NEWSPAPERS

Southland Times, Issue 18962, 8 June 1923, Page 6

NEWSPAPERS

CLASSIC AND OTHERWISE. THE EPOCH OF THE “STUNT.” SEVERE CRITICISM OF MODERN JOURNALISM. Mr W. Haslam Mills, during the course, of a recent lecture at Manchester, severely criticised the modern newspaper, which he regarded as having a bad in fluence, but not so bad as to be hopeless. Towards the end of his address, says the Manchester Guardian, Mr Mills admitted that they could hope for nothing except by some moral revival. If, for instance, a foreign correspondent con 1 tinued to telegraph to his paper inconvenient facts would his newspaper print them ? It was very much to be desired that every newspaper proprietor should put the question to himself, and that every newspaper reader should ask it himself of the newspaper he habitually read. To this indication of the disease Mr Mills added some samples. Some years ago a curious story get. about England that a wolf had been seen in Northumberland. Accordingly, several newspapers sent correspondents to make inquiries on the spot, and if possible to see the wolf. When they arrived they found that nobody seemed to have seen it, though everyone knew somebody who had. For a day or two, therefore, none of the correspondents sent anything to their papers. W T hile matters were in this state the correspondent of a particularly enterprising paper received a curt telegram from his editor saying that his silence was occasioning great surprise, and that he had “better hurry up and see the wolf.” It was implied in the tiegram that if the unfortunate correspondent did not see the wolf in next, to no time he would be withdrawn and someone else would be sent who would.

“In that, story,” Mr Mills said, “there is the whclc substance and spirit of propaganda.” It turned out that the wolf was a big dog “which had developed a kind of misanthropy and was living an emancipated life in the hills.” The principle of “hurry up and see the wolf,” however, was applied to much larger and graver affairs. Mr Mills continued. “And it is because this principle is acted upon, consciously and unconsciously, that it is to-day vain and foolish to believe seven-tenths of what we read about Germany and the Ruhr and nine-tenths of what we read about Russia.” Propaganda was described last among the attributes of the Press as an attribute, not ridiculous like some others, but dangerous. Earlier in his address Mr Mills showed how the newspaper had grown frem a thing half owned and “half a public trust” into’ an age in which Mr Kennedy Jones, Alfred Harmsworth’s

[ right-hand man, could claim that they had “found journalism a calling and

made it a trade”; an age which had “a whole marine biology of monthlies and weeklies.” In all this teeming life one curious thing had to be noted—that nearly all of it which is very good is also very old. The Morning Post was founded in 1772, The Times in 1785, the Spectator in 1828, Punch in 1840, the Church Guardian in 1846, the Manchester Guardian in 1821. “There is nothing to put next to these,” Mr Mills continued, “or even near them, and it would seem as though moder® England was as little able to produce a new 7 classical newspaper cr magazine as she is to produce a new symphony.” The only new 7 -comer he could remember which was strong in the head and not apparently weak in the arm was the Hibbert Journal He dated the modern history of the English press by three years. The first was 1861, when Mr Gladstone abolished the duty on paper, and thus created the popular press. The next leading date was 1871, when Mr Gladstone passed the Elementary Education Act, and thus provided the most conspicuous example of the State changing by a single Act of Parliament the habits, customs, and almost the very human nature of its constituent citizens. The Act fertilised the popular mind for ten years, and in 1881 “a little flower appeared above the surface. That flower was called Tit-Bits.” It was produced not to convert, not to edify, and not to degrade, for that matter, but to hit the popular taste and sell. It was the beginning of unideallstic journalism. It had to be readable, its articles short and full of facte. It might be, for example, “What becomee cf all the safety-pins?”—but yet, Mr Mills said, “you are in no better position to face life and your duty in it when you know than when you don’t know.” The Tit Bits spirit was carried into daily journalism by Alfred Harmsworth, who established the Daily Mail in 1896. “It may be thought a violent transition of thought to mention the name of Alfred Harmsworth with the names of Martin Futher, John Wesley, and Richard Cobden,” he went on, “but he undoubtedly belongs to the same class of momentous, epoch-making men. Like them, he destroyed an institution and built it up again, quite different. ... he intro duced into English journalism the totally new principle that news is made for news papers, whereas it had been believed that newspapers were made for news.” Two words grew out of the journalism—“stunt” and “story.” Standard bread was a stunt ; it had been dropped, because though it should last a little while, the essence of a stunt was that it should be succeeded by another. A “story” was different. A new one was needed every day, some crime, some folly, some misfortune. Life, however, Mr Mills declared, “it not like this at all. It is a ridiculous distortion of life by a journalism which measures its scul by the size of its type.”