A TRAGEDY

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 45, 19 September 1930, Page 3

A TRAGEDY

THE "CHRONICLE'S END" CAME AS A BOMBSHELL. "The sudden ending of the Daily Chronicle was a resounding revelation to the worlcf of the extent to which the daily newspaper has been sucked into the vortex of financial speculation," writes Mr. S. K. Ratclifle in the July number of the Nineteenth Century. The Daily Chronicle was established as a Liberal morning journal in 1877, and it maintained a high reputation until 3 918 when a few weeks before the armistice was signed it was sold to a syndicate composed of the Lloyd George political fund, a group represented by Lord Inverforth, and a group headed by Lord Bute. The price paid for tire Chronicle and Lloyd's Sunday News was more than £1,000,000. Lloyd's Sunday News had a circulation of more than 1000,000, which rose to 1,300,000 in 1923 The Chronicle changed hands again in 1926, when it had a fort-lived ownership under Sir David Yule and Sn Thomas Cat to. In 1928 it was acquired bv Mr William Harrison, ol the inveresk Paper Company. The paper appeared to be flourishing. New plan, to the value of £250.000 was installed, and it was expected that Mr. Harrison would float it into a nubile company. At tne end of 1929, after the Hatry and New York financial disasters, this project became impossible. Early in 1930 advertising slumped heavily. The Daily Chronicle had fallen into the hands of Lloyd's Bank, and on June 2 of this year the paper was submerged in the Daily News.

Well Kept. "No outsider can understand how it happened that a great newspaper with a circulation of some 960,000, which was able last year to show a profit, notwithstanding its swollen finance and repeated upheavals, could be closed without warning or preparation," says Mr. Ratcliffc "The secret was astonishingly well kept. Until the fateful week-end not a single member of the staff had an inkling of what was impending, hence the crash was all the more shattering. "The paper fell because of its having been sold or reorganised four times within ten years. On three occasions it was made the play of speculative forces. It is believed that more than 1000 employees, including 60 members of the National Union of Journalists, were affected by the stoppage of the Daily Chronicle. "One can sec no reason for contradicting the statement made repeatedly since the first week in June that the ending of the Chronicle is the worst disaster of the kind from which the world of London journalism has ever suffered," says Mr. Ratcliffc. After tracing the growth of the great conflicting newspaper interests in England, which represent a capital of £32,000,000, the remarkable extension of Sunday publications is described. "The Sunday newsper is flooding 8,000,000 households in England with standardised printed matter," says Mr. Ratcliffe. "Lord Rothermere's Pictorial, and Berry's Graphic have a combined sale of not much less than 5,000,000. Lord Riddcll, proprietor of the unique and indescribable News of the World, has, I believe, completely failed in his effort to prevent his sales coming within sight of 4,000,000; and 'he remaining Sunday papers musl together account for something like 4,0u0,000. Twelve Millions. That is to say, there is a week-end cataract of papers from the presses of London and Manchester to the extent of many more than 12,000,000 copies. These papers treat of public affairs only in so far as they can be brought under the heads of personal gossip or entertaining incident. They collect bucketfuls of what journalists call "slop" from successful churchmen and politicians, aviators, and film stars, about marriage, the Americans, the younger generation the right length for the skirt, or where are the dead? Sport, crime, and the young girl make for the Sunday editors an inexhaustible provision. The paper which commands the largest circulation has worked out a technique for Sealing with police court records which has long been a jest among the reporters who profit by it, and a wonder to that by no means inconsiderable public which knows little or nothing of a modern nation's hidden depths."