Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1922. LORD NORTHGLIFFE AND HIS CRITICS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 25, 29 July 1922, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1922. LORD NORTHGLIFFE AND HIS CRITICS

"The corse of journalism," says the New Statesman, "is the absentee proprietor behind whose edicts there is no authority save that of the purse, and who ■ more often. than not appoints as his mouthpiece someone whose claims upon the respect of the profession are scarcely greater than his v own." The Northcliffe press is certainly free from this particular curse. Whatever else may be said against Lord Northcliffe's methods, they are not those of the \abaentee proprietor. Even when he was making his tour of the Empire the utmost limits of his journey never took him very far from Fleet Street and Carmelite House. .He ,was constantly supplying his journals with " copy " as he went along, and we may be sure that he had his finger on the business pulse of the great machines all the time. There are obvious inconveniences in the domination of so active a mind and so powerful a will for those who are subject to it, but what the New Statesman appears to regard as the supreme cui'se of journalism is not one of them. And it is interesting to find this very able and candiil newspaper justifying from the standpoint of professional journalism the methods of a man with whose political and social ideals it has no sympathy whatever, and at the same time condemning the management of other unnamed papers whose views are very much more like its own.

The occasion of the New Statesman'sl article was (the remarkable manifesto in which Lord Northcliffe gave his reasons for his withdrawal from the Newspaper Proprietors' Association. These reasons, by' th'e■ way, are condemned' by the New Statesman as " palpably inadequate." This stalwart champion of trade-unionism and socialism is satisfied that Lord Northcliffe had no right to seek to break up an employers' association, and declares that " it is a definitely retrograde step, bad for masters and men alike." In asking us to believe, that he took this step "" because he found himself alone amongst his fellow-propri-etors in holding that linotypists should own' side-cars," Lord Northcliffe is, in the opinion of the New Statesman, asking more than is reasonable. While sharing his faith in " the economy of high wages," Lis critic argues he could have served the interests of the large majority of printing operatives better by continuing to uphold their cause as a member of the Proprietors' Association ■ than iby withdrawing his influence and " condemning the organisation on which . collective bargaining is founded." But Lord Northcliffe gives another reason for his secession. " I have only a few votes in the Association," he says, ""-and ''can be swamped at any time by the rest of my colleagues., I do not propose that they should interfere with my affairs." ! " There speaks 'Lord Northcliffe !" is the New Statesman's comment upon this second reason, and it concedes that there is a measure of justification for .this assertion of independence. As one of the very few newspaper proprietors who have made money out of the business instead of spending on it J what they have earned elsewhere, Lord Northcliffe has a right to be jealous of interference. If he is " not prepared to. accept in his own business of producing newspapers the dictation of -'Shipping Kings, and Cotton Kings, and Goal and Cocoa and Oil Kings," the.refusal will, says the New Statesman, command the sympathy of many a professional journalist who has no liking for Lord Northcliffe or his views.

On the whole, the New Statesman proceeds, newspaper production is the most chaotic and Inefficiently organised industry in the country, and journalism accordingly the most. unsatisfactory of. professions, precisely on account of the fact to which Lord Northcliffe refers. It is largely at the mercy of rich amateurs, who not only do not understand the business themselves, but are so indifferent both to-the financial and to the professional side of it that they do not even take. the trouble to secure competent professional advice, or to apply those tests of efficiency' which in their own business they would regard as iii> dispensable. To them a newspaper is a toy, or possibly .a political lever. It is true that in the hands of the more careless and the-more incompetent it is apt to become an extremely expensive toy, with the result that newspapers are always; dying or changing hands, but as there is always a new i; millionaire " ready to try his luck, this form of naluvai selection is not very effective. '.' . . Journalism is the one profession In wlitoli exceptionally aWe mia nuccssaJul md experienced most we chronically

subject'to the direction of their inferiors. They are. forced to be the servants not of the public, but of the (journastically) ignorant millionaire.

A classic example of the failure of " the journasticajly ignorant millionaire " is supplied by the fate of the Tribune, on which Mr. Thomasson is said to have lost nearly £200,000 during its brief life of less than two years and a-quar-ter. But the examples given by the New Statesman illustrate the more insidious operation of a tendency which iB continually at work. It ascribes to this cause the disappearance from daily journalism of " the two greatest Liberal journalists in this country—Mr. J. A. Spender and Mr. A. G. Gardiner." Mr. Spender's supreme technical capacity as a, leader-writer, says the New Statesman, is universally recognised. He made a small evening newspaper one of the great political forces, not merely of the country, but of Europe. In America the views of the Westminster Gazette were more widely quoted than those even of The Lord Northcliffe, it is said, once offered Mr. Spender the editorship of The Times. We can well beliere it, for Lord Northcliffe recognises professional merit. ■ But the people for whom Mr. Spender was willing to work allowed him to retire! Such are the ways of the amateur capitalist in journalism!

Of Mr. Gardiner the- New Statesman says that as a .political writer he has, with the possible exception of Mr; Garvin, " a larger and more devoted public than any other journalist in Great Britain." Yet Mr. Gardiner also " is silenced because an old gentleman who lives near Birmingham, and very likely has scarcely seen the inside, of a newspaper office, chooses to indulge in personal prejudice." The masterful and hustling methods' of Lord Northcliffe are so obvious and so freely criticised that it is fair to remember both his zeal for efficiency and good pay and the mischief that is being done by rivals who have neither his push nor his competence by way of a set-off. It. was not Lord Northcliff c who lost Mr.' Spender to daily journalism. Lord Northcliffe would have given him the highest position to. which a journalist can attain. It is the amateur capital- . ists of Liberalism who have turned him out. And the extent to which Lord Northcliffe carries " the economy of high wages " was strikingly illustrated a few months ago when Mr. W. J. Evans retired after 28 years' service at Carmelite House. During a large part of that time Mr. Evans was Editor-in-Chiei of the Evening News and a director of the Associated Newspaper, Ltd., and his salary was doubtless a good one. Yet on his retirement he was given a cheque for £10,000, a pension of £2500 for ten years, and a pension of £1000 for the rest of his life. There are some great points in Lord Northcliffe's administration which his rivals, both professional and amateur, would do well to imitate. ' : "> ■