THE DAILY NEWSPAPER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 1 October 1927, Page 12

THE DAILY NEWSPAPER

THE MODERN TENDENCY “READING WITHOUT TEARS.” “In the rivalry, the competition, the internecine struggle in which the popular Press is ceaselessly engaged, it is apparent that the reading public, for whoso favours the battle rages, is universally regarded as a spoilt or tired child who must be eftnstantly amused, or excited, but never exerted,” writes “The Old Stager” in the “English Review.” “Every new “stunt’ or concession to catch the popular fancy is in the direction of reducing the exercise of the mind—or cutting the cackle and doubling the pretty pictures. “The shortest report of an event is too long for the public—it must be extracted to head lines and summarised under headings. Newspaper staffs are constantly devising new lay-outs and new type to make the business of olancing through a newpaper easier; at all cost the public must be spared exertion; an important speech is boiled down to two lines containing some homely OT humorous simile irrelevant to the context; if trouble breaks out in Palestine, a view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olivos is as much as the public must sec of it; a photograph of his wife’s boudoir is regarded as an adequate substitute in the public menu for the declared policy of a great statesman. “Always the tendency is in tho direction of reading without tears, of pretty pictures, of saving exertion, of killing time.”