CANDID JOURNALISM

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1934, Page 11 (Supplement)

CANDID JOURNALISM

NEWSPAPER THAT DARES

(By

O. E. W.)

Strange though it may seem it is true—every now and then a newspaper man dreams about professional joys he can never have, sitting morosely in some corner of a dingy reporter’s room with his feet on the table and his hat over his eyes. Most times they are insane, improbable sort of dreams such as that about working for a paper that never prints matter it hates; of working for a paper that dares to say windy council meetings are windy; a paper, in fact, that records the truth, undimmed by mere matters of expediency and fear of the libel laws; very briefly, ‘a paper that, reporting a wedding, could dare come to light with such a wedding account as this:— “The groom is a popular young loafer who hasn’t done a tap of work since he was expelled from college. He manages to dress well and keep a supply. of pocket money because his father is a soft-hearted old fool who takes up his bad cheques instead of letting him go to gaol where he belongs. _ . “The bride is a skinny, fast little idiot who has been kissed by every boy in town since she was 12 years old. She paints like a Sioux Indian, sucks cigarettes in secret, and drinks mean com whisky when she is out joyriding in her dad’s car at night. She doesn’t know how to cook, sew, or keep house. “The groom wore a rented dinner suit over athletic underwear of imitation) silk. His pants were held up by pale green braces. His number eight patent leather shoes matched his . state in tightness and harmonised nicely with the axle-grease polish of his hair. In addition to his nail-file he carried a pocket-knife, a bunch of keys, a dun for a ring and his usual look or mild imbecility. “The bride wore some kind of white things that left her legs sticking out. at one end and her bony upper end sticking out the other. . “The young people 'will make their home with the bride’s parents, who will put up with them until the old man dies, when the bride will probably take in washing.” Well, there is one newspaper man who has made his dream come true, and there is such a man who prints just such a paper, believe it or not. Naturally enough such a startling thing could only happen in America—the land where libel laws are sketchy, to say the least of it, and where Hearst laid down the principle, then new, that newspapers’ primary function was to amuse rather than instruct. As a good New. Zealander the writer would have been inclined to attribute the tidings to some enterprising journalist’s efforts to amuse, if he had not actually seen a copy of the Fountain Inn Tribune—the most famous (or infamous) small-town paper in the world. The publication is the- offspring of some Puckish kink in the mind of America’s greatest paragraphist and gossip writer, Robert Quillen —a man who, unknown to the judges of. the competition, produced half, of the hundred best paragraphs appearing in American newspapers in 1933, a man who writes sober, penetrative and brilliant editorials for the Washington .Evening,.Post, a student, philosopher and journalistic diplomat! In addition to his weekly columns of commentary and gossip, he sits down every morning before breakfast and writes 21 paragraphs for a column syndicated all o-ver the United States. The income from such activities explains why he can afford to run such printed dynamite as the Fountain Inn Tribune. Published weekly, the-Tribune sees light of day in a Caroline village of 1500 inhabitants. It circulates six or .seven thousand copies only to those in the journalistic “know” —but for all that, if you care to inquire, it can-be bought in the one Fountain Inn bookshop. Long since the local people have learned never to take any notice of Robert Quillen. What else can one do with a man who cheerfully calls his subscribers “an illiterate, barbarous and murderous community?” ■ Every now and then he lets fly witn some scourge such as the wedding notice in which only the names are fictitious, and which is recognised as deadly truth by the crowd that reads it down, by the service station. So when he mummifies vital statistics thus: “Bom on Jan. 27 to Mr. and Mrs. Jim Daderight, a son. The little fellow has the sincere sympathy' of the community. On his mother’s side there are three idiots and one gaolbird of record, and nobody on his father’s side of the house can' count above four. With that start in life he faces a world that will scorn, abuse and eventually, hang him through no fault of his own. . His readers know, although there is no Daderight in Fountain Inn, he has “said a whole mouthful” about the inbred hills of South Carolina—the state notorious for its outrages and lynchings. If Quillen’s wit has the barb of bitterness that comes from too clear an observation of the modem American cosmos, he can also indulge in the purest of pure nonsense. Last New Year s day the Tribune was published with nothing at all tn its eight pages but this one hand-set notice. The last, blankety blank Tribune For this blankety blank Year. The linotype is busted and we No Can Do. A few years ago, in a spasm of utter boredom, this announcement ran across the front page. “The Tribune is for sale, lock, stock and barrel, subscription list, print shos equipment, paper stock and goodwill. The price is one dollar.” I am inclined to agree with the reader who remarks “Completely mad!’ but after all, the humorist’s delightful madness has signs of a method in it; or sometimes so few signs of anything but lightheartedness that one can’t help admiring and liking such a man. When he was writing editorials for the Baltimore Sun they threatened to sack him if he would not move from Fountain Inn and stop wiring three thousand word “leaders.” He replied by sending a Caroline opossum to the editor, shipped in a box lined with sweet, potatoes. The editor wired back. “Polecat arrived. God will punish you”—and didn’t sack him. The Baltimore Sun couldn’t afford to. Epigramatic, too, Quillen can produce potted wit of calibre as easily as the ordinary journalist can produce a routine report of a Red Cross meeting. “A good reducing exercise,” he wrote Recently, “is to place both hands against the table and push.” “A small town is one where there fe no place to go where you shouldn’t be.” “There is some co-operation between even the wild creatures. The stork and the wolf usually work the same neighbourhood.” Columns of this, mark you, are written as a spare time job! It will be a sad day for American journalists when the Fountain Inn Tribune really ceases to print.