TELEGRAMS JOURNALISTIC COMPARISONS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 49, 27 February 1913, Page 3

TELEGRAMS JOURNALISTIC COMPARISONS

BY A GERMAN VISITOR; {BT TELEGtUPH— SPECIAL To' TIM POBT.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. Mr. Heinrich Hemmerj a German journalist, who is making a tour, of the Paci« lice in order to obtain material for a book of travel has been in Christchurch for some time. In the course of an interview he said that the press of New Zealand appealed much more strongly to him than the American press did. Some of the American journals were vulgar and objectionable, and nearly all of them shouted their news at the top of their voices. ' The New Zealand journals were more restrained in tone and Were on a comparatively high level. Sensationalism was not marked in their pages and the use of the muck rake seemed to be unknown amongst them. They shoved that it was possible to be bright and interesting without searching the gutter for news- In Germany journalism was conducted on a somewhat different Scheme from that followed in New Zealand. The different classes of the German communities had their special journals. The Neve Frie Presse, for instance, was favoured mainly by the professional classes while the commercial classes looked for knowledge and guidance to the Tageblatt, of Berlin, which in its general features represented the morning dailies of New Zealand. In' Germany and Austria every cafe was a newspaper library, and it was in the cafes perhaps where' the press found moLi of its readers. Newspapers could not be sold in the streets of Vienna. Readers in that city had to arrange for their newspapers to bo delivered at their doors or they had to buy them at the shops. Several of the large German newspapers helped to mould public opinion, but in that country educated people read many different classes of publications and thought for themselves on political and social questions. That and other methods led to ideas taking different channels from those followed in New Zealand. The democratic feeling in the colonies was equivalent to the democratic feeling in Englandi In Germany democracy and socialism were largely regarded as matters of fashionable culture. The socialistic journals there represented the highest point of literary and artistic culture ; they were well written, well illustrated and well "got up."