New-Century Journalism.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 61, 13 March 1901, Page 4

New-Century Journalism.

(By Henry Labouchere.) Mr Alfred Harmsworth has been giving his views on twentieth-century journalism to the Americans, and has gone so far as to edit himself for a day the New York World in order to exemplify them. He seems to be under the impression that there are to be in future “ Press Trusts,” by which, I take it, he means that the individuality of newspapers will be a thing of the past, and that huge monopolies news and opinions, will be formed. As regards newspapers he would have them small in size and what he terms “tabloid” —in other words, that they should not have long articles or give long reports of legal proceedings, but should take the most telling points in them and administer them in tabloid fashion, as Messrs Burroughs & Wellcome do with medicines.

I can conceive nothing more undesirable than a great newspaper trust, controlled, as it necessarily would be, by wealth, and with the directors or managers syndicating public opinion. If Brutus was justified in killing Ctesar, anyone would be justified in slaying .the- “boss” of such a trust. The boss would have his own axe to grind, and grind it he would for all it was worth. The press can only be useful so long as there are many journals, each advocating different views. Each thus finds an antidote for the bane of the other, while whai • ever good there is in both remains unaffected.

In London the daily press has become far too much of a commercial concern. It has to a very large extent fallen into the hands of a few men, clever in business and with large capital at their backs, eminently respectable very likely, but without any special gift to act as advisers of a nation. On political issues they take the side which they think is popular for the moment, and they do their best to make then- facts tally with their opinions. Some of them are bitten- with social aspirations, and this renders them inclined to keep well with “ smart society.” The statesman in this age of advertising wants to be well advertised. He therefore curries favor with them, and in return they puff him like a pill warranted to cure all this world’s ills. If he takes a course which does not fit in -with the craze of the moment he is either treated with silent contempt or, if alluded to, described as a plotting knave or a well-meaning dolt. Thus either he passes as a person too insignificant to be regarded as a factor in politics or his name becomes a household word for a man endowed with the vastest capacity or jvith the meanest intelligence. Mr Harmsworih is right, I think, in deprecating long-winded leading articles. They are all very well in a weekly paper, which to a certain extent is rather a review than a newspaper. In a daily paper they are out of place, and they exist because they are a tradition, and because a daily paper generally has on its staff a nnmber of gentlemen who like to air their opinions at length. This is earned in some daily papers to such a point that thenforeign correspondents write leading articles instead -of transmitting news. Oracular utterances should be brief, The oracle should not discuss but proclaim the faith from a pedestal.