NEWSPAPERS, PAST AND PRESENT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2980, 13 January 1881, Page 4

NEWSPAPERS, PAST AND PRESENT.

(From the Graphic.) Not eren the astonishing advances of utilitarian science are more wonderful than the development of the newspaper press during the last half-century. The difference between the old News Letters of tho latter part of the seventeenth century, and the early impressions of the Morning Post, Morning Chronicle, and even of the Times, is not so great as that which separates those first issues of the Fourth Estate, as we understand it, from the newspapers of tho present day. Eighty years "ago, the newspaper was made up of skits upon fashion and famous personages, satirical poems, piquant scandals —in fine, it was such as tho "Society" journals are now. There were a little foreign and war news ; but home affairs was almost entirely ignored. Neither law nor police cases nor public meetings wore reported. Perhaps, in the latter case, our ancestors had something to be thankful for, since it kept in their natural obscurity many obnoxioxis personages of whom we hear too much now-a-days.

The first great impetus to journalism -was given by the establishment of The Times. The Public Advertiser, the Morning Post, the Morning Herald, and the Morning Chronicle had preceded it; but the energy and skill -with -which the future " Thunderer" -was conducted soon distanced all rivals. The first number appeared in IVBS, but not nnder its present world-famous title. It was started under the name of the Universal Register. Mr Walter, tho grandfather or great grandfather (?) of the present proprietor, had at this period a crotchet which he called logography, or word-printing—that is to say, a great number of the most common words in the

English language, such as "heat," t: cuid,'' "wet," "dry," " murder," "lire," "robbery," were cast in blocks instead of being set up in separate lottcrs ; and, in spite of much opposition on tho part of compositors and its obvious inconveniences, ho persisted in printing the paper by this system for some time. It had, however, ultimately io be abandoned.

On Jan. 1, 1788, the Universal Register was issued as The Times. It was a single sheet, without a leader, and with fifty-seven advertisements ; and in the latter respect even then it was ahead of its contemporaries. It was printed by hand at the rate of about 450 per hour; and its price was 3d, which was an advance of one halfpenny upon that of any other paper. Tho last number printed by hand was published on Nov. 28, 1814. From that. date tho steam press, the first of its kind was brought into use, and printed what was then considered the prodigious number of 1100 per hour. So inoensed wore the pressmen at the introduction of machinery that threatened to supersede their labour, that it was considered necessary to call in protection of the law in anticipation of an attempt being made at its destruction ; but a premise on the part of Mr Walter thnt no man should bo thrown out of employment by the change prevented all mischief. When the Evening Standard was started, 1827, it was a single sheet, price 4:1; its circulation was only 700 or 800 copies daily, and its advertisements fell short of one column. We can only appreciate this change by glancing through its present colosou.! form, its pages of advertisements, and by calling to mind that its daily circulation now approaches upon 200,000, that it is thrown off at the rate of 25,000 an hour on sheets of paper five miles in leng-h. ! md i* printed, cut, and folded by machinery alone.

One need not be very old to remember the first number of the Telegraph. It was stated in 1855, a single sheet, price 2d, and was a failure. It was then made over to its originator as a security for debt to Mr Levy, who published it at Id. Grant, in his " History of the Newspaper Press," tells us that the sum paid for advertisements in the first impression was 7s 6d.

Perhaps even more wonderful than these facts and results is the development of the system by which they have been brought about since the days when contributors to daily journals might have been reckoned by units, to this year of grace 1880, when their number is legion; since news, like men, could only travel in post-chaises and letterbags to the days of Reuters telegrams, when a detailed account of the battle fought in the wilds of India can be flashed across thousands of miles, and read here in London within a few hours of its occurrence.

What a marvellous revelation it would be to Dr Johnson, were it possible to resuscitate him, with his remembrances of his old garret days, when he used to shape the rough notes, taken surreptitiously in the Gallery of the House of Commons, into speeches, which, under high sounding Roman names, substituted for the true, were published in the Gentleman's and were the only reports of Parliamentary proceedings that the public could obtain! What a revelation to the old Leviathan would be the present system of Parliamentary reporting, which works with the precision and exactitude of a machine ?

The establishment of the Press Association Telegraph, by which all newspapers obtain their home news in common, has greatly minimised that keen competition between different journals, of which old reporters tell us such capital stories, when all depended upon the ready wit and resources of their representatives, upon the speed of a horse, upon the state of the roads or the weather ; when the breaking of a trace, tho mare falling lame, the splintering of a shaft, taking the wrong road on a pitch dark night, or any of the accidents incidental to quick travelling, would give an opposition paper the first of some coveted piece of intelligence. And it may well be supposed that, in their eagerness for the first innings, rival reporters were not particular in resorting to something more than legitimate artifice ; when they put up at the same hotel, their attitude was ever on guard, and even iho roads they travelled were, if possible, kept secret from each other.

A good anecdote was told me some time ago by one of the actors in these contests. Sir Robert Peel was to deliver a speech, somewhere far down in the north of England which was looked forward to with unusual interest, aud was worth a considerable sum to the first paper who could issue the report. There were two —the Sun and the Post, I think they were—between which the competition was peculiarly keen. One, the Post, I believe, had made extraordinary arrangements along the whole line of road, securing short relays of the fleetest horses, and taking such precautions that not a moment's delay should occur in tho transmission of the report. But the rival journal, while making equally complete provision for the speed of its representative, supplemented it with a clever exexpedient. Its sheets, printed with the ordinary news of the day, but with a considerable blank space left, were sent down to a certain printing office in the town in which the coveted speech was to be delivered ; a large number of compositors were engaged, and bit by bit the speech, as Sir Robert was delivering it, was sent off to the office by the Sun's active reporter, and set up. As soon as it was completed it was printed into the blank space, and while the Post was tearing up the London road with its " flimsy," its rival was despatching copies to all the great towns about, and was followed behind with a cargo for town. Of course the Post arrired in London first, and some time after its arrival met the Sun entering at break-neck speed. The former's chuckle of satisfaction and cry of victory, however, was suddenly checked, although he could not understand the mystery, by his rival flourishing out of the chaise window the printed copy of his newspaper. The special correspondent is a creation entirely of our own time. The intelligence in which he deals was formerly given in the tersest and driest form. Perhaps his peculiar style has been a little overdone of late ; and the minuteness with which he describes everything he eats and drinks, and wears, and how he sleeps, and what he thinks is becoming a little tedious ; but, for all that, we should very much miss his lively chat, and would not be content with the meagre prosy paragraphs that contented our fathers.

Like every branch of literature, the newspaper is now nothing if not light and amusing. Such feuilletons as appear in the Telegraph are quite innovations upon the dignified sobriety of the old newspaper of twenty years back, of which The Times is now the only representative. Even the long-winded ponderous leader, upon which so much labour was expended, which our fathers used to peruse with such conscientious deliberation, and which this irreverent age either skims or skips, is giving way to smartly-written paragraphs. Reviews of books, abstracts of lectures, dramatic and literary notices are lengthier and more frequent. Indeed, the form of the newspaper is rapidly changing; it is approximating moro to the magazine, and is decidedly very much more readable for the change.—H. Barton-Baker.