MODERN NEWSPAPER

Taranaki Daily News, 30 December 1929, Page 3

MODERN NEWSPAPER

LORD HEWART’S TRIBUTE. “Do we always think as gratefully, or indeed as justly, as we might of theamazing ability, diligence, . care and learning, the wit, the humour, the skill and the versatility, the dutifulness, the courage, the conscientiousness and the sheer hard work which go to the making of the best kind of newspaper?” asked Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice of England, in an address at the New Athenaeum in Liverpool.' “When we take in our hands a really first-rate English daily newspaper do we always reflect upon the recurrent miracle of the lead-* ing articles—so aptly chosen and to-day so happily named, the rapid harvest of we know not how much brilliancy in school and university, kow severe a training in affairs, how fine a character and how wise a mind—. Or when we look at the telegrams and reports from all quarters of the world, the work of the foreign department, the work of the reviewing staff, the work of the subeditors, the work of the reporters, and not least the work of the law reporters, together with an infinity of work besides, are we not sometimes a little inclined to take everything for granted, to think that somehow the newspaper automatically produces itself, and to forget that every issue of that journal which means so much to us presupposes and depends upon the daily initiative, the daily industry and the deliberate organisation and correlation of the daily industry, of a vast, unseen band of highly-skilled and conscientious artists? To conceal the art is, no doubt, a work of art. But theire are occasions, and perhaps this may be. one of them, when a debt which is not always visible, and is never claimed, may at least be gratefully acknowledged.”