SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 June 1936, Page 12

SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS

■' man WHO SHOCKED LONDON.

Good old Doctor Johnson, in whose time it may be said that the nev. . - oantr Press was .firmly established, bo’Sed that Ms “SWto W* founded in 1780. »as s day newspaper .ever established i the kingdom.” be given credit for a good idea (writes O > Timer” in Newspaper News). “The Monitor- survived, not without' difficultv for half-a-century, but Sow ii di«l ill 1«». crrppt’s present most tiou.isiung sunfjy ue vspapors were ostab ished SL Observer Tbs ugg Dispatch (now Sunday Dispatch (1801), and The Sunday Times d BB -)- There were other competitors o Sunday Monitor, of. course, but m Crabbe put ft, “many weie issued to die' before the next, revolving morn. d Although 'Johnson. was the tor of the Sunday Press,- the -Father of Sunday newspapers as we kno. them to-day was John Bell, who founded Bell’s Weekly Messenger m l and The Weekly Dispatch in 1801, be sides other papers. Historians tell us little about him. Ye know that he was’ a representative oW- timer ° f Fleet Street, for Leigh Hunt tells us that he was a typical Bohejnian of the ofd school with a taste foi wines, ankles and pretty books. Bell was a bookseller when he de scended upon London at the age ol 2i. '"'He was a practical typographer and his new typefaces revolutionised English printing- As latter-day typographical styles are evolved to make newspapers’ more easy to read, so diu Bell in his day do much to that .en,d. It was he whp abolished the long s and th.at was no small contribution .0 readability. Beil was more than, a typograpnel- - geni,us did hot' stop at abolishing the long “s,” .'and he was no scissprs-and-piiste man. He wrote powerful articles,’crusaded -against the scandals of child labour, forced labour, bad housing, flogging ill, tli,e Army, barbaric treatment of criminals and $0 nuisance Jo those who were content with the' state of social injustice that existed at the turn of the eighteenth century. One can believe what has been said of -him—that he was the very devil of a fellow. He, s.turdy Imperialist, 'awoke I?rilain to the danger ot Napoleon's .menacing dictatorship across the English ’ Channel. He was the Empire’s Crusader of his day. KOVEL CIRCULATION METHODS.

Not only did he remind the moneygrabbers of the industrial revolution, and the politicians. ..ol their responsibilities. His enterprise shocked othei London newspaper proprietors. He raised his by unorthodox methods and .thought, nothing of going to balls and piasquerades dressed as a newspaper seller, distributing Copies' of ‘his papers. He scandalously ignored’the trade.customs of his day and employed grotesquely clothed .vagabonds to gp-,g.b,0,u,t the countij blo.wing, horns and drawing attention to his newspapers. . . Bell’s news-flair was strongly developed. his enterprise in, other he knew that the way to sell neyvspapers was to print stories that the'Others had not got. When lie hecapie his. own war correspondent and made what he galled A perilous excursion through Flanders,” his jealous competitors described him as “a" bloody“ satellite .ot Robespierre apd “a promoter of Jacohinite heresies.” 1 On one occasion his enterprise larfued him in the Bankruptcy Court, but Bell "came back:”' When he died at the age of 86 he was a wealthy man. •"Robert Bell’s flair-for news and publishing was shared by his son, John; Browne Bell, who founded (in 1841) The News of the .World, the circulation of which to-day is approaching four millions.. He als.o died a rich man. ■ Fr,esent-xlay Sunday - newspapei s cater for. every taste. They range from the sedate Observer (owned by Viscount Aster and edited by J. LGarvin) and The Sunday 7 Times (a Camrose paper thought by 7 some people to b,e connected .with The Times, but of co.urs.e th,ere is pp such connection), down to the “populars”; Sir Emsley. Carr’s News of'.th,e World, Odham’s Tlie Reople (both of over 3/)M000 circulation),' Lord Rothermere’s Sunday Dispatch, Lord Beaveierbrook’s Sunday Express, Lord Rothermei'c’s Sunday Pictorial, and Lord, ’ CJaiiu’ose’s Sunday' Graphic (all in tlie million class). ‘' Today,' all newspapers are illustrated, so we must call The Sunday Pictorial and The Sunday Graphic •‘picture" papers. Both were bora in 1915 (The Sunday Graphic as The Sunday Herald)."Both' jumped to success and showed that-the daily picture papers. The Daily Mirror (1903) and ■The Daily Sketch (1909). had whetted the British public for well-printed, pages of news pictures on Sundays also. Lower down in tlie circulation scale and' difficult to place in any definite class Is Tho Sunday Referee, founded, by “Pendragon,” in J,877 and for many years known as the Sunday theatrical paper. FapW.us AVrfters, including ,Geo. R. Sims, have been. asAPpiated with The Referee, noyv owned, by Isadore Ostrer, 'ipillionai.re film niagnate and . financier who' is well-tipped to be the next Baron of "Fleet Street. Film- , magnate,Qstrer bought the paper from Stoll fij, 19,31',- thus carrying on the . ehtertaininent-business association.*’

The. R,ef.er.ee has probably had more changes of '.editorship in receut year's than any other newspaper in Fleet Street. It is generally considered to have brighter prospects than, ever before.- Tt - has used modern methods of exploitation, such as radio broadcast announcements' from the Continent which" until'dropped, put it but of favour with the* Newspaper Proprietors’- Association, "severe frowner on radio advertising. OLD PAPER’S .CHALLENGE. The latest challenger for big Sunday circulation is Reynold’s, 8.6-year-"old weekly newspaper that.wag.owned by’the'late L6r(rl)'4fzieT"bef6re it was bought by the ’' Co-bper'atfye Movement for propaganda, purposes a few years ago, ltf : was founded in 1850 by George' Williain“'MaeAr'thur Reynolds, a dyed-in-the-wooi demberat, and he. like John Bell,' Wiis ihd : very devil of a fellow, i : - "

Like Bell had done half a century before, Reynolds crusaded against harsh .treatment ’in'’the Army, bad social conditions, and anything that reacted against the people. His editorial formula Av as dhe-nia;egta&nslted and simple one: When he saw a head that he didn’t like,, he. hit it. . Unlike Imperialist;. John Bell, he was a virulent Republican and did not hesitate to say,, so. An ardent

supporter of the Chartist Movement, he presided at the Trafalgar Squaie meeting which sympathised with the revolutionists who had been expelled by King Louis Philippe from I aris. He also presided at the meeting held on Kensington Common from whjch the “Monster Petition" was dispaiclied to Pai Lament. This so frightened the Duke of Wellington that he called out the troops and half of the a ell-to-do residents of London were sworn in as special constables to .chock what was believed to be the prelude to a British revolution. He w%s the only British journalist to defend the Paris Communards oi, 1871, and it is said of him that u his , mind had not always Imimed back io | ;ho t'rench Revolution. out iU''ead had visualised the potentialities ot the | Trade Union movement. Ins Pen mid paper might have Iren employed wit.i much greater weight. Reynolds was the Edgar Wallace o hi« day. Before lie started his paper, ho wrote thrillers that made him a 'wealthy man. He was also aJ’egaila 1 ’ leader writer for The v\ coklv Dispatch. but was dismissed because ol bis too-outspoken alt-acks on social conditions. Then it was that he turned one of his occasional publications into Reynold’s. Doctor Johnson's idea that there was room for a-Sunday new spa pet

has developed into a vast or S an ’^ a ' tion Sir Emsley Carr, editor ol The News of the World, in an address on “The Sunday Press” to the Institute of Journalists some time ago ga.e illuminating figures. “There are,” he said, “fourteen Sunday papers in the British Isles with a combined circulation of seventeen millions. This is two millions more than the- daily circulation ol their secular contemporaries. Sir Emsley summed up the popularity oi the Sunday newspaper as' not. due to any particular feature: ‘‘lt as a human document representing the dailv Rfe- of the average man—not neglecting the more serious problems

but touching upon the lighter forms | of life, bringing humour, brightness j and real humanity into everyone’s ex-< istence.” ; So, Doctor Johnson, it was a good | idea! |