THE GLOBE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1881. A ROTTEN REED.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2321, 12 September 1881, Page 2

THE GLOBE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1881. A ROTTEN REED.

“Of course we tell our readers nothing now when wo remark that our dear old friend and contemporary the Globe is fast drifting into drivelling senility.” For the benefit and information of the great majority of newspaper readers in Christchurch, wo may state that the foregoing is a quotation from a leading article in the evening “Telegraph” of Friday last. We notice that leader for two reasons. In the first place, we would enlighten the few who may have read it as to the character of the newspaper in which the article appeared ; and, secondly, we would show how it came to be written, and thus expose the writer to that contempt and scorn which every honest man must feel for one who has been detected in an act of reckless and unblushing effrontery, and then tries to cover the act by characteristic impertinent abuse apd ruffianly bravado. The “ Telegraph ” is a print

which grow out of a daily publication called the “Echo,” whoso only recommendation was a blackguardism of tone and character almost unparallod in the annals of newspaper journalism. The Echo suffered a miserable existence somewhat more extended than the life of a butterfly, and was on the verge of a death no less inglorious and contemptible than its life, when some one rescued it from its dying agonies, and renewed the lease of its existence under a new name. In reality, medical aid was called in, and a pecuniary pill administered, which so far propped up the diseased infant that it has since lived in the wretched and pitiable plight -it now presents, borrowing light and air from its neighbors, and stealing, like some half-starved mendicant, tho very food that sustains its puling, and flickering, uncertain vitality, from day to day. This is the “Telegraph,” an offshoot from, ‘but no improvement on, its worthless parent stem, the “ Echo,” and whose only claim to be a medium of telegraphic intelligence is obtained by means of "barefaced, wholesale robbery. If necossary, wo could more fully explain and thus cheaply advertise the condition of the unfortuate weakling under notice; hut for the present let the foregoing suffice. And now to speak with almost equal brevity of the motives which dictated the silly, but, where coherent, insolent article in reference to ourselves. In doing this we have a painful duty to perform, or rather we have to repeat, the performance of a painful duty, viz., the “ drawing of that veil” which is ordinarily allowed to be a sacred and impregnable shield, protecting the anonymity of tho Press. To make tho matter clear, we may observe that tho correspondent of a Dunedin paper, the “ Saturday Advertiser,” took advantage of his connection with that paper to advertise his own position on another journal, viz., the evening “Telegraph” of Christchurch; and in giving himself the said cheap advertisement, this person (for whom we ■keep a pill yet in reserve), had the ■remarkable assurance—seeing that ho is the veriest amateur in the journalistic profession—to announce that his advent on the staff of the “Telegraph” newspaper would add greatly to its popularity in consequence of his being so much •superior in every way to the ordinary ran of “ dilettante pressmen.” Now, this would, under any circumstances, be considered very egotistical, but, looking to the character of the man who wrote it, such self-praise mast be considered vain, flatulent, and altogether beneath contempt. It is hard to believe it possible that any decent public writer, with tho slightest pretensions to manliness and selfrespect, could in cold blood advertise his •own excellence like a Billingsgate fishmonger his stock-in-trade; so hard is it. Indeed, that we altogether decline to admit the possibility. When we find a decent man doing the like we shall ho prepared to consider and discuss the phenomenon. Holding such views, we took occasion to make some sarcastic observations concerning the Christchurch correspondent of the “ Saturday Advertiser,” properly connecting that individual with “ a recent addition ” —the Fates help tho original structure—to the staff of the evening “ Telegraph;” and concluded by expressing a hope that the said correspondent’s prophecy would be fulfilled as to the assumption by onr sick little friend and contemporary of ( healthy and respectable proportions, j Now it appears that this person has yet something akin to shame left in his composition, and, being thus exposed to ridicule and contempt, he naturally feels angry. Hence the article in which we are described by this obliquo-eyed acrawler as being on onr last legs; hence also a paragraph by the “ Saturday Advertiser’s” Christchurch correspondent —the same oblique-eyed serawler—in which no denial is made of the charge that he used that column to puff his own weak efforts at paper-staining; but there appears, instead, a repetition of the silly impertinences that appeared in the “ Telegraph” about ourselves. We may pity the unfortunate who has been detected in such a shameless breach of journalistic honesty —we need not speak of etiquette, which is altogether beyond that class of persons. But few journalists will condemn us for making the exposure. It is just possible that the “ Telegraph” may have been reduced, through want of fnnds or influence, to employing a class of literary laborer long since condemned as being outside the pale of docent journalism. If so it should not allow this to be made manifest so soon in the columns of its paper. Our infant friend has gone through so much misery one way and another that we can understand a sore more or less in its dilapidated little sides will scarcely bo observed; bnt let it learn how it casts its feeble weight on a rotten reed, lest it collapse utterly whilst yet in the days of its ill-starred Babyhood.