THREE CENTURIES OF NEWSPAPERDOM

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 October 1931, Page 4

THREE CENTURIES OF NEWSPAPERDOM

PRESS EXHIBITiON UNIQUE PANORAMA OF BRITAIN'S PRESS SINCE 1625 HISTORIC ISSUES LONDON For the first time in the history of British journalism, Fleet Street has seen a panorama of the newspapers which have been streaming from its noisy presses since the commencement of the seventeenth eentury. The London Press club has today probably the finest libary of any newspaper club in the world, and outside a few of the great museums, it can claim, appropriately, the best collection of historic newspapers. These were arranged on exhibition recently by Andrew Stewart, the club's honorary librarian, and attracted ■ numbers of distinguished people to the reporters' traditional retreat, tucked away in a surprisingly peaceful backwater off Fleet Street's roaring stream. Mr. Stewart, who has been responsible for the great growth of the Press 'Club Library in the last 10 years, has amassed a fine collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century sheets, and to these have been added the valuable specimens of the Henry Sell collection, presented to the Press Club recently by Alfred Sell. The Sell exhibits include a copy of the first English newspaper, "A Continuation of Our Weekly Newes," a spasmodic production, which judging by No'. 11 (published in 1625, three years after the first issue), was edited by pioneer journalists with a prophetic foresight of the "pull" in headlines. Its front page summarizes in this fashion all manner of disturbing news, "from Rome, Venice, Naples, Millan, Savoy, Germjany, France, Denmarke, the Low Countries and divers other places of Christendome." Expanding Powers From this beginning, as we pass along the collection, we see the press of Britain expanding, drawing into itself the great writers of each succeeding generation, and developing into the recognizable aneestor of the newspaper of today. There was good "copy" in abundance, close to hand, at the time of the Civil War, and it is around this era that the leader writer and the special correspondent commenee their vivid art. Up to this time the "Perfect Diurnalls" and &o forth has been, in the main, reports of paarliamentary ptoceedingfc. The first regularly illustrated pericdical appears in 1643 — "Mercurius Civicus. London's ' Intelligencer" — and advertisements are Ifntroduced into newsbooks for the first time in 1647 in "Perfect Occurrences of Every Daie Journall in Parliament." First Daily The first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, was launched on its career March 11, 1702, and the Press Club has a copy from the year 1705. Then follow the Tatler and the Spectator, with writings by Steele and Addison, and the first "serial" — Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, in the Daily Post (1720). In 1706 appeared the first evening newspaper, the Evening Post. Early "features" are Dr. Johnson (glad to write "stories" for the London Chronicle'in 1757 for a guinea a piece), the poet Cowper, contributing to the Connoisseur, abcut the same time, and the celebrated letters • of Cato, in the London Journal (1721) and of Junius, in the Public Advertiser (1791). Slow Motion Picture. So is presented a "slow motion picture" as it were, of almpst the entire history of the British press. The Corantos of the reigns of Elizabeth (1558-1603) and James I (1603-1625), which were the forerunners of the newspaper, are not yet represented among the exhibits, but from the succeeding phase of development there is a continuous seqence of the most important items, which have a wide "human" appeal, and a specially piquant interest to those newspaper men and printers who today are carrying on the work of chronicling history while it is being made.