NEWSPAPER LIFE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22320, 18 January 1936, Page 12 (Supplement)

NEWSPAPER LIFE

A JOURNALIST'S MEMOIRS An extraordinarily retentive memory, n keen sense of humour, and the ability to retail innumerable anecdotes in racy style have enabled Mr. P. A. Lawlor, who is well known to journalists in New Zealand, to make an interesting and entertaining record of newspaper lifo in Now Zealand during tho past 20 years or so. To most of those "on the inside," journalism nowadays is rather a more serious business than it seems to have been in tho days when Mr. Lawlor was introduced to it as a copy runner on the Wellington Evening Post, perhaps because literary stalls of newspapers in these days contain a very much larger proportion of earnest' young men with university degrees and vaulting ambition. The methods of gathering news and presenting it to the public have altcrod almost beyond recognition since tho times when carrier pigeons fluttered down to the office loft with results irom u not-very-distant race meeting, and though, as is natural enough, Mr. Lawlor's memories havo gathered a somewhat roseate aura about the literary achievements of tho contemporaries of his younger days, his book of reminiscences is a record of a period in New Zealand newspaper lifo, and of those who peopled it, which will be of value, particularly to those concerned with the profession, for all time.

Tho author gives an interesting nccount of tho careers of several journals which, for various reasons, are no longer in existence, and his admiration for many of the men who worked for or contributed to them is as great as the apparently boundless onergy and enthusiasm which he devoted to those with which ho was directly connected. A valuable featuro of tho book is the section which is devoted to personal portraits of some GO representative Australian and New Zoaland writers, though, as Mr. Lawlor candidly admits, some of tho skotches are slight because of his own very brief acquaintanceship with the writers concerned. The book is very well illustrated with photographs and numerous caricatures by such well-known figures as David Low, Tom Glover, Jack Gilmour, George Finey and Ken Alexander, and if there is any ground for criticism it is that tho manuscript was apparently not handled by a competent city sub-editor, who would not have allowed such expressions as "waiting on," "knew a fair bit," and "re the development," to appear, to say nothing of such a word as "proudful" instead of "prideful," in a book, much of which is devoted to literary affairs. "Confessions of a Journalist: "With Observations on Some .and New Zealand Writers." by Pat Lawlor. (Whitcombo and Tombs, Limited.)