The Reading of Newspapers.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue XXI, 25 May 1901, Page 967

The Reading of Newspapers.

As everyone knows, the business of conducting a newspaper is the easiest in the world. There never was a man yet, or a woman either, I believe, who was not strongly convinced that if the “Times,” or even the local paper would take him or her on the staff, there would be such a change in the paper that the fossilised journalists in command would be astonished. The unfortunate, who spends his business hours in the production of a newspaper has his leisure hours enlivened by the comments (painful and free) and the advice of his friends, who in the most genial manner possible point out the egregious blunders of his policy, the stupidity of his arrangements, and the general lack of liveliness under which the "rag,” as they playfully denominate it, suffers. Their suggestions are not more amazing for their utter impracticability than for their infinite variety, and were it not that, like eels to skinning, the newspaper man gets used to anything, madness . would assuredly quickly supervene. So accustomed is he indeed to be bullied and lectured that it is with a quite unreasonable amount of joy that he notices that a champion has arisen who criticises not merely the making, but the reading of newspapers. I have never been in the amateur or any other ring, but I imagine that the victim who has been “pasted” (that is the term, I believe) by some expert, finds no little satisfaction in subsequently watching the punishment of his erstwhile antagonist. In a recent article in the “Contemporary” Mr. Leonard Courtney has a good deal to say on the subject of the art of reading newspapers. To ears wearied by advice as to how to write them, Mr. Courtney’s utterances fall exceedingly grateful. There is no doubt, however, that the average newspaper reader of to-day knows his business fairly well, and can get the cream of the news and the gist of the comment by heart in a few moments. But the question of whether a man reads wisely is another matter altogether. If a man can only read the paper which jumps with all his own pet theories and convictions, and habitually contemns those journals which take the opposite view, he has certainly not cause for congratulation. Still less so has the man who allows his own paper —the paper of his own side that is—to form all his opinions for him. As Mr. Courtney justly observes: “If we cannot enjoy frequently reading an opposition paper the next best thing is to bring a spirit of critical enquiry to the paper of our own side.” But on the other hand he need not, as he does now, consider that because he and the paper hold divergent ideas, the paper is wrong, and would more fully represent public opinion if it promulgated his notions. It is pointed out, too, that there is equal unwisdom in excess or in total abstinence in newspaper reading. Probably the danger of excess is the only one that need now be considered. The majority of ns read far too much current literature, and by snch excess so weaken our intellectual digestion that we are unable to assimilate any more strengthening diet. On the other hand, those persons, usually •f a somewhat narrow and pedantic

school of showy intellectuality, who declare they never read the papers, soon suffer from a form of mental paralysis which produces sterility of thought.