“REPTILE CONTEMPORARY”

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1939, Page 9

“REPTILE CONTEMPORARY”

EDITOR FLAYS RIVAL. Vigour is the keynote of American journalism, and nowhere is vigour more in evidence than when the editor of a newspaper in a small town reproves his “reptile contemporary” in a neighbouring town for misleading the public by publishing inaccurate information. The following item appeared' in the “Ossego Press,” published in the State of Dlinnesota: —“J. T. G. Roe, editor of the ‘Amoka Beacon,’ should be lynched, parboiled, vitriolised, quartered, and his remains hung on a fence to dry. In flaming headlines he accuses us of attempted suicide in the last issue of his 2 by 4 measly, mangy sheet. This long, lean, lanky, lantern-jawed, lopeared, lop-sided, lop-faced, holloweyed, pot-bellied', carping, whimpering wampus, this cross between a jellyfish and a cur, will answer to us not in a libel suit, but personally. We admit that wo were ill last Wednesday evening. But to accuse us of self-destruc-tion could only originate in the mind of an imbecile.”

All that had happened to the editor of the “Ossego Press” to cause his illness, and to circulate an unfounded rumour of attempted suicide, was that he drank some floor polish in mistake for a health tonic. Less than 100 years ago London newspapers used' to abuse one another with almost as much vigour as that employed by the “Osego Press.” ‘‘The Times” referred to the ‘‘Morning Chronicle” as “the squirt of filthy water,” and to the “Standard” as “a stupid and priggish print which never by any chance deviates into candor.” The “Morning Chronicle” described the “Morning Post” as “a slop-pail of corruption,” and the “Standard” referred to the “Globe” as “our blubberhead contemporary,” and spoke of “tlw base and filthy insinuations put forward in "The Times.”