MR VOGEL AND THE PRESS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1526, 18 November 1873, Page 17

MR VOGEL AND THE PRESS.

The Auckland Evening Star of the 27th October, writes: — We observe by a telegram in our morning contemporaries that Mr Vogel has floated another Newspaper Company in Wellington. This comes not unexpectedly, and is quite in accordance with the programme which this aspiring politician has evidently set before him. Not content with haviug a corrupted and demoralized House of Representatives prepared to register his edicts and give them legislative force, he aspires to grasp in his band the Press of the Colony, and use that powerful engine for his purposes. Some time ago he organized the Press Telegraphic Association, intending it unquestionably for the dissemination of cooked telegrams, his comprehensive mind seeing in the extension of telegraphy one of the mightiest means for swaying popular feeling in the Colony. That bubble burst in consequence of the journalists of the Colony being unwilling to play the part of political tools, and to pay for the. privilege. A few months ago indications were afforded of an intention, by the adroit substitution of his creatures in the various sub-agencies of the Anglo-Austra-lian Telegraph Agency, to compass the same object. Recently he has used his power as head of the Government and its guiding spirit, to attempt to crush evening journalism by imposing costs on telegrams fourfold greater than those imposed on the morning papers. Now he advances to grasp morning journalism, establishing a Vogelian journal in every principal city, and having his creatures appointed to the editorial chairs with fixed salaries and for fixed times. The principle appears to be—float the company, fix the editor, and then for the shareholders—let them rip. Mr Vogel has floated the Otago Guardian Company at Dunedin ; he has floated the Southern Cross Company at Auckland. Now he has floated the New Zealand Times Company at Wellington, and again we observe that another company for a morning paper has just been floated —we presume by Mr Vogel—at Christchurch. If they are all attended with similar success to that which has attended the newspaper company floated among ourselves, the whole lot of them will not set the South Pacific in a blaze; and if all the shareholders are, after the lapse of a few months, as satisfied with affairs as our local shareholders, we may anticipate that unless the editorial chairs are firm, and secured for a certain lapse of years, these various offsprings of Mr Vogel will doou all turn round and eat him up. Nevertheless we cannot close our eyes to the bold and daring objects of this ambitious man, or to the fact that he aspires to the position of being able, at any moment, to crush any man and any party, and to sway popular feeling as he wills.