NEWSPAPER COMPANIES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 299, 18 December 1874, Page 4

NEWSPAPER COMPANIES.

':■ - The Auckland Herald says:— Oar Wellington telegrams, among other •;■ items of intelligence, informs us that shares in the New Zealand Times are -* offered at seven shillings discount, fifteen shillings paid up. We are not in a position to verify the statement. iThfe New Zealand Times may be financially a great success; but if it be it will prove an exception to most ; newspaper companies which have been \ enrolled in the colony within the last few years. The fact is that the successful management of the newspaper is an art, known only toa very few,and that ; art, those who have been initiated in it through a prolonged and cot unlikely a bitter experience do not care to explain to the multitude. The mysteries which make journalism a success, or the palpable mistakes which make it a failure are altogether unknown to shareholders of a newspaper company. A business man may be made to understand the working of a bank, or an insurance company, or a mine; be can see where expenses can be curtailed, or where liberality of expenditure will result in increased dividends, but no man living ignorant of the internal working of a newspaper is capable of making a suggestion which is worth one moment's consideration. What does he — what can he— possibly know about the value of editors, reporters ' correspondents, - compositors, or machinists? How can he venture to say what csn be dispensed ■- with, and what cannot? What does he know about issaes and advertisements, or allowances, or what should be the poiicy of a paper to secure the largest amount of intelligent public patronage. Every shareholder desires 1 -, t hat his particular " doxy " shall be the "doxy " of the paper, and as every shareholder Has his own particular " doxy " he is greatly chagrined if it be not advocated. He becomes disgused, and *♦ sells out " his interest for what he can get for it. There are three things no man should enter into without due consideration and without a thorough knowledge of the probable consequences. He should avaid newspaper speculations, the running of four horse stage coaches, and the marrying a woman whoso character and antecedents he knows nothing of. It is as dangerous for a man to do any of these things as it would, were be being unable to swim, to plunge into a river without first ascertaining its depth. One man takes shares in a newspaper in the hope of a dividend; another, that he will be able to obtain prominence io his advertisements; > " another, that he will be able to air some peculiar crochet, another, because it is such a fine thing to have a share in a - newspaper; another, does not care about dividends so long as he can influence a policy, or the "walking into" somebody, or justifying a doubtful a^t, or caving his own way with someone, or to gratify a private pique, or bring about something he has set his heart upon. When a man buys shares in a Bank, or an insurance company, or in a gold mine, he has but one object, which is- to enrich himself, not caring about anything else, but men buy into a newspaper company from very different- motives, and there is no ■ unanimaty as to how the enterprise should be managed. So after a time, one shareholder drop 3 out, content with a loss and another, another, and another, and the paper, after probably losing ( ; much of all of the influence it may once - have possessed, reverts back to an in- : dividual proprieta/y, who, feeling their responsibility and knowing their work, _ eet obont resuscitating it, at which they sometimes succeed, and in others do not.