Editorial Free, but not 'full'

Press, 19 October 1978, Page 1

Editorial Free, but not 'full'

A free paper, though not a proper newspaper, is published again today. It contains all that “The Press” can print within the restraints imposed by industrial pressure upon the active staff of the company. “The Press” accepts these restraints reluctantly and continues to acknowledge the patience of readers and advertisers while members of the New Zealand Journalists’ Union are on strike. Perhaps our readers are giving more than their usual attention to the messages from advertisers. That bonus for advertisers is welcome enough; but we would just as soon divert some of the readers’ attention to the news, features, and information that they expect from a daily newspaper. Last evening we received a letter from a correspondent, Mr Robert Erwin, who quoted from a novel, “The History of Tom Jones,” by the eighteenth century writer, Henry Fielding. Mr Erwin reports that Henry Fielding said of newspapers that they “consist of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in them or not. They may, likewise, be compared

to a stagecoach, which performs constantly the same course, empty as well as full.” With all possible respect to Mr I Erwin’s sense of what is apposite to I the loss of news during a journalists’ h strike, we contest the view. In the twentieth century, and in ' the seventies of it, a newspaper is no I! stagecoach. It cannot traverse the h same course. The routes taken by l| news are longer, they are swifter; H they reach every corner of the globe i within seconds. The staffs of news- H papers are large—not a handful of pamphleteers of partisan correspon dents. Elegant as the publications of the eighteenth century might have been j in phrase and form of persuasion, the business of newspapers today is news first, explanation second, opinion last. Somewhere in between we offer entertainment and diversion. Without news the newspapers are empty. Certainly a publication, such ■ as this one today, can serve other good purposes: but it is not “full” and does not run its usual course. For that we are at fault and. in one sense, we are free.