THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2815, 26 February 1908, Page 81

THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER.

There is a bright article in a. recent number of the University Magazine, .written* by Mr Archibald Maclise, and entitled "The American Newspaper." "Truly," said Swift, " when I consider that natural disposition in many men to lie, and in multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do tfith that maxim, so frequent in everybody's mouth, :that truth will at last prevail." Our author asserts that certainly truth has not yet begun to prevail in that sphere of human activity which has to do with the production of newspapers — or, at least, American newspapers. Mr Maclise finds an explanation of- the present condition of American, newspaper writing in the statement of tie editor of the magazine section of one of the most widely circulated newspapers of the United States. He boasted of the literary excellence of the advertisements -which he printed, and confessed that it wa& his ambition to bring the text up to that high standard. Well, the aim of thajt lofty literature is not to tell the truth, so says Mr Maclise. For instance, with the fear of the, public prosecutor, 'the district attorney., and the postmaster-general before hif eyes, the advertisement writer now changes " cures for consumption " •into "consumption! cures/; "warranted harmless " becomes "• pleasant to take " ; and " soothes the most fretful child " now reads "opium and chloral." But for the efforts, of thf, law to hold him to the truth, the advertisement writer would, as a rule, make no' attempt at the truth. As it is, he deals in "tergiversation, evasion, and subterfuge, when he must. Heresoirts to hyperbole and over-statement when he may. The owner of a newspaper, by reading, his advertising pages, and consulting- his accounts, quickly dis-" covers that this kind of writing pays. This is the kind of literature which he thinks admirable; and, consciously or unconsciously, he adopts that style. He forgets that, it .is an occasional function of literature to tell the truth. The principal reading in the United States is advertisements, and the public ear is so bedevilled thait it. can only hear a shriek." Thus, a preparation in a bottle is either a queen, or empress, or —king of table waters; a railway train is a cannon ball, a meteor, or a wolverine; a steamship is a greyhound, a fryer, or a racer; a boot is a Napoleon, and a typewriter is a monarch. There are, of course, advertisements which are mere statements of fact.

■ It h&& long been impossible, (says Mr Maclise} to allow any but a very few newspapers in the hands of children, because of the odious matter so many of them contain. "Itis no small matter for a newspaper to break down the boundary ■berf/ween. truth and falsehood, and when one has read the affidavits, in support of statements that cannot be true, he is 'Inclined to doubt the dictum of the late Sir Francis Johnston,- t-hat a statement is not necessarily false because it is sworn to." It is a singular fact, asserts the writer, that the makers of American newspapers have not yet discovered that people do not read 'them: they only buy them. In a western town of not more than two hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, the Sunday edition of one of the newspapers regularly contains from a hundred and twenty-eight to a hundred and forjty pages ; proof enough that it is not read. Another curious fact is the kind of news which American newspaper writers think interesting. In June last, there was a wreck oik the Southern Pacific railway, and 40 people were killed. In fthe account of the disaster, the feature which received most prominence was that a' "rich and beautiful young woman " rode to the scene of the accident on the brake-beam of the relief train.. She had been ejected from »the train as a wayward busy-body, but " American womanhood was not to be denied in its passion to minister to the wounded aad dying." After that, she disappears; nothing is said about her more; whether she got to the end of *he journey, or whether she accomplished anything. Why? Because the whole incident came out of the writer's, imagination.

Mr Maclise considers that so long as the American woman is taught in the newspapers especially devised for her enlightenment that an endurance of the ordinary inconveniences of the married state is i an "insult to her womanhood," she will avail herself of the ready- weapon of divorce. Freedom of divorce she is taught will result in an enhanced "^purity, a sublime sacredness, a more- beautiful embodiment of the trinity of tha- lather, the mother, the child." Whether because of such teaching or not, Judge Stevensrecently gave evidence that in two States 4 alone daring 20 years there were over 30,000 divorce cases, and during a similar period in Ifche whole country, the future care of 267,739 children was decided by the courts. Our author finds the news which is printed as coming by cable from Europe most curious, both in respect of its amount and its quality. European events, in the judgment of these writt»rs, owe their relative importance to the connection, more or less remote, which some visiting jAmericana may have with them. The arrest of a midnight reveller in Paris is elevated into national importance, if he happen to be a relative by marriage to one of those beautiful and wealthy American "married girls" with which foreign capitals now abound. Our i " cable" correspondent, who had great vogue recently, always began with " Every chancellery in Europe » agog over the intelligence ■which, I sent yon yesterday by exclusive cable/ and- which was promptly repeated to London, Paris, and Berlin.' It is almost needless to suggest that finch " cable " messages am faked trp in toe newspaper offices a* home. ■B-nt Mr Maclise discerns signs tha* the people are tired of the farce, and thai soon the lights will be out., and the people gone home. All sensible persons, ne conc&des, most yearn for the tone when, the American newspaper known as ° yellow "" shall be a by- word of the past. — Montreal Witness.