THE BRITISH PRESS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 304, 21 November 1934, Page 8

THE BRITISH PRESS.

The most striking page in “The Fleet Street Annual” (edited by Harold Herd) is, perhaps, that in which the figures of London nempspaper circulations are given. There has for long (comments a writer) raged a circulation, or free gift war, or as the annual terms it, a “frenzied daily newspaper competition.” A sentence concerning the Daily Express and the part it has played makes the astonishing revelation, by the journal itself, that the system of “door to door canvassing for new readers had been curtailed,” and that “the peak expenditure of £24,000 on canvassing during one week of June had been brought down to £5870 in the last week in October.” The circulation figures published in November gave the Daily Mail and the Daily Express 1,850,000 each. Both papers had previously touched 2,000,000 a day. The Daily Herald circulation is announced as 2,000,000 daily, while the News-Chron-icle, the Mirror, and the Sketch are well over 1,000,000 each. The circulations of the other three morning papers provide an astonishing contrast—the Dailv Telegraph, 327,000; the Times, 179,000; the Morning Post, 130,000. Part of the fight consisted in what the Londoners described as “the battle of the books,” .complete sets of Dickens s works, encyclopaedias, war histories, and other publications being offered for a small payment, plus coupons, and an immense number of people switched from oiie paper to another at the end of the qualifying periods, and thus stocked their bookshelves. Of the Sun. day journals, tlio News of the World prints 3,300,000, and The People, 3,000,000. Generally, Fleet Street is feeling that there has been a turn of the tide, confidence being rapidly restored, advertising increasing, while the current year promises even better things. Incidentally, it is stated that there is a scarcity of good cartoonists, Low being given first place among the few regarded as first class.