THE DAILY PAPER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 74, 28 March 1930, Page 18

THE DAILY PAPER

ROMANCE OF THE NEWS

Mid-evening in a suburban home. The children have been put to bed. The aadio speaker, tuned low, discourses soft music (writes Charles Nuttall, in •'Life," Melbourne). The slippered citizen reads a newspaper; his wife, on a; sofa, flams stockings; the eat dozes on the hearthrug. The wife breaks a long silence. "Anything in the paper?" she asks indifferently. ' "Nothing of interest," the man replies. He puts the newspaper aside,, turns a knob on the face of the radio set, and reaches for his pipe. Let us in imagination pick up that discarded news-sheet. Here is a record of moving adventure by air, flood, and field Here are stories of business advance and downfall. Beports, "hot from the Press," of romantic happenings, of riot, murder, sudden death. Governments are overthrown; kings are sent to exile, mountains are removed, the course of rivers changed. Tornadoes—inundations — earthquakes. The world quivers, trembles. . ; . You will find the complete story m the paper. Yet, "there is nothing o± interest!" . . ~ Is there nought of surprise ml the world? Are we become utterly blase? In every city are certain institutions ffcat are the very core of the city s lieart The newspaper offices are tor ever a-buzz with excitement of news, electrically alight throughout the night, teeming, through the day, with busy feet of messengers, with hurry of reporters, with work of writers and editors, with winning machinery or mint. In the morning, in the suburbs, the breakfast egg grows cold while the news is read. The News! —adventures .. that Detail persons who are not ourselves. News is the greatest interest of our lite. _ In a recent speech, the Lord Chiet Justice of England raised a paean in praise, of the makers of daily newspapers. Said he: — "Let it be granted, if you please, that the production of newspapers is mixed up with the art of making money. . So, too, are all the practical aris.' So is medicine, for example; so is surgery; so is accountancy; so is engineering,- so even is law. With such a being as man in such a world as the . present;-:these things perhaps are not to be avoided. "But when wo take in our hands a really first-rate English daily newspaper :'-do *wb .'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 turn to the special articles, of which there may seem to the casual reader to be an easy and unceasing supply, do we stop to think in what circumstances and by •whom those topics are chosen, with what anxious care the writers are engaged, and with what unsparing labour the "work is produced? • "Or when we look at the telegrams ancl reports from all quarters of the world, the work of the foreign department, the work of the reviewing staff, tho work of the- sub-editors, the work of the reporters, and not least the work of 'the- law reporters,, together with an ■■infinity, of; work besides, " are we not 'sometimes a little inclined to take ■•everytiling for granted, to think that somehow the newspaper automatically produces itself, and to forget that ©very issue of that journal which means so much to us pro-supposes and depends upon the daily initiative, the daily industry, and-the deliberate organisation and. correlation of the daily industry, of a vast unseen band of highly skilled and conscientious artists? , "To conceal tho 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 always visible, and is never claimed, may at least be gratefully acknowledged." How— unconsciously—we are influenced by bur reading of newspaper articles and reports! At times, reports are coloured red, that public feeling

may be stirred. The mob-instinct, present in the mind oven of cultured persons, responds to such appeal, and it may be admitted that, in certain matters, tie end justifies such means. As a rule, newspaper advocacy of causes is straightforward in intent and in principle; our daily Press mirrors the ago in which we live. In politics and in general conduct it sets and maintains high standards. To-day, we do not withhold from our children tho privilege "of'reading the day's news. If we accept as statement of fact the saying that the newspaper is a true mirror of to-day's thought1 and event—then we tnay rejoice that the world is wholesome as its 'appearance in that mirror, the daily Press.