THE NEW OLD COUNTRY

Evening Star, Issue 22252, 1 February 1936, Page 2

THE NEW OLD COUNTRY

HOW FLEET STREET IS CHANGING

[By (i. S. C-ox.J

Fleet street, so well known ns “ Uio slreiu. of adventure,” might equally well he tenneil tlio sired, el change. ’There is iillhi I,lml. is sialic about the great Immlou daily papers which are covered hy the eompreuoasive term “ have liieir oll’uvs in and about Heel, Hill.” Mirrors of Ilu; changing world, they change themselves according to the shape of dm things which tuey relleet and record. Gradually, hut unmistakably, Dm newspapers of to-day arc evolving into something widch will be as dilfercnt from the, papers of the pre-war and immediately post-war eras as those papers were from the massive documents of the Victorian days.

The newspaper as we know it to-day is, after all, largely tho creation of tho past forty years. Until the ‘ Daily Mail ’ was developed by Arthur Harmsworth out of ‘ Answers,’ tho famous weekly periodical offering appetising pieces of information which could ho understood without much education or thinking, tho daily paper was a solemn record of events, eompondious_ and unsolcctivc. It was a set of minutes of the transactions of the world from day to day', and often as dull as tho meetings of any ordinary club or society. Into this world burst Harmsworth, with his tumultuous energy and his belief in “ news.” This word was a magic wand which brought into being the halfpenny (later penny) papers, with their circulation of a million or more, and which changed plain Alfred Harmsworth into Lord Northcliffe, friend of Cabinet Ministers and moulder of public opinion. This “ news,” which has dominated newspaper thought and activity since that day, has been defined in many ways, Northcliffe’s own definition being the famous “If a dog bites a man, that’s not news; if a man bites a dog, that is hews.” Anything new, exciting, surprising, unusual, sensational, or scandalous —though not libellous—anything which made a good story, had to go into the paper, replacing the verbatim reports of Parliament, of the courts, of public meetings which had occupied so much many columns before. The era of scoops, of one paper finding out some sensational fact or incident before its rivals,. arrived. Newspapers in the chief cities of the world developed into hour to hour recording machines of the more vivid and exciting happenings of the world, selected and presented so that ho who ran might read. . Many forces are now tending to change this. Prominent among them is the growth of wireless. When the radio was first introduced the newspapers regarded it as a dangerous potential rival. Northcliffe alone was an outstanding exception. He went halfway to meet the radio by staging tho first public broadcasts under the auspices of the 1 Daily Mail.’ Care was taken, .however, that clauses should be inserted into the charter of the 8.8. C. forbidding it developing a news gathering service of any magnitude,_ and restricting the amount of time which could be devoted to news every day each year. The influence of the wireless lias not been, however, in the form of competition with the papers for news scoops. Most people still prefer to get their news from a paper which they can read when they will rather than from a radio to which they must listen at certain fixed times.- It has not been the sale so much as the style of news which has been affected by the wireless. By bringing the best popular speakers and the leading authorities on practically every subject to the microphone, broadcasting has undoubtedly raised considerably the standard of public education and interest. It lias, together, of course, with improved educational facilities of .other kinds, provided new reading public for the newspapers just as the Education Act of IS/U provided the reading public which devoured the halfpenny and penny papers of the Northcliffe regime. Much more than the sensational, vivid presentation of news is demanded by the reader to-day. He wants to know not only what lias happened but why it has happened. 'As a result one linds papers tending more and more to carry articles on popular economics, popular science, popular psychology. A railway disaster will not only bring out accounts of similar smashes, but an explanation of how signalling works, and how collisions are caused. A murder brings out not only the facts of the crime and the trial, but articles on the psychology of a murder trial, on the efficacy of capital punishment. . Uno result of this has been a rapid growth in specialisation. Instead of carrying a staff of journalists who could turn their hands_ with equal facility to writing a criticism of a Parliamentary debate, an account of an agricultural show, a description of a holiday crowd, a paper will now engage a politician as “ Our Political Correspondent,” a farmer to write a weekly agricultural column, and even a short story writer to do special descriptions. Specialisation, moreover, has not been confined to the explanatory side of papers. The actual gathering of news is, in big cities like London and New York, entrusted more and more to news agencies, who supply all tho papers impartially in a way which greatly lessens the chance of scoops. The development of the art of publicity has aided this process. News of tlio doings of political parties, of public bodies, even of sporting stars is offered to the papers by circular publicity notes, or at Press conferences and luncheons, instead of being left to leak out or to gush under the pick of the firstcomer. The result of this is that Feet street papers are lining driven in one or both of two directions. In addition to carrying news—for despite all these changes this remains their primary and most important function—they begin to carry either instruction or entertainment, or both, in quantities which would have appeared to the popular daily of 20 years ago as an incredible waste of good news siiace. The paper becomes slightly highbrow, and publishes informative articles on the Central European situation, the gold standard, the upbringing of children, or it proceeds to become almost a daily magazine—tabloid is too harsh a word —with its nows stories presented as vividly as if they were fiction, its columns filled with the witticisms of gossip writers, short stories, comnctitions. What will he the next developments it is hard to forecast. Everything depends on the inarch of science. Tt may he t’mt wo shall find one wireless station in each country devoted entirely

to tho broadcasting of news. We shall then be able to tune in on it and bear the latest news just as now we ring the exchange to ask the time. Television may allow as to watch many big events as they actually occur. If this happens the daily paper will tend to concentrate more on finding full, than surprising information, plus criticism and entertainment. It may, in short, become something of a mixture of a pro-Northcliffian daily, plus the criticism and wit of Steel and Addison’s ‘ Spectator.’ But one thing is certain. Change, whichever way it may,come, is undoubtedly in the air iu tho newspaper world to-day.