A PURE PRESS. No Sporting News.
REFERENCE was made m the press some time ago to the fact that a clergyman, had offered to supply daily a mass of religious "copy" to a newspaper provided the newspaper used it instead of sporting news. That paper still publishes sporting news. Quite lately, at a religious conference, an esteemed reverend gentleman said the clergy should do their best to induce the papers to give up publishing sporting news at all. He wanted his hearers to pledge themselves to clip out all sporting news from papers used in the reading-rooms owned by their organisation, so that the reader might not be led astray by the pernicious influence of such matter. ¥ * * If an epidemic of virtue of this pattern swept over the press of the colony, the British — and German — paper-makers would wonder what had happened the export trade in paper, for you colonials will go without leaders, locals, cables, or learned articles rather than without the latest news about the test match, . the winner of the Melbourne Cup, the result of the boxing tournament, or the proud possessor of somebody's bowling feathers. One hears very little but sport talked in all .public conveyances in New Zealand. The smallest boy can tell you who is going to win the big football match. * * * Perhaps the newspapers of the colony feel good Perhaps they woiild like to meet the parsons m this matter, and leave out all sports. Half the reporters in New Zealand would be idle, and a large proportion of the printing machines would go to the scrap-iron heap It would be quite as reasonable to ask the esteemed clergymen to go without salaries, or to refuse to work on Sunday as to ask the newspapers to quit giving sporting news. In New Zealand the winner of a race is as important a person as a Cabinet Minister, and we want to know about him The fact that Jimmy Slick "cut out" a hundred yards in a fifth under record time will sell a thousand papers extra in Jimmy's native town You may touch the press heart, but when it comes to touching the press pocket — avaUnt '
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZFL19040123.2.6.4
Bibliographic details
Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 186, 23 January 1904, Page 6
Word Count
363A PURE PRESS. No Sporting News. Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 186, 23 January 1904, Page 6
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