MODERN NEWSPAPER

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 73, 19 December 1929, Page 11

MODERN NEWSPAPER

LORD HEWART’S TRIBUTE TO PRODUCERS “Do we always think as gratefully, or indeed as justly, as we might of the amazing ability, diligence, care and learning, tbe wit, the humour, the skill, and the versatility, the dutifulness, the courage, the conscientiousness and tbe sheer hard work which go to the making of the best kind of newspaper!” asked Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice of England, in an address at the New Athenaeum in Liverpool. “When we take in our bauds a really first-rate English daily newspaper, do we always reflect upon the recurrent miracle of the leading articles—so aptly chosen and to-day so happily named, the rapid harvest of we know not how much brilliancy in school and university, how severe a training in affairs, how fine a character, and how wise a mind? ... Or when we look at the telegrams and reports from all quarters of the world, the work of the foreign department, tbe work of tbe reviewing staff, the work of the sub-editors, the work of the reporters, and not least tbe work of the law reporters, together with an infinity of work besides, are we not sometimes ,a little inclined to take everything for granted, to think that somehow the newspaper automatically produces itself, and to forget that every issue of that journal which means so much to us presupposes and depends upon tbe dally initiative, the daily industry, and the deliberate organisation and correlation of the daily industry, of a vast unseen bund of highly skilled and conscientious artists! To conceal the art Is, no doubt, a work of art:. But there are occasions, and perhaps this may be one of them, when a debt which is not alwys visible, and is never claimed, may at least be gratefully acknowledged.”