, the visitor, the reader, the representative of the general public.

As far as the public is concerned, there is very little distinction made between the function of newspapers as newsgatherers and their duties as purveyors of opinion. This arises from a very simple cause. While news is nominally an impersonal thing, as a matter of practice it is far from being so. In obtaining it the faculty of selection is required in the highest degree by the newsgatherer or “story-writer.” Selection again is strenuously required in determining the competition between one item of news and another. Finally the presentation of news in words and paragraphs leaves a wide opening for individual preferences and inclinations. Thus it comes about, naturally enough, that the same series of habits, which govern the conduct of avowed opinion in a newspaper, habits summed up briefly in the term, the policy of the paper, express themselves, not so consciously but even more effectively, in its news columns. Readers, who are on their guard against the intention of the editor in that part of the paper, which is avowedly the vehicle of opinion, retaining a certain critical faculty, wherever they have reason to believe that their favourite newspaper is not what they call “sound,” are quite unsuspicious of the news columns and accept as plain facts statements, which have perhaps undergone three unconscious garblings. It is therefore paradoxically true that where a group of men conducting a paper consciously try to exert an influence in a certain direction their intention is often discounted and they produce very little effect. Whereas otherwise, through being the medium of the distribution of mere news, a newspaper will wield unconsciously a very considerable influence over its readers and may continue indefinitely to do so, so long as it does not exploit this subtle power in any way, which is detected to be conspicuously unfair.

The last aspect of a newspaper is much less impressive to outsiders than anything, which appears in print in its columns. Every newspaper is a commercial organism subject to the same laws of life and death, which govern businesses in general. It has to build up a goodwill sometimes slowly and against great odds, almost accidentally, in other cases meteorically and insolently. Its peculiar faculty of dealing in publicity both ways, through its news columns gratuitously and through its advertisements for payment, give it a special power of making its own way independently of outside help, in certain cases of advancing itself by the aid of its own enemies. To succeed it must be talked about and abuse is welcome, almost as much so as praise. Once arrived at the eminence of an extensive popularity it becomes able to help others and thus acquires the revenue necessitated by its own expensive wants. But these wants are the great obstacle to any flash success. In the case of a new daily morning paper it is impossible to start with any less equipment than the best and richest of its rivals. The income from the sales of the paper is trivial and for some time it has to support enormous expenses out of capital, until it has not only established an undoubtedly important circulation but has also convinced the numerous classes of advertisers that this circulation has been securely attained, a problem which is sometimes even more difficult to solve than the other. All these questions and problems fall under the classification of business management, which we shall arrive at in due time.

The life and power of any newspaper or periodical is thus doubly entrusted to the hands of its readers and to their opinion of it. They must draw from it amusement, instruction and business facilities and for the latter the newspaper proprietor is even more concerned than for the former. The secret of the miracle whereby 6d. or 10 cents worth of news and literary matter can be sold in the streets for one penny or one cent is that the reader makes a return to the newspaper for every copy, which he buys, equivalent to the difference in price. This return is afforded by his attention, a commodity in these days of busy competition in exchanges, which it is extremely hard to secure and worth therefore to the advertising world a very considerable body of wealth.

CHAPTER II
NEWSCOLLECTING AND REPORTING

Of the duties and functions of any newspaper the first in point of time and of importance is the collection and dissemination of news. The necessity of giving to the news, which is collected, some sort of literary form in its presentation leads at once to the possibility of reinforcing it, of distorting it and sometimes, by suppression of essential points, of even inverting its meaning. The propagation of opinion is thus inseparably allied with the dissemination of news and no effort of organization can entirely separate the two departments. In all daily papers, however, and in most weekly papers, which attempt to give the news, the editorial system is a duplicate one having under the control of the supreme chief two staffs, kept more or less separate, one for giving the news of the day in the briefest form and the other for commenting on such news in accordance with the habits of the paper. The status and quality of every newspaper is chiefly determined by the relative importance allowed by the editor and his proprietors to giving the mere news as compared with the pains taken to elucidate it. The more popular and cheaper papers concentrate their chief energies on giving the largest number of items of ordinary news, which it is their aim to transform as far as possible into matters of exceptional interest, while the old-established organs of social and political weight are content to state their news impartially, if not boldly, and rely on their powers of interesting the reader by able discussions on political, artistic or literary topics, as they present new features day by day. Every one can call to mind two or three instances in either the United Kingdom or America of papers, which show these opposite tendencies in extreme form.

Taking the two branches of Anglo-Saxon journalism together as one whole, there is a very distinct tendency in America to attach greater prominence to the news-collecting side of journalism. Comment, criticism, propagandism are not excluded from American papers but the papers themselves live and flourish or die quickly according to the value which their public attaches to their news columns. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, and especially in London, the purveying of news is accurately and competently done, but more or less in a perfunctory manner, while the energies, which competition calls forth, are devoted to the writing of special articles, the expert criticism of the arts or the drama or else in the creation of what are generally called the “features of a paper,” that is to say, news, of which the presentation is individual, while the matter is more or less common to every one. It must not be supposed, however, that on this side of the water, including London, there is no keen competition in some quarters in the procuring and even in the manufacture of news. Certain papers strongly specialize in that direction and in many respects have imported American methods. But the predominant type of newspaper in the two countries is very different. British and Irish newspapers are content to share much more news in common than is the case in America, which inclines the Transatlantic reader to consider them extremely slow and unenterprising. On the other hand the purely editorial columns in an American newspaper are often curtailed to minute dimensions, while the standard of indulgence generally extended to carelessness and ignorance in matters relating to culture would not pass muster in British papers, even of the second rank.

This comparison is made with obvious reluctance for a certain definite purpose, because the distinction between the two types, is a sure guide to the relative superiority of each system in its own way, the one aiming chiefly at efficiency in collecting news and the other at the perfection of editorial presentation. The American system of collecting news is necessarily superior to that of most English newspapers, because in America news is the all-important thing and nothing else counts in promoting the prosperity of a newspaper. It follows also that not only do individual American newspapers employ larger staffs and spend greater sums for news than is the case with us, but also, in spite of the competition and partly because of it, the whole business of newsgetting is professionalized to an extent, which no English journalist would be led to imagine from his own experience. The divisions between one grade and another within the ranks of editors and reporters are more finely distinguished; there is a much freer circulation of able men from one paper to another and much more prompt dismissal of incompetents from the whole group than our slower habits would tolerate. With us there is a certain amateurishness permitted in all ranks of a newspaper because when the system is too perfect the individual is cramped in his free play and the results aimed at in British journalism are less mechanical than the first-class newspaper “story,” which it is the aim of the “star” reporter in New York and Chicago to turn out. In America so great is the keenness of competition on one straight set of rails that individualism is practically stamped out by the ruthless perfection of the professional machine. Recent changes in their habits point all in this direction. The individual “I” has been long suppressed; the editorial “we” is considered to date back to the time of the war; what is more, every word tending to introduce an element of personal opinion is struck out of any ordinary description of an event. An American reporter is not allowed to say that a meeting was successful or that the statesman was eloquent or that the confusion around the railway wreck baffled description. His professional duties require that he should report only, what the statesman said and what his audience thought of him, and if his powers of description are to be baffled by a railway accident he will soon be out of a job. The present tendency on this side of the Atlantic is all the other way. The public seems to wish to know what great cricketers think about cricket, golfers about golf, statesmen about politics. A British editor’s task is largely a matter of keeping up communications with a large circle of experts on hundreds of subjects, who can be appealed to from day to day about any event or topic of immediate importance. The shortest way of putting it is to say that the ordinary American paper from cover to cover is almost wholly written by professionals, while perhaps one-third of our papers is the product of an outside sporadic ring of contributors, who are practically half-employed amateurs, and the remainder, which is the more perfunctory but sometimes the least sensational portion of the paper, is the work of the home staff.

I am sorry to labour, what seems to be perhaps an invidious critical comparison, but it is necessary to explain that any one who attempts to present the best side of two national journalisms, between whom I may say parenthetically the want of sympathetic comprehension is rather marked, can only do so by recognizing and making clear the difference in the strong points of each. Of an admirable system of news collection the American paper unquestionably offers the best example; it is, however, a difficult one, especially for a foreigner, to describe. But as an organ of opinion, the newspaper is on the whole much more comprehensively and effectively organized in the United Kingdom than in any other country; its standard of general culture is higher than that of the press of any other country except perhaps that of France and even in the case of this latter comparison it may be considered decisively superior, when the breadth of its scope and range is taken into account.

Let us examine in detail the organization of the most expert newsgathering machine in the world—an American daily paper with perhaps an evening paper attached to it.[2] Of this double system the former part is of the greater importance, because the morning paper has greater wealth and a wider geographical distribution but the latter presents some points of superiority owing to the more difficult task and the continued strain of producing edition after edition. To understand a news-collecting system is to be able to answer the five following questions: What is news?—From what sources is it drawn?—Who gets it?—Who writes it?—Who determines what and how much is to be published? The answers to these questions largely overlap one another, but together they cover the whole subject. The first two questions are mainly a concern of the public; what they are interested in collectively and what personal and public incidents they and their affairs will supply, which will be of interest to others. The last three are the concern of the organization of a newspaper.

[2] Although I have been connected with the American press for some years in more than one capacity, it would have been wholly impossible for me to attempt the detailed description of their news-collecting organization without the inside view of their professional life rendered in Mr. Given’s book called “The Making of a Newspaper.” Mr. Given, formerly of the New York Sun, often called “the newspaper man’s newspaper,” has written to my mind the only valuable professional account of the newspaper world.

What is news? Americans give a more comprehensive answer to that question than any other people. In that country small things overshadow the great. Perhaps it would be truer to say that the important things to them are matters of detail. Foreign politics are to them outlandish matters. Their public life is itself a matter of small things; detailed changes in the tariff; detailed changes in the personnel of federal, state and city governments; details about railway concessions or amalgamations or prosecutions, which affect stocks and shares. As a consequence an importance is attached to the details of personal life, private happiness, social standing, success and failure of individuals, which in Europe is quite beyond comprehension. Everything is news; almost anything may become big news, if it can be shown to be in any way connected with the interests of the vast, curious, highly intelligent but not deeply cultivated public.

Take the case of the suicide of a poor man. To a trained reporter this may be just a paragraph of three lines, or it may cover material for a week’s agitation and a national movement, so that his experience prompts him to examine its details untiringly for some underlying fact which will lift it out of the common run. Suppose the paragraph runs:—Early this morning (Monday) John A. Smith hanged himself at 31, W. 249th Street. He leaves no family and no light can be thrown on his motive. His habits were reported to be irregular.—Such a suicide, especially on Monday morning, would be unfortunately so common an occurrence after a possible Sunday’s intemperance, that not much beyond a few enquiries would be prosecuted. Let us put the paragraph in another way:—In an unoccupied room on the fifth floor of the tenement house at 31, W. 249th Street the body of an emaciated man was found hanging early this morning. He had apparently been dead some time. Enquiry elicits the fact that he was called John Alexis Smith, who lived with a wife and four children at 917, Ninth Avenue where he had no difficulty in finding work, but very little chance of keeping it long. His former employers describe him, as semi-imbecile, with various degenerate traits. Apparently he had been in the country only seven months. How he passed the negligent inspection officers at Ellis Island is a matter, which demands rigid scrutiny!—and so we go on to the Immigration Laws, Corrupt Federal Administration, Pauper Labour of Europe, etc.

Take John A. Smith another way and suppose him to have been in good work up to a few months ago and to have lost his savings through wild speculation in United States Steel Common; then will follow Wall Street and the Harpy Brokers, who stoop to take the Earnings of the Poor. Or, again, Smith may have lost his savings in one of the recent Trust Company failures and then we have a criticism of the Unstable Foundations of Credit. Or, he may have been sick and gone mad with the heat, which will yield an attack on High Prices and the Wickedness of the Ice Trust. Or, his family and he may have been starving, owing to the increased prices of food and the Machinations of the Beef Trust. All these are openings for news, where the further investigation of facts may elicit, it is not to be assumed that they will, confirmatory items of superior importance. On all serious questions the American public can be appealed to ten times more strongly through emotional sympathy than by reasoned discussion, and that is a reason, usually forgotten, why we should be slow in condemning a sensational tendency in their journalism.

The next question arises: What are the sources, whence the news, which interests the public, is drawn? These may be classified into three: official news, business items and general matter. What we may call official news covers all public announcements, government and municipal publications, police bulletins and matters of record from public registers. This class of news comes into the newspaper office automatically or very nearly so; sometimes a messenger has to call to fetch books and papers or a reporter is ordered to run his eye down the public registers; but very little trouble is necessary to collect this material, because everywhere all kinds of authorities and semi-authorities are accustomed to consult their own interests by keeping newspapers informed of official transactions. When anything unusual occurs in this field there will always be some one at the police office or in the city hall to telephone to the chief papers and warn them not to miss an opportunity.

Business items of serious importance are of all news the most valuable that a paper can get. But except for an occasional accident there is almost no way of getting any, save by way of favour. Anything interesting of this kind has always a value for some one so long as it can be kept secret and the only way in which a newspaper can counteract this tendency is to keep in touch or be introduced to other parties, who may be interested in disclosure. The ordinary published items of business news, failures, amalgamations, flotations, etc., are on the same footing as official news and come into the newspaper office of themselves.

General news sometimes comes in by routine methods, such as reports of trials, political speeches and all items of literary, artistic or dramatic material, which offer themselves generally only too profusely and eagerly for publication. The most interesting and most valuable matter under this head is the unexpected; accidents, crimes, disasters and mere freakish occurrences having a humorous aspect. All these must be collected by the professional organizations because, curiously enough, the public, who is the ultimate judge of what is interesting after it is printed, is not a good judge of it at first hand. A crowd is immensely affected by a small accident but may equally probably be unobservant of or callous to a great one. In criminal matters the police court is fuller than the final court of appeal. Those items of news which are brought in by private individuals, and a good deal of this is done by amateurs, are generally valueless or improperly observed. The observation, description and sifting has to be the systematic work of trained men. The American system is to assume that every small accident, catastrophe, crime or intrigue is potentially a great one. As a matter of professional competition this method is forced upon them. No newspaper can allow another to gain an important start on a question, which may become the sensation of the hour. Consequently the wearisome task of turning over every sordid detail of misfortune, weakness, disaster and corruption has to be undertaken simultaneously by the members of every staff in competition with every other paper. Except in the case of co-operative news agencies, to be described later, it is very rare that news investigation is undertaken in combination, and, when that happens in New York or any big city, it is generally done by private understanding between the reporters themselves, when the ground to be covered is extensive and there seems to be little opportunity for exceptional features to be developed.

We come then to our last three questions: Who gets the news? Who writes it? and Who determines what and how much is to be published? and we may well answer them together for this is tantamount to describing the organization for collecting news on any great paper. It is in this department, that the American newspaper has carried sureness of grasp and differentiation of function further than the press in any other country and we may take their system as our model. If any important news “story” slips through the meshes of their net for news more than once or twice a year on any individual paper, probably the shutters will have to be put up in that office and certainly all the editors and reporters will have been sent flying to other cities to look for jobs. The struggle for mere existence in this crucial respect is pushed to the extreme. The aim and object of this struggle in the American press is the presentation of a “story,” that is to say all the facts about and as many aspects as possible of some event, disastrous, humorous, pathetic or merely arresting, in such a way that the “story” should have more features or more human interest than the description of the same fact or event, which may appear in another paper. Almost everything in an American paper amounts to that in one way or another and very brilliant talents and quite astounding energy and resourcefulness are brought to bear to realize an ideal, which at first sight does not seem very impressive. It is, however, much more difficult to realize than appears on the surface and above all it is what their public wants.

The material for the ordinary newspaper “story” is more often than not taken from the unfortunate or shady side of life, because in that class of facts the masses of the public take an unfailing and untiring interest. It is not a question about which it is worth while moralizing, because, now that the supply of such matter has been made available from one or two sources, all others have to follow. The history of journalism has only one continuous lesson for editors and proprietors. It is not possible to dictate to your public and the only choice open to any one who is obstinate on questions of taste is to appeal to a narrow public of a better class against the more common preferences of the multitude. In America the papers, which have found such a better-class public to maintain them in moderate prosperity, may be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The regular sources of sensational news, which are watched as a matter of course by the professional corps of reporters, comprise some fifty localities in a big city. Mr. Given mentions some ten, where there is a constant attendance, such as the stock exchange, the City Hall and its courts and offices, police headquarters, the police courts and higher courts. Others, such as the police stations, municipal courts, fire stations, the jails, hospitals, the morgue and administrative offices of various kinds are patrolled at frequent intervals, while some twenty more places are visited every day. This duty falls on a special class of men called “watchers,” who are far from being ordinary reporters, as very often they have not been promoted to the dignity of writing a line, but they must know what news is and their function is to telephone to the head office any bulletins, which are promising, or any definite items, which need to be investigated and worked up, and in fact to be the eyes and ears of the newspaper. But they are eyes and ears which have to be open all the time. If they stopped to follow up any news item for themselves, they might miss a much more important one the next minute. This is the kind of news in brief which they send to headquarters.

9th Precinct 7 a.m. March 15.

6.30 a.m. Jessie Hawkins, 87, Cortlandt Street, attic above warehouse, badly burnt, feared dead; age 7 years, flannelette; no one present; sent St. A. hospital.—P.B.

6th Precinct 10.30 a.m.

10.10 a.m. Fire, 916, Franklin Street; tenement house; occupants mostly gone to work; 3 children crushed on stairs; Leczinski, laundryman, recent immigrant; damage $700, owner Belmont.—L.A.

2nd Precinct 8.15 a.m.

7.20 a.m. Body unknown man found off Pier 1, East River; about 40 years, 5 feet 10 inches; light complexion, lace shoes, blue shirt, black coat and trousers; some valuable papers in pocket but no money.—J.W.

To solve these problems another group of men is needed, the reporters proper, called, when they are on this service, “general workers.” As the original brief messages come in to the city editor, he details one or another of his young men to the spot, who sets to work to ransack every fragment of fact or probability, which throws light on the case. If a general worker has to think only of a morning newspaper and the matter is important, he will try to treat it exhaustively and not return to the office, until he has his story complete and ready for the press. But more often he has no time for this. He may very likely have one job treading on the heels of another, especially if he has evening paper editions coming out successively behind him. It is therefore more usual for the general worker to treat his work in fragments, either telephoning his account through to the office or, if he has time to be more careful, sending his notes by hand or taking them back himself. He will then continue to study the same story for more facts or pass on to some other task.

In any case the matter passes into a third stage and comes into the hands of the “rewriters” or “telephone rewriters.” These two groups of people handle this half-prepared matter and give it more or less literary form. It has now become a “story,” complete for the moment but liable to be changed, supplemented, or suppressed according to later information. But for the present it passes on its road to the press into the hands of a fourth body, the “copy-readers,” whose duties in America correspond partially to part of the work fulfilled in this country by “sub-editors,” who do not enjoy however so much positive responsibility, as we should allow them here. The functions of a copy-reader are unpleasantly negative. The real power of judging the news and criticizing it lies above with the city-editor and the managing editor, officials only dimly shadowed in England. The copy-reader’s duty is to suppress hopelessly incompetent stuff, to revise the results of carelessness, to add headlines and to correct all blunders. In addition he is the policeman of the office, cutting out the list of forbidden words, correcting spelling and removing contradictions and obvious absurdities. There are no thanks coming to him either from above or below and endless possibilities of reproof and disaster.

We have now the “newspaper story” complete in its final form for a morning paper and subject to addition and revision in the evening paper. It has to run the danger of fading away under the eye of the city-editor and may even, if it be very important, attract the unfavourable notice of the managing editor or the editor-in-chief. But, as these great men belong essentially to the central framework of the staff, we must invert our investigations for a moment and look at our American newspaper from the upper side downwards. The first difference between the two countries that strikes one here is the rather larger number of men and the much larger number of titles, as compared with the staff on an English paper. As the net output of most American dailies is not much larger than some of our own, we are led to suppose that what is once done in England, is done two or three times over in America, because over there the pace of output is tremendous. And that I believe to be the explanation of the difference between the two systems. While in England we have usually a single editor, or man in charge for the night, with but three grades of workers under him, the literary staff, the sub-editors and reporters, supplemented by outside men on special subjects; in America the situation is more complicated. To begin with, the proprietor very often takes a hand in it himself, eclipsing the great editor and laying down his views, often criticizing the “make-up” of the paper, while it is still in the press. But usually we have the editor-in-chief with a dual organization under him for pure news and for what one might call fancy news, such as the plays, art, finance, etc., of the day. In fact he has three separable organizations under him and every member of any one of them is called an editor. There is the staff for fancy news, including the editors of finance, sport, society, fashions, real estate, art, drama, music, literature and others. Then he has the routine staff for dealing with outside news, the foreign editor, the telegraph editor, who handles provincial news, and the exchange editor, who follows all the other papers and tries to get free “copy” from them if he can. Lastly he has the news organization proper, consisting of the managing editor, who usually has an assistant, the city editor, who looks after news up to six p.m. and the night city editor, who takes over this duty after that hour. Beneath these are all the reporters or general workers and others.

The duties of managing editor and city editor cover much the same ground; that is to say, it is the duty of the managing editor to revise and do over again the work of the city editor, while at the same time he has a certain control over the decorative news, except as a rule finance, and in this respect he rather trenches on the sphere of the editor-in-chief without however having any right to influence what may be the policy of the paper in politics or social matters. The distinctively American system centres on the city editors, who have the primary responsibility for the news and the newspaper “stories.”

The city editor on duty for the time being combines in himself functions, which in England are usually divided between the head reporter and one of the sub-editors, whose duty it is to revise home news. For instance he has to make the assignments for the early morning to his corps of reporters; but whereas the English head reporter, having distributed tasks, would probably himself take the most important engagement, work beside his own staff and leave the “copy,” as it comes in, to pass to the sub-editors’ room, this is not the case with the American city editor. He remains at the desk all day with the telephone at his ear, waiting for messages from the scattered “watchers,” ready to make fresh assignments for anything unexpected that may turn up. That is his pre-occupation and imminent anxiety. With all his men already out, something startling and of infinite importance may arise at any minute and he may have no one to deal with it. For that reason it is the custom for all “general workers,” except those engaged on some prolonged investigation to report themselves at regular intervals to headquarters. Suppose news came of an explosion or fatal accident to one of the huge ferry-boats plying from Manhattan Island to Jersey City or Hoboken. All ordinary “stories” would be dropped at once. Even “murders” would be postponed. Every available man, as he reported himself, would be hurried to the quays to get tales from officials or survivors and to try to build up a theory about the disaster.

On the return of these “stories” to the office the second half of a city editor’s duty begins. The stories have been to some extent prepared for him by the “copy-readers,” but he has to judge of each individual “story” by itself and to exercise a certain choice between them. Having declared certain preferences he issues fresh orders to the reporters for fresh facts to lengthen them, while at the same time he curtails or drops entirely the “stories” of lesser interest. In the end he sends up to his superior, the managing editor, a mass of digested and to some extent coordinated “copy,” enough to occupy from a fifth to a sixth as much space over and above what the paper will hold. Such a margin of superabundance of “copy” leaves some room for the superior magnate to exercise a choice of his own in going over all the mass a second time. But here it is not a question of amending or extending; rejection at this last stage is the only resource. If the managing editor has fault to find about preparation or selection, he gives his views to the city editor next day with more or less vehemence, as the occasion requires. For the moment the whole body of news has to go to press, more or less as it stands.

There is another higher function remaining to the managing editor. He has to keep the balance between the predominating bulk of home news coming from the city editor and reporters and the body of less important news coming from the foreign, telegraph and exchange editors; to estimate the quantity of financial news, which is generally inelastic and practically outside of his control; and to allow space as well for the decorative parts of the paper drawn from art, literature, the drama and society. This is not the end of his responsibilities. A certain quantity of editorial matter descends to him from above, coming from the pen of his chief and the special political writers, always at the last moment. The amount of this and its habitual fluctuations are merely a question of judgment or guessing, because it cannot be altered and everything else has to give way to it. The managing editor’s only resource is to mark certain of the other items sent to the composing-room, as optional matter, liable to rejection at the last moment, even after it has been set up in type.

[3]The English system has the same complicated problem to face but the pressure of mere time and space is relaxed by our easier habits. A larger part of the paper is habitually filled with regular services and with, what I have called above, the decorative items. All this comes in early and can be judged more coolly and definitely fixed in quantity. What is incomparably the most difficult part of a newspaper’s task, the adjustment, arrangement and choice between various items of news, is relegated to an allotment of space on less imperative terms and is more governed by mere routine. The simple explanation of this material consolation to editors and sub-editors lies in the fact that competition about mere news is not, speaking relatively in respect of American practice, tuned up to the same pitch of keenness. As we shall see in the next chapter, the English papers are content to have a comparatively large amount of their mere news provided from common sources.

[3] This contrast of which I speak is an extremely difficult matter to write about. I have perhaps made rather more of the point than many journalists, especially in London, would allow to be true. There is now no paper in London worked exactly under what I have called the typical English system, but all the daily papers have evolved their own separate practice from something very like it. It prevails in the provinces, and will ultimately, I have no doubt, be transformed gradually to something more resembling the American system. For instance, in London practice the functions of (1) the Chief Sub-Editor, and (2) the News Editor are coming to be very much the same as those of the City Editor and Managing Editor in New York.

The effect of this on the usual arrangement of the staffs of English papers is that the type of organization is more primitive, the working of it less vehement and more elastic and variation from one settled type more common. No two English newspapers have their staffs organized in exactly the same way. Yet there is practically very little departure from the grand traditional tripartite division of functions, including the editor with his personal staff of leader-writers or budding editors, the room of sub-editors, and the corps of reporters. This system is so flexible that it need not be materially altered in form to meet the most varying needs. Even the most progressive, sensational and restless innovators, who have half adopted the latest American impetuosities, can fit them tolerably well into the English framework. The editor and his staff share the responsibilities of power and round them they have an extensive group of half-employed satellites, differentiating into all shades of expertism and virtuosity. The sub-editors are not, as a layman often imagines them from their name to be, assistant editors, but those whose business it is to exercise the art of “sub-editing”; that is to say, of correcting, revising, arranging, selecting and passing judgment on news and “copy” of all kinds, except strictly “editorial” matter. In their quiet room filled with news clippings, flimsies and MSS. lies the core of an English newspaper, just as in America the critical work is done over the city editor’s telephone. The “sub-editors” have one great advantage over the American “copy-readers” in that they have a real and often final control of and power over copy and much of the responsibility of deciding what is to be considered “optional” at the last moment rests with them. The reporters are dwindling both in number and function owing to the inroads of two outside institutions; firstly, the purely reporting or shorthand work is now almost completely taken over by the great newsagencies, and secondly the semi-amateur outside specialist is coming to fill up more and more space both in the daily and evening papers. For instance there are people, who make a comfortable income by writing signed and unsigned articles on gardening on half a dozen papers; others specialize as reporters on naval and military matters, photography, golf, cycling, motor-cars, aviation, the weather, health, comic paragraphs, etc.; celebrated professors resign government posts and earn increased incomes by writing on science; dons at college write regularly on their special subjects. So that the sphere of the regular reporter narrows every day and his work is tending more and more to be confined to selecting incidents of an unusual kind and dressing them up in a way, which amounts to very much the same thing, as the American “newspaper story,” although the style of doing it is rather different.

The conscious aim of all news-collectors and reporters on all Anglo-Saxon newspapers is to score a “scoop” or a “beat,” which is the technical press name for an exclusive item of sensational interest. In America this achievement is still but very rarely within the powers of an individual reporter. A striking instance of a success of this kind in amateur detective work was made by a reporter on the New York World at the time when an attempt was made on the life of Russell Sage in December, 1891. The point of the sensation was that no apparent clue remained of the identity of the man, who threw the dynamite bomb, as his own body was almost completely destroyed. He had penetrated into Sage’s office in Broadway but mismanaged his throw, so that he himself was blown up without leaving any more traces than a few scraps of cloth and a button or two. This was the reporter’s opportunity. He secured one of the buttons and an adhering fragment of cloth. On the button was the name of a well-known Boston tailor. So with this clue in his possession, which had escaped the attention of the police, he took the next train to Boston. Interviewing the tailor and showing the cloth he found that a suit of this cloth had lately been made for a young Boston broker, named Henry Norcross. Further enquiry about Norcross’s antecedents and a visit to his home elicited the facts that Norcross had lately been in financial trouble and had been missing for several days. Putting two and two together the reporter risked the conclusion that Norcross and the potential murderer were one and the same man, and, inducing his paper to adopt his view, he obtained one of the greatest newspaper successes in New York. For the matter had been the sole topic of conversation in town for days and the subsequent verification of the facts fully confirmed his brilliant and daring hypothesis.

Those individual “beats” are rare and are becoming rarer. Their most frequent opportunity used to occur in war correspondence but nowadays in war all news is served out by the censor in common to a group of correspondents and the only task left to the latter is to arrange to wire the news according to the dimensions of the parental purse at home. Outside war a modern “scoop” is obtained only by elaborate and organized expenditure, undertaken a long time beforehand for some special purpose with the risk that the whole scheme may fall through and the money be wasted. A classic instance of a successful “beat” of this kind was the expedition organized by Stanley at the expense of the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph to find Livingstone in Africa. A comparative failure of the same kind was the Jackson-Harmsworth exploration towards the North Pole. The Daily Mail achieved an inverted “scoop,” when it announced the massacre of the legations at Pekin.

The Daily Chronicle of London in the beginning of 1912 successfully brought off a sensational “beat,” no doubt by previous arrangement and at great expense, in being the only paper to receive an authentic telegram from Captain Amundsen, on his returning from the discovery of the South Pole. This “beat” was respected by all the London papers of the day and was only quoted by permission next day to a limited extent. In New York a different situation arose. The New York Times had purchased the American copyright of this telegram from the London Chronicle and expected to have it as exclusive news; since however New York time is five hours later than English time, there was time for Hearst’s paper, the New York American, to have the whole article telegraphed from Europe and to publish it simultaneously with the New York Times. The quarrel developed into a law-suit, turning on the question, whether there is copyright in news in the United States or whether there may be copyright in the literary form of news, a question long vexed in Europe and not yet entirely decided.

Another extensive “scoop” hardly known, but quite unequalled, in London was obtained by the Manchester Guardian, who had prepared for it long beforehand. The death of Queen Victoria took place at 6.30 on a Monday evening and on the following Tuesday morning there appeared in the ordinary way, incorporated in the daily paper, some twenty full pages of biography by several distinguished writers with a large number of illustrations, at a time when illustrations hardly ever appeared in the daily press. The success of this unexpected tribute to the late Queen was prodigious. Editions of many thousands were absorbed at once and single copies were sold in Lancashire towns by private speculators for five shillings each. The sale continued for five days and after a million copies of the issue had been sold, the publication was closed down out of mere weariness and in order to allow the ordinary work of the office to be carried on.

An amusing instance of a “beat,” which “fell down,” dates back to the time when the Oxford and Cambridge boat race was a matter of more absorbing interest to the general public than it is nowadays. A provincial evening paper with small circulation endeavoured to force itself to the front by engineering a sensational success. It prepared, some little time before the result was to be announced, two complete editions, one printed in dark blue ink announcing an Oxford victory, the other printed in a lighter blue colour announcing Cambridge as the winner. That year there was a dead heat.

A more important if not so disastrous a failure is recorded by Sir William Russell, who was sent on a special mission for the Times to Dublin to report the trial of O’Connell in 1844. He came back in a specially chartered steamboat well ahead of any one else and as he was entering the Times office among a group of shirt-sleeved men, whom he took to be compositors of his own paper, one came up touched his hat and said, “We are glad to hear, sir, they have found O’Connell guilty at last.” “Oh yes!” replied Russell innocently, “all guilty but on different counts.” This individual turned out to be an emissary of the Morning Herald, who stole Russell’s secret from him in the very jaws of the rival office.

If the ambition of the newspaper man is to achieve a “scoop” or “beat,” his ever present fear, and one much more imminently near to him than the corresponding hope, is an inadvertent libel. The great libel actions of the past, which have become historic, such as the Parnell letters and Pigott case, were generally the result of deliberate intention of the newspaper to run the risk in question, but only a newspaper editor knows how often accidental libels have been avoided by mere luck and at other times unfortunately not avoided at all. Libels lurk in single words misplaced, in head lines, in queer coincidences, in accidental resemblances of name or description. Many instances have come within my personal recollection, of which the following are a few. There was the celebrated Artemus Jones case, where an occasional contributor writing for a northern paper was giving a character sketch of people on their holidays at a French watering place. He mentioned as a purely supposititious character, a certain Artemus Jones, who apparently misbehaved himself or conducted himself in a reprehensible manner. Now there happened to be living in the neighbourhood a real Artemus Jones, a fairly well-known man, who was also even a frequent contributor to the same paper. The real man brought evidence of damage to his reputation and was awarded a considerable sum in compensation.

An even more curious coincidence occurred in the case of a disreputable weekly paper, now I am glad to say, long dead. This paper throve on scandal and one week it produced a circumstantial story, which the printers for fear of being held liable for damages refused to print; the story was then elaborately altered, fresh names and places being substituted. When the story appeared in print, it proved to be substantially true of another incident, which had happened elsewhere under circumstances sufficiently similar to justify action being taken. The matter had to be settled out of court.

One peculiarly unlucky case, I remember, which turned out the other way in the end, arose out of a mistake in the advertisements. A Liverpool firm of solicitors had sent for insertion a notice of winding-up proceedings to be taken against a firm of shaky credit. A daily paper in a neighbouring town received this order and had the advertisement set up in type for Saturday morning’s paper. On Friday night very late came a telegram from the solicitors, withdrawing the advertisement, as their own claims had been satisfied. Unfortunately the compositor in charge that night made an innocent but fatal mistake; he withdrew the wrong advertisement and next morning the incriminating advertisement appeared without any authorization. The newspaper had no defence and the damages threatened to be very serious. However, finally the firm in question had been so fatally shaken in their credit by this wholly accidental revelation of the true state of their affairs, that they went into liquidation and had no money to bring an action against the newspaper. But the manager of the newspaper had an unhappy time.

A reporter’s mistake, although quickly corrected, once had far-reaching consequences. A man concerned in a petty police court case was reported as convicted, when he was really acquitted. The true version came in three minutes later but meanwhile the evening paper had gone to press. A hurried rush was made by the editor and staff to the machine room to stop the edition and to the publishing room to recover all the guilty copies. Seventeen had been sold and of these fourteen were immediately recovered from the newsboys. The remaining three did not at the time seem to constitute much danger but unfortunately one of these papers fell into the hands of the agent of an evening paper in another town, whose business it was to get news for his paper cheap by wiring all news items from early issues of his rival. This agent had already wired through the fatal paragraph, which cost his paper £500. The original mistake cost the first evening paper only £200, because they were held to have caused less damage than the other.

Besides editorial matter, which includes both political, social and decorative items, and besides the news “stories,” the ordinary newspaper has to include correspondence from the provinces, from abroad and special correspondence, of which by far the most important and sensational kind is war correspondence. But before passing on to consider correspondence in general we must note one form of newspaper enterprise, the invention of American ingenuity and now universally employed everywhere, the interview, which does not exactly fall under any of the above categories. Interviewing has acquired a bad name, first because undoubtedly, when maliciously or stupidly done, it may be an annoyance or a serious nuisance to the individual interviewed; secondly, however, because human vanity, desperately afraid of detection, often proclaims the institution a bore, when in reality it is of the greatest value to the person concerned by enabling him to give forth his views on important occasions without being under the necessity of seeking publicity or being compromised, as he would be by a considered written statement. There is a great deal of interview matter now formally disclaimed under circumstances not entirely justifiable, as the mistake really lies with the person, who has changed his views, and the discredit would fall on the interviewer, if newspaper authorities were not fully aware of the weaknesses of public and semi-public characters.

There is hardly any need for describing what interviewing is, as it is a conspicuous feature of the press, but there may be some interest to the public in realizing what an extremely difficult art it is. The interviewer has to bring all his experience and art to bear to correct the errors or deceptions of his subject; he must be prepared to conquer his reticences and check his exuberances; to remember beforehand what he himself wishes to know and to render faithfully afterwards what information he has acquired. An experienced American journalist lays down the following rules, for what is perhaps the most difficult branch of all newspaper work. “Interviewing is hard work. Finding your man sometimes is the worst part of the task, but more often it is still harder to get him to talk. People to be interviewed are of three kinds; those who talk too much, those who talk too little and those who will not talk at all. And after you do get your man to talking it takes the concentration of all your mental powers to do your part of the work. You must pay the closest attention to what he is saying, grasp and remember the points he makes, take notes on the statistics he may quote, jot down some of his striking sentences, keep up your end of the conversation and at the same time bear in mind all the other questions, which you still must ask, for it will avail nothing to think of a neglected point afterwards. Before approaching your man be sure you have outlined clearly in your mind just what questions you wish to ask him. Impress each thought upon your mind when it is uttered and when you return to your desk you will be surprised to see how much of your conversation you can reproduce from memory. An important trick in interviewing is to be on the look-out for any pet phrase, which the speaker is in the habit of using and to work this into the article once or twice. It gives a lifelike touch to the story. As you proceed with the body of the article, take care not to be too rigidly verbatim. Wherever there is any part of the talk that is dull and wordy, give the pith of the matter in your own words and then drop into direct quotation again. A well-written interview with a prominent man on an important subject is a thing of which any reporter may be proud.” One may add to this that the most delicate tasks in interviewing have often to be done without shorthand notes or pencil and paper, lest the subject should be liable to nervousness and be checked in the current of his (or her) conversation.

The correspondence of a paper from outlying districts, from the provinces and largely also from abroad has been almost completely taken from the shoulders of individual papers both in America and in the United Kingdom by the great newsagencies, which we shall consider in the next chapter. So also has the recital of ordinary incidents in the streets of the capital town, those for instance, which do not merit special attention from the home corps of reporters. This has been especially the case in London, where twenty years ago the man, who made his living by selling short “pars” to a dozen papers, flourished greatly under the name of “penny-a-liner.” He has almost completely disappeared. The paragraphist of to-day is a much more elegant person, well educated and with some expert knowledge, of which he can make a monopoly. He flourishes chiefly on the needs of the metropolitan evening papers and on the well established institutions, known as the London letters of the leading provincial papers. By a man of this class and education the calling is not followed as a career in itself but as an aid to literature or the professions or sometimes, in between jobs, by the trained journalist. On the other hand the London press does not reciprocate the compliment; there are no provincial paragraphists and little provincial news in any London paper, except perfunctory paragraphs at the bottom of a column. I was told the other day on good authority that the Times for twenty years had no important article on the Manchester Ship Canal, one of the most extensive engineering enterprises of twenty-five years ago.

There is probably no respect, in which individual newspapers in this country differ so much as in the copiousness, merit and character of their foreign correspondence. This arises from the fact that the mere news is covered almost entirely by the wealthy foreign telegraphic agencies. In the case of America this is only partially true, because there is a peculiar circumstance, which renders telegraphic competition between daily newspapers for foreign news almost unnecessary over there. Owing to the difference in time between European cities and especially between London and New York, American newspapers can present to their readers at the cost only of Atlantic “press rates” all the news of the world from the London papers. London is thus the capital of the world in the matter of international news. She has an hour’s advantage or a little more from Berlin and Vienna; with Paris she is in constant touch by telephone; so that all that New York or Chicago has to do is to keep a bright newspaper man in London to run through the early editions at 4 a.m., and send the pick of it through to his paper. The only competition in foreign news within the reach of American correspondents in London is either for exclusive political news, which seldom comes their way and is not much wanted by the American public in any case, or else the manufacture from European sources of some ordinary newspaper “story.”

On the other hand the London papers and one or two provincial British papers find the question of foreign news a great problem. The public services of foreign news are now so comprehensive that to supplement them effectively requires great and permanent resources. A newspaper can easily spend £10,000 or £15,000 a year in this direction without adding appreciably to its attractiveness and a more important consideration appears in this sphere, that any open rivalry attempted can seldom be begun and afterwards dropped, without serious loss of prestige. It follows therefore that the majority of daily papers in the United Kingdom have almost completely withdrawn from avowed competition in foreign news. Their practice is to rely on agency news altogether in ordinary times and on occasions of special excitement to supplement these services either by sending an expert in foreign politics to the centre of disturbance or by forming a combined news service with other papers or by both. These resources are habitually used during war by most of the provincial press and by the weaker London papers.

The richer London papers still avowedly keep their salaried correspondents in the capitals of Europe and America and arrange for occasional letters and telegrams from locally appointed correspondents in the East and in the British colonies and dependencies. In this respect the London Times occupies a unique position in the world. It has correspondents regularly appointed everywhere and is probably the only newspaper independent of Reuter, except the New York Sun, which for special reasons has to be. It never prints less than a full page of foreign news, much of it special to itself and most of it telegraphed. It is the only paper, which has continuously scored important “beats” on news of first-class international importance. Of these probably the most vitally influential on the course of foreign politics was the secret information obtained by De Blowitz of the intended military pressure by Germany on France in 1875, which perceptibly affected the mutual relations of various powers, and the most sensational was his carrying off a copy of the draft Treaty of Berlin from the Conference in his hat. De Blowitz had arranged to meet his informant in the diplomatic corps every day at a club or restaurant and without recognition or salutation to exchange hats with him in the corridor every day as a regular habit. The hats thus offered a secret and sure method of communication of documents without the dangers of open intercourse.

The other London papers do not aim so high as the Times. The Morning Post has a corps of serious students of affairs abroad, whose news is sent on a consistent plan to enable the paper to maintain an independent attitude on foreign politics. The Daily Telegraph spends vast sums on the regular transmission of paragraphs from Paris and Berlin on lines similar to the London letter of a provincial paper. This regular fare is varied by sensational telegraphed descriptions, when occasion arises. But it can hardly be said to aim at any consistent scheme of policy with regard to foreign affairs. The succeeding changes in the editorial control of the Standard have rendered its policy in this respect somewhat erratic but its reputation abroad still stands very high. The foreign correspondence of the halfpenny London papers is spasmodic and liable to very considerable variations in extent. In the case of the Daily Chronicle not very much special foreign matter is given, but the paper has organized a syndicated service of some independent value in connection with one or two provincial papers. The Daily News maintains its traditional special consideration of foreign affairs, treated however in a manner closely adapted to the views and policy of the paper. The Daily Mail and Daily Express practically treat their foreign news, as American papers treat all their news, that is, according to its sensational value, but the former on special occasions will lavish expenditure quite on the most magnificent scale and will make almost any sacrifice in order to get a “beat.”

War correspondence falls into the same category as a foreign news service and is treated in much the same fashion everywhere. The public is so infatuated with the early stages of a war and so bored and incapable of serious interest in it after a few weeks, that the proper treatment of war news is the most serious problem, which a newspaper manager has to face. For an editor, the situation is confined to a simple issue even if his task of arranging for news requires great brilliancy in planning and judgment in selecting his men. For him it is a question of spending what is allowed him by the manager and proprietor and he cuts his clothes according to his cloth. But for those, who have to supply the sinews of war correspondence in [4]thousands of pounds the task is most unpleasant. The manager sees his advertising revenue curtailed and his expenses of distribution increased, while he obtains in return only a slight increase of revenue from greatly increased but useless circulation. The popular impression that newspapers and their owners like wars is fundamentally false. The only kind of war that a newspaper manager would really welcome is one that would last only three weeks, of which he had exclusive information; he might then be repaid all that it would cost him. The most dangerous feature of war from the point of view of newspaper finance is that a vast expenditure must be kept up long after the general public has ceased to take serious interest in it. A little can be saved in telegraphing at this stage and a correspondent or two may be cautiously withdrawn, but for the most part, wherever the men are first placed, there they must stay, even if they send nothing. The unfortunate manager lies awake at night thinking of a thin line of men, servants, donkey-boys, despatch-bearers, horses, ponies, camels, and mules all eating their heads off uselessly at the front day after day with little revenue coming in wherewith to feed them.

[4] Probably the maximum figure reached in extravagant war-costs was in the case of a New York paper during the Cuban war, which estimated its special monthly expenditure at $300,000, or at the rate of £720,000 a year. This rate was maintained, however, only for a short period during the height of the war.

There is a great deal of romance and glamour attached to war correspondents personally, to the men, who suffer hardships and risk their lives more from fever than from bullets at the front, but none to the organization which sends them unwillingly abroad. It is a plain fact however that the public at present takes less and less interest every year in either foreign or war correspondence. The great public is intelligent and quick but not at all addicted to continuous attention devoted to anything but its business and serious amusements. It has become so much accustomed to have its interest sensationally stimulated at frequent intervals that nothing will hold it very long. All news has to partake of the nature of a “story” in the newspaper sense; the fate of kingdoms, the marriage of a Gaiety actress, the trial of a clever criminal will weigh differently for the time with the man in the train and the tram car but the duration of his interest will not be appreciably different in any case. Of the three the trial will probably be remembered the longest. The amount of space now devoted to this class of special correspondence remains still more a matter of tradition than calculation but the latter is slowly overtaking it and daily curtailing it. The dictum of a leading London manager about news is, that he will not print anything that interests less than a third of his readers and such a policy is beginning to cover the whole field and to narrow news down steadily only to those things which are next door to the daily preoccupation of the majority of readers.

In any account, however brief, of the characteristics of the American method of manufacturing “stories” one cannot omit to mention that extraordinary phenomenon of their journalism; the Sunday paper. Of these there are some which consist of the daily issue with additional supplements, which are conducted on the plan of a magazine. They are on the whole the exceptions and the majority are built on a sensational scale both as to size and as to general eccentricity of character. To a stranger, even if he be English, they are almost incomprehensible and indescribable and, as criticism on these points is quite a delicate matter, it would be safer to repeat an American description of them. “The average Sunday paper is like nothing else on earth. It might well be called a literary dime museum, for the editor presents not ‘stories’ that will simply amuse or entertain, but only those which will attract attention, because of their absurdity and the pictures, which sometimes cover whole pages, are, if anything, more unusual than the text.”

CHAPTER III
THE GREAT NEWSAGENCIES

Every man, who has had a newspaper in his hand, has remarked that from time to time on any occasion, which seems important, two or more accounts appear of the same event. These differing accounts to some extent repeat themselves and are also supplementary to one another. The most detailed one will be the production of the newspaper’s own reporters, who often work on the skeleton story provided from outside the office. The other accounts appear from one or other of the general agencies, whose function it is to supply to many newspapers the fundamental framework on which each is built up. The sphere of action of these agencies has grown steadily, owing to the mere utility of having the strain of competition lessened between rival newspapers. The field, which they cover, is continuously expanding and will soon include all that kind of news, which is expensive to gather and also offers little opportunity for obtaining individual distinction.

Of the established organizations the most interesting, which are also among the most important, began from the natural co-operation of newspapers in order to eliminate ruinous competition and to save expense. Although there are many newsagencies of all kinds, which are out and out commercial concerns, buying news and selling it at a profit, it is remarkable that on both sides of the water the leading news supply company is in each case a co-operative concern. In America it is the Associated Press, in the United Kingdom it is the Press Association and they are both organized on similar lines. It was the excessively daring and competitive spirit of American journalism, which in the early forties, brought about the first attempt at co-operation. At that time years before an Atlantic cable was laid competition for European news was limited to sending out fast sailing vessels to meet incoming ships and take the latest news from them. Newspapers vied with one another as to who should sail out the farthest and catch the news soonest, until at last it came to sending fast vessels all the way over to Europe to get the news at its source. Such competition had a sufficiently ridiculous aspect to bring about its own collapse and somewhere about 1850 the New York papers organized a joint service, which while primarily covering European news grew slowly to cover both general news and practically all but the internal news of each city, as subject for competition among newspapers. This was the germ of the Associated Press, which numbers about 700 papers as subscribers and regular members and is certainly the largest newsgathering concern in the world. It is both a newsgatherer and a news-trader and also a news exchange between its own members. As an exchange it receives news free from its members and retails it at a low charge. As a trader it buys from the great international foreign newsgatherer, Reuter’s Telegram Company and hands over the telegrams to its subscribers. Finally it has its own supplementary corps of editors and reporters in all important centres.

There is one very important respect in which the Associated Press of America differs from its English counterpart and that is that, while it is a very large, it is not a universally co-operative body. Existing members have a right to block the entry of new members and to that extent it is a close corporation. For instance the New York World has always vetoed the inclusion in the system of the New York Sun, thus driving the latter paper to maintain its own foreign and home service and in fact to establish a rival agency, in order, by getting outside help, to lessen the burden of its own expenditure. This rival agency, known as Laffan’s service, even has customers on this side of the water.

The co-operative English newsgathering organization, called the Press Association, had a different origin. It arose from a domestic crisis in the newspaper world, which was coincident with the taking over of the private telegraph companies by the State, whereby the telegraphs at once became a public service. Up to that time the newspapers, as the largest customers, enjoyed the advantage of a special rate for the transmission of news but without the power of furnishing their own services. About the fifties the telegraphs of the country were in the hands of three companies, who used their monopoly of the wires for the purpose of making also a monopoly of news services to all papers out of London. As these services were without any competition and cheaply organized for profit, the plight of the provincial papers was distressing. It came to a point where the provincial press organized a co-operative telegraph company of their own in 1865, so as to secure at any rate their own supplies or force their opponents to come to terms. This policy would have been certainly carried out, but whether successfully or not one cannot say, if it had not been for a national movement in favour of an improved telegraph service which culminated in the purchase of the telegraph organization from the private companies by the government. The provincial newspapers were led by necessity to organize a substitute for the old and inefficient common telegraph news services, which they did by founding in 1868 the Press Association under the lead of the late John Edward Taylor of the Manchester Guardian.

The Press Association in this country is almost as dominant as the Associated Press in America, but it does not include the London papers. It has for the provinces the same partnership with Reuter, as its cousin in America. The term P.A. is as much in the mouths of newspaper men on the one side as the A.P. is on the other. But it has one feature, as some people think, of superiority over the American organization in that it is a truly co-operative body; it welcomes any new member which wishes to join its membership and except for the London press, which remained voluntarily outside its scope, it includes every newspaper of any position in the country.

Reuter is so much a household word that an explanation of the function of Reuter’s Telegram Company is quite unnecessary. It was founded by the late Baron Julius de Reuter as a telegraph and foreign newsagency business and was turned into a public company in 1865 for the purpose of raising sufficient capital to equip a telegraph cable from England to Germany. This direction of development was subsequently altered and the cable sold and Reuter’s name became the trade-mark for semi-official foreign news all over the world.

Of domestic newsagencies in the United Kingdom there are many which come and sometimes go without making much stir in the world. The chief rival of the Press Association and Reuter is the Central News covering both domestic and foreign intelligence. Laffan’s service is also international in character and so is the Agence Havas. The chief domestic rivals of the P.A. are the Exchange Telegraph Company and the London News Agency, a newcomer founded by three or four experienced reporters, who found their old livelihood made by “penny-a-lining” being slowly undermined by the agencies. At one time these made almost a monopoly of police-court news in London, but this with other general news now passed almost completely out of private hands.

In addition there are the specialist agencies, whose names in most cases proclaim their work, such as the Commercial Press Telegram Bureau, the American Press Telegram Bureau, the National Press Agency, the Labour Press Agency, the sporting news services and firms like Tillotson’s, who do a great business in syndicating popular fiction for publication by newspapers in feuilleton form. Topical photographs are also a favourite subject of traffic by agencies for the benefit of illustrated papers. There is no question that this form of enterprise is largely on the increase, as the public is agog to have every sense tickled, as well as to have information as food for the imagination.

Some of the humbler servants to newspaper production, which escape the notice of those, who only know the big journals of the large cities on both sides of the Atlantic, are the agencies, whose business it is to furnish syndicated matter, supplied at a low price, not only already written and edited but even set up in print, stereotyped and ready for the press. Such a commodity passes in America under the name of “plate matter” and the trade in this branch of literary wares is enormous, especially there, where the small local papers cannot rely upon filling more than half their columns with the real news of their own districts. The organizations which supply this line of goods, sell the matter at so much a column or half column with or without illustrations. General news, fiction, truth, political opinions and jokes are all offered at the same “flat rate.” It is as near a thing to a Cervelatwurst, sold by the pound or foot, as one can get in the intellectual world.

There is one field for journalism, which is now peculiarly the property of the enormously circulated evening press. The halfpenny evening paper is the daily paper of the working man and especially so in the provinces, where in the small towns none but evening newspapers exist. For their immense mass of readers every conceivable matter of national or personal interest is subordinated to the overwhelming predominance of games, sports and betting. It is no exaggeration to say that five-sixths of the circulation of all the halfpenny evening papers is built up on amusements and gambling. The two for the most part go hand in hand, because, with the single exception of cricket, there is hardly any widely extended form of sport, which, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, is not the subject, and predominantly the subject, of betting. Incomparably the keenest competition in the newspaper world is developed as the result of rivalry to bring out the earliest news of sporting events. There is no indication of a reversal of this tendency, but since the mechanical facilities, which provide the means of this rapid production, are now the common property of all, it is no longer possible for any one competitor to leave another seriously behind.

The progress and development of these mechanical facilities are probably a matter of general interest, because, although the results of this break-neck rivalry are apparent to any man in the street, the methods, by which it is accomplished, are due to very elaborate devices of great technical perfection. I do not know that it is a matter to be inordinately proud of but this form of competition was first developed to its highest form of excellence, not in America but in England and not in London, but in the provinces. The old and common method of bringing out a special edition with the results of a race was by cutting a hole in the stereoplate from which the paper was printed and slipping in a small box with a spring, holding one or two lines of type. The process was dangerous and inadequate because it would be used only once for one announcement and that a curtailed one. Mr. Mark Smith of Manchester originally invented the device now in universal use. His invention is variously called the “late-news device” the “stop-press box” or familiarly the “fudge.” The object of this invention was to enable several small items of news, such as the result of a race or football match or the score at cricket, to be rapidly inserted in the paper, without the necessity of altering the body of the text and of going through the lengthy operation of recasting the large metal stereoplates from which all rapid printing has to be done. For this purpose a blank of about half a column has to be left on the main page, or on whichever page is selected for the latest news, so that, as the paper passes through the printing-press, that portion remains unprinted. Corresponding with the space thus left blank, there is attached to the printing-press a small supplementary cylinder, which can carry securely clamped a specially designed box to hold type or linotype slugs, so adjusted as to print on the portion of paper left blank during its passage through the main press. It is an easy and expeditious task to alter the contents of this small box without otherwise disarranging the plates and the process effected a material increase in the pace of production over the old methods, especially where a large number of presses were used to produce a big edition. The two to five minutes thus gained were quite sufficient to establish a decisive advantage over a rival not similarly equipped for publishing news of special interest. At the present time hardly any evening paper in any considerable town in America or the United Kingdom is without this invention.

At one time this device was protected by a patent, which was the property of a firm for which I was acting and I came across an amusing experience in connection with it during one of my visits to America. Some little time before, while my firm was engaged in difficult and expensive litigation over the validity of the patent in this country, there had been some question of the purchase of these patent rights for New York by the proprietors of the New York X. We had been asked in the course of this negotiation, whether we would defend this patent, if infringed. Having our hands more than full with litigation at the moment we declined, but offered to sell the entire rights in the invention to the New York paper for a moderate sum. The New York X broke off negotiations and knowing that the patent would not be defended adopted the device at once and spent a very considerable sum of money in adapting their presses for this purpose. There the matter was dropped for the moment.

Some eighteen months later, when we had successfully established our own patent here through a decision in the House of Lords, I had occasion to go to New York and found myself one evening in the office of the New York X. The occasion was of exceeding importance to the New York press. It was the night when the prize-fight to decide the championship of the world was to take place at Coney Island—a little way out of the city—between Jefferies and Fitz-Simmons and the island of Manhattan was agog from end to end with excitement to a degree, which sober Britons would hardly understand. On that occasion there was especial rivalry between the two popular papers in New York, the X, in whose office I was, and the Y. Both had made elaborate arrangements for special editions and the presses in both offices were furnished with very expensive installations of the special late news apparatus, which was controlled by our patent.

Mr. M. the manager of the X received me most cordially and showed me all over his office and the machine room. When I reminded him of our unsuccessful negotiation over the patent, he smiled genially and remarked that it was all right. In introducing me to various foremen in the building he said, jocosely: “This is Mr. D., whose patent we stole,”—the exact phrase was his own. Before leaving him that night I met him in his own spirit and said in farewell: “You have spent a lot of money on equipping yourself with this patent and the Y has done the same. What good has either of you got out of it? Do you not think it would have been better to have bought our patents for a moderate sum and have kept out the other fellow?” He smiled: “Now that you put it that way, perhaps you are right.” So we said: “Good-night.”

CHAPTER IV
THE NEWSPAPER AS AN ORGAN OF OPINION

While the necessary characteristic of all periodical literature has been the conveyance of news of some sort, sometimes of a general and frequently only of a special character, there has run side by side with this function the conveyance of general information and of instructed comment and incidentally the opportunity of thus moulding public opinion. In respect of this capacity there has been the widest divergence in the character of newspapers and journals. So far as they are newsgatherers and news disseminators, all papers have the same task, even when there are enormous differences of excellence and subtle differences of intention. But it is otherwise with them as organs of opinion. This is an optional duty, which a great many papers avowedly reject. Others by professing impartiality seem to follow the same policy, while in reality they attempt to exercise influence by every indirect method. A minority constitute themselves or find themselves forced into the position of becoming the official or half-avowed leaders of parties or groups, while every word of comment or criticism is admittedly stamped with the current doctrines commonly held by its special band of readers.

It is the case of these latter organs which we have specially to consider in this chapter. There are so many ways of either guiding or forming opinion by editorial comment or exposition and by the publication of signed or unsigned articles of a more or less rhetorical nature that a complete analysis of the subject means little less than the history of the press. There are, however, roughly speaking, certain broad differences of method, which afford us means for a partial classification. It has been the habit for newspapers on the continent of Europe to become the mouthpiece of certain well-known journalists or groups of journalists, who influence and lead opinion by the publication of signed articles, for whose policy the individual journalist is himself alone responsible. In the United Kingdom the prevailing practice has followed another course. Anonymous journalism has been found in the end to be a more powerful political weapon, partly because reverence attaches itself more easily to the unknown and also because the shelter of corporate responsibility adds somewhat to the freedom of writing and very much to the fertility of invention. In America again the case is somewhat different. Both methods are there followed but they are employed subject to the supreme requisition made by the reading public for mere news, which it can analyze and judge for itself.

Just as we chose the American daily paper for the model of a newsgathering and news-presenting organization, so here we must admit that, as an organ for expressing instructed opinion not only on politics but on general topics, the distinctively English type of paper is a far more potent and more highly-developed instrument. In this respect the American press suffers severely from the general democratic contempt prevailing on that continent for expert opinion of all kinds. Since one man there is commonly reputed to be as good as another, so there is no room even in that huge population for any one whose opinion carries weight in any other sense than that a large number of people think that he adequately expresses their views or comes near to saying publicly, what privately each man feels and thinks more effectively for himself. Although there are to be found across the Atlantic many men of literary distinction and of a culture, which would be exceptional anywhere, they hold sway, journalistically speaking, only in elegantly printed magazines of small circulation and in social circles they are notable for an apologetic manner and deprecatory attitude to their countrymen, which sometimes seem odd to a stranger prepared to reverence their talents. Of course here as elsewhere there are exceptions, which we will come to later on.

So far as the American press is concerned the only sphere, where editorial influence is either secretly or forcibly exerted, is in national or municipal politics. Here the line is so sharply drawn between opponents that little or no attempt at impartiality is pretended and news and comment are both frankly presented by party newspapers with highly-coloured bias and vehement advocacy. Persuasion is not a weapon adopted by the American press, because during a political campaign no reader has time or inclination to read the other side. Sheer battering force or biting ridicule are the favourite weapons. Their ingenuity is directed almost entirely on personal matters rather than in the exposition of general ideas. More importance is attached to discovering some weakness of private character in an opponent or to attaching to his opinions and views some nickname with an unpopular connotation than in confuting his arguments or in examining the soundness and sincerity of his patriotism. The power effectively within the control of an American party organ can be exercised much more decisively inside the party before candidates are chosen than afterwards when the champions are selected and the battle is formally set. This choice of candidates is however itself painfully restricted by the almost monotonous sameness of character among the budding Transatlantic statesmen of the time. Pedestrian eloquence, high animal spirits, physical vigour and an unimpeachable rectitude in private life are indispensable requirements for success in public life in America and politicians happy enough to possess all these characteristics rather resemble each other on these lines to the exclusion of any marked or unusual individuality of character or intellect.

In France and Italy, where the signed article, speaking generally, prevails, the excellence and weight of the written word in the press has been profoundly modified and greatly extended. This authority, however, attaches itself by a natural law to the names themselves, as they become well known, and is apt to carry the fortunate individuals, who thus establish themselves in popular favour, up to greater heights than mere anonymous journalism can scale. Journalism thus becomes only the ladder of ambition, as far as the successful writer is concerned, and so far from being an end in itself, as it should be, is generally, no more than the first step on the road to politics, even more so perhaps in this respect than the profession of the law. As compared with the English system the power of the newspaper itself is very considerably curtailed. The advantage of the temporary possession of a meteor is a doubtful one. He may mingle insubordination with brilliancy and even where meekness and all the journalistic virtues are combined in one pen, the ultimate loss of it will be the more severely felt. The solid qualities on which the continuous influence of a great newspaper rests are difficult under these circumstances to build up and it may therefore be taken as an axiom that the cultivation of brilliancy in journalism is to some extent converse to the acquisition of permanent power and wealth by the press.

The favourable side of the continental system is the maintenance of a very high literary standard and the acceptance in metropolitan circles of only the finest qualities of artistic criticism on most subjects. Nowhere in the world is such power wielded by journalists in the realms of music, literature, art or the drama as in France or Italy. It is taken seriously by the cultured public which reads it, because it is good. It has to be good, because it is taken seriously. The standard set in these matters is quite unapproachable by the wealthy and enterprising English press and nothing less than a century’s education of the English people would be required for us to see how much in this respect our public taste is inappreciative and our general journalistic performances inadequate.

The German journalistic system is on the face of it not so far distinct from the general continental practice, except that they make less use of the signed article and newspaper properties are correspondingly more valuable. While the artistic and critical sides of German newspaperdom are distinctly inferior to the standards common in France and Italy there is one path in which their journals can claim pre-eminence in that they treat seriously and reverently all matters of science and learning, quite apart from any commercial demand in this direction from their readers. But after making this deserved tribute to German newspapers a foreign critic can best add to it by paying them the compliment of treating their newspapers as in a state of transition from Bismarckian serfdom to American commercialism. They combine some of the worst qualities of both. Of independent character in the English sense they have none, as they are too much under the heel of authority. Enterprise in the American sense is only adopted in unessentials. In the collection of news they are not more enterprising than the French and their standard of accuracy in reproducing it is not very high. Their papers are printed in Gothic type and written in a still more Gothic style. Neither in politics nor in commerce, nor in finance is their integrity above suspicion. Their influence with the public is very considerable, especially in politics, but the source of their power arises from the general respect felt by every loyal German for the ultimate and all-high authority which does not scruple or disdain to use a thousand methods of pressure in order to sway to its will the minds of men. Even where this authority is not itself ostensibly at work, as it often is, its powerful and indirect influence over the press is fertile in suggesting to the popular imagination those courses of conduct which will be agreeable to the powers that be.[5]

[5] Although this criticism in the text sounds rather harsh, it by no means equals many things said in the Socialist papers against the “Steel Press.” German papers have never recovered from the combination of bullying and corruption exercised by Bismarck, and still to some extent continued, and since his time great commercial concerns like the Stahl-Verband have had an almost equally baneful influence. I was unfortunately in Berlin at the time of the “Titanic” disaster, and looking at the records of that catastrophic incident even in the best papers, I was not impressed either by their critical power in assessing the value of news, or by their judgment in commenting on it.

Taking the press not only as the great news-distributor of the world, but also as almost the most powerful existing mechanism for the moulding of opinion, I do not hesitate to declare that for the last half of the Victorian century the British press held a position demonstrably superior to the press of any other country. Although in many respects, and some of them important ones, of which I have already mentioned a few, we ought freely to acknowledge our inferiority, in the two most vitally important attributes of journalism I believe we have long been unrivalled. The first is good professional judgment in selecting and absolute faithfulness in presenting the news of our own country and the most important news of the world. The second is the spirit of independence and contempt for corruption, either through the channels of power or by the pulling of financial strings, which makes it inconceivable for even the smallest newspaper here to boast of its honesty, an experience, which is a common enough occurrence, when one travels in any other country. Whenever corruption or blackmail occasionally finds an unsafe footing in one of the side-walks of journalism it is looked upon as a crime, both morally and professionally, which every one must stamp out, wherever found. Any manager or journalist of experience will tell you that the suggestion of bribery either at headquarters or with one of the ordinary daily staff of a newspaper is an experiment of the utmost danger to any one attempting it. It would most probably be followed by the instant occurrence of the disaster, which there was an endeavour to avert; in fact the only chance of escape for the offender would be the extreme insignificance of his affairs.

But while in many respects much of this stubborn virtue is still a characteristic of the British press, especially in the professional sense, yet it is questionable whether, looking at the independence of our press in the broadest sense, we are not in the course of a transition to a less desirable state of affairs. It is a matter on which I should be very reluctant to pronounce a responsible opinion. All I can see clearly is that a very important change is in progress, the final result of which it is still too early to forecast. The critical date of the change was almost exactly at the end of the last century with the outbreak of the Boer war and the tariff controversy, which followed. Those two events, while they left the country press in very much the same position as before, profoundly modified the position of the richer and more influential daily papers in London. The bitter controversies, which commenced with those issues, have practically thrown the great majority of the well-to-do classes in the kingdom on to one side in politics. Nearly all the richer newspapers, including one or two influential provincial dailies, naturally followed this lead and we have the remarkable spectacle of practically the whole of the important daily press in the metropolis being influenced by the aspirations, prejudices and casual opinions of only one of the great political parties. Now without suggesting the slightest imputation on the professional honour of these great journals nor impeaching their straightforward honesty, it is clear to me that the relative value of truth in all controversial matter has been dangerously disturbed. The mirror of the London press reflects only the drab colours of any presentation of one aspect of society, reserving all the hues of sunset for any little feature of the other. The resulting picture is produced unconsciously and in good faith, but it is none the less subject to dangerous distortion of the truth. This prevailing misfortune is growing worse daily and already we have lost the chastening memory of days, when impartiality was more strictly maintained in our press as a whole by the adequate representation of both sides. Society with a big S, has gone entirely on to one side and has imposed on its press that most hopeless form of provincialism, which already prevails in high circles in Berlin, of merely refusing to recognize as possible the existence of culture, good faith and even of common honesty in those who do not adopt the opinions prevailing in its own ranks. From this blindness I see no ordinary means of deliverance.

These somewhat gloomy reflections are applicable only to the penny press. In the more popular forms of journalism honours between the two political parties are nearly equally divided. But stress is to be laid in this matter chiefly on the penny press, because it is only in these journals or more expensive ones that any considerable space can be given to political debates and intellectual and artistic interests. They are a necessity to any man of culture and it is a disaster for him if opinions on important matters in the leading organs become stereotyped in what some may regard as a prejudiced point of view. Again the importance of the penny press in this connection arises in another form, because in what I am disposed to consider the Augustan age of the press, the last fifty years of Queen Victoria’s reign, it was this section which really raised British journalism to a height of dignity and power, which has never been equalled and most probably never will be again.

During this golden period, in the course of which the penalyzing taxes on advertisements and paper were removed, the rise of those powerful and rich organizations took place such as we pre-eminently connect with our idea of an “organ of the press.” This idea itself is probably more completely embodied than anywhere else in the London Times, which although not itself a penny paper, set the standard to which the penny morning journals of the United Kingdom more or less approximated. The foundation of the power and influence of our great metropolitan and provincial dailies was continuity of proprietorship and of general policy over a long period and the possession of great wealth. They were too valuable, both as properties and as political weapons, to pass easily from hand to hand and the families in whose possession they remained constituted a little aristocracy of high ideals and great stability of character. This represents one side of the medal. The other must be looked for in the staffs of journalists, who worked for them and the system of co-operation and the sacrifice of interests on both sides.

Looked at philosophically the keystone in the dignified arch of the old-fashioned press of the United Kingdom was mutual sacrifice between the proprietors and journalists. Wealthy corporations though they generally were, the great English dailies have always been liable to storms and disasters and progress could only be purchased by great risks of capital. The proprietors of those days stood by their papers,[6] as they would not have done by an ordinary business, staking their private fortunes and exposing their family comfort to the risks of an unstable source of income. Some foundered while others rose to great wealth. The proprietors also stood by their men, whether editors or journalists, and treated them as members of a family, protecting them, encouraging them and keeping many a lame dog in employment because he had once done good work.

[6] For fear that any one should imagine that I am labouring this point or exaggerating an exceptional condition of things I think I am free to state here what would otherwise never be known. The fact is entirely to the honour of the proprietor and not at all to the discredit of the paper concerned. To my certain knowledge the late Mr. John Edward Taylor refused to consider an offer of a million sterling for the Manchester Guardian, at a time when such a sum would have very favourably represented the value of the paper. He wrote to me briefly, asking me not to send on to him communications of that kind again. I have known four or five other proprietors of great papers, who would have been capable of doing the same thing.

As an instance of the generous and courteous consideration shown by a famous proprietor to a deserving servant I refer the reader to a letter written by Mr. John Walter of the Times, dated Oct. 30, 1854, to his correspondent, Mr. William Howard Russell, as he then was, acting for his paper in the Crimea. The letter is given in full in Mr. J. B. Atkins’ “Life of Russell,” and contains very much more than an acknowledgment of an obligation or the conferring of a favour.

The sacrifices they required and generally received in return were devotion to duty, anonymity and frequent concessions in matters of opinion to the policy of the paper. As the two latter points are vexed questions of high domestic interest to newspaper men a digression to discuss them will be pardonable particularly since they have a very material bearing on the power and influence of any organ of the press. With regard to devotion to duty a very special quality in this respect is demanded of newspaper men. Private interests, life and limb and even reputation have to be risked by them more frequently than in the ordinary walks of life.

Anonymity is the institution on which the peculiar success of British journalism is founded. It is a point on which the individual surrenders with the greatest reluctance. There is something dazzling in the public reward of successful persuasion and the avowed capture of other men’s minds. In fact very brilliant writers will never consent to it, feeling, that their power is inherent in themselves for which there can be no adequate compensation. So long as either pure literary quality is aimed at or personal influence desired, such an attitude is entirely justified. But such men are not permanently destined for journalism. They must fight out their fate on a wider field and bear the frost of criticism and the starvation of neglect by their own strength without the support or constraint of a newspaper behind them. For journalism proper anonymity has many good points about it, which escape the eye of the young and inexperienced. For one thing it builds up the wealth and importance of the organization, which draws the revenues and distributes the salaries. Thus it comes about that a young man, who would not earn a pound a week in any walk of pure literature, where he expects to be paid also by recognition, can earn a comfortable living by suppressing his natural desire for fame and doing the necessary work of the press. But there is a further advantage for the journalist in anonymity; it is a very effective shelter under which he can do his daily round of ordinary work without the natural slackening and the painful fits and starts which pursue inevitably the responsible writer, who has to put his own name to everything he produces. It may be possible for the Latin mind to dwell perpetually in the higher levels of brilliancy but the heavier Anglo-Saxon finds a sheltered routine more profitable to his genius.

The advantage to the newspaper of anonymity is more obvious. The grand manner can be more easily sustained where irrelevant individual characteristics are suppressed and continuity can be better preserved in spite of necessary changes of the staff. Again any writer can almost double his output under the shelter of the paper’s responsibility and what is lost in brilliancy is gained in steadiness. Perhaps the greatest advantage is gained by the paper through the establishment of journalism on a professional basis. The writer of signed articles is really a pamphleteer, who uses the newspaper as a vehicle just as in other days he would use a publisher. The journalist proper, who takes material as it comes along, has to acquire a certain toughness of taste and suppression of inclination, which in the ordinary course of things is probably the greater part of the sacrifice he makes to his calling. It is only a rare writer here and there, with something of the touch of the missioner or fanatic, who can successfully fulfil his career as a journalist without acquiring these callosities and partial mutilations.