TELEGRAPHIC ERUPTION.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XII, Issue 3236, 5 February 1879, Page 3

TELEGRAPHIC ERUPTION.

(Bruce Herald) What may be termed an eruption of telegraphy has broken oat on the surface of large morning papers throughout the Colony. This has arisen from the action of the Government organs in whose favour a special wire was secretly granted, and on whose behalf some wonderful telegraph association was started that was to knock everything and everybody on the head in the way of supplying news. By the way, it may be mentioned that this association included this paper amongst its subscribers, and on the 2nd of this month started sending us masses of useless tele-

grams which we incontinently rejected} As it seemed to us that the only advanhge to be gained by country papers join, ing the association was to obtain the privileije of helping to pay for a special wire which they could not possibly use, we declined having anything to do with the matter, even though by this course we put ourselves in the unfortunate position of being outside the Government literary rimj, for whom so much is done by the Ministry. As the Press Agency has served us for some time back efficiently and economically, we did not see why we should make any change, and therefore we declined to do so RWerer, it was not with the intention of enlarging upon these matters tbat we commenced the present article. Our object was to point to the patience with which certain newspapers now bear a swarm of inflictions, with the smallest of which they were intensely dissatisfied not long ago, Whilst the Press Agency supplied the majority of tlie telegraphic correspondence to New Zealand newspapers, the Otago Daily Times were instant, in season'and out of season, in condemning them if they forwarded an item of news that was not of enormous importance. Yet, now those papers have taken upon themselves the task of supplying telegraphic information to all and sundry, they have their columns filled morning after morning with a mass of telegraphic verbiage in which the smallest possible amount of news is conveyed in the greatest quantity of words that can be conceived. And not only this but so lovingly do these papers take to their task, that in respect to some items of news, they follow the manner of a gourmand with a titbit, and roll it over by frequent repetitions in order that its flavor may be fully appreciated. This occurs in numerous cases every day; and whilst iu one line we are informed that Mr Snooks, of Wanganui, bought a new hatchet, we find, after a few paragraphs occupied with the intelligence that someone has presented a lithograph of the Lord's Last Supper to the Washdyke Athenaeum, or that the people of Stewart's Island have confidence in the Government, the circumstance of Mr Snooks' hatchet comes up again with all the vigor of freshness, and the statement that he has bought one, is not only repeated, bat /we are informed that he made a nick in 'a with it. Then we are carried away for v a time into what may be called a wide speculation, and after hearing about a man being tried for stealing 's coat, Bnd a policeman having lost a button, up comks Mr Snooks' hatchet again, with the additional information that tho post he out into was a totara one, Seriously speaking, the papers that have recently exhibited this telegraphic disease must have a deal of ignorance combined with their acoustomed impudence. Not long since they were unsparing critics of the Press Agency! Now, in their own capacities, they publish every day quantities of ill-edited, badly selected, worse compiled, and wlretohedly uninteresting telegraphic news, land never take heed of the insults theyV thereby offer their constituents. \ ;'