NEWS MOSAIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 3 (Supplement)

NEWS MOSAIC

MORE READING THAN A NOVEL IN EACH ISSUE OF A DAILY NEWSPAPER.

A MODEL OF INGENUITY ■VOTHING is sought more eagerly in an age of seeking than a popular daily newspaper with the latest information from all over the world. And yet nothing else in this universe of perplexities so quickly loses its pristine attractiveness. Every newspaper is as ephemeral as the ripples on a running stream. After It has been read or but scanned with unflattering haste, even a favourite journal, representing the thorough and painstaking work of experts, together with that of marvellous mechanism, is flung aside as a "rag.” Modern newspapers live for the fleeting glory of a day or a night. There is compensation, however, in the necessity which, because of the quick passing of each daily achievement, recreates enthusiasm, and revives energy for the next day’s triumph. No other modern achievement is subjected to the same casualness. If the rule were given general application, a hundred more pretentious professions would quickly fall into ruin. MORE READING THAN A NOVEL. It is neither generally recognised nor appreciated that an up-to-date metropolitan newspaper has as much reading matter as a standard novel aud more lines of communication than a modern army. These run daily without ceasing across oceans and continents; explore every promising avenue of news; touch the affairs of all nations; cover the strange experiences of mankind from the nursery to the grave; reveal romance and adventure, toil and turmoil, folly and fame, and all the pastimes, pleasures, and pettiness of great men and knaves. Ail these diverse interests are scaled to their relative value in the mosaic of news that makes or mars a perfect newspaper. It may be claimed reasonably that even the dullest of daily journals are seldom less interesting and always vastly more informative than the average best seller from the mill of fictional literature. KALEIDOSCOPE OF CURRENT HISTORY Moreover, a daily record of universal life—a kaleidoscope of current history—is made available in attractive form for a trifling sum. Apart from advertisements which, if entrusted to the right experts in the art of newspaper display, make alluring reading, not less than 80,000 and frequently more than 100,000 words of news are gathered, edited, set up in type, printed, and distributed for the sum of ninepence a week. Thus sixty issues of a first-class daily newspaper can be obtained—brought to the easy chair, indeed—for the price of a fifthrate novel. And many novelists nowadays first try out their stories as serials in sixty newspapers. Including enlarged issues on many occasions and special supplements the total type space in THE SUN for a year will be equivalent to about 300 standard novels. ORGANISED HASTE AND EFFICIENCY How is all that done? It is accomplished only by the most remarkable and most successful system of organised haste and co-or-dinated efficiency in the whole sphere of modern industry. This highly intricate, but smooth-working system was unknown and only visualised in dreams less than fifty years ago. It is the product of specialised industry by willing men and ingenious machines. In few spheres of life, if in any at all, has evolution been so amazing and so successful as it has been in type-setting, news-gathering and news-printing. Its pace has been the stride of a giant. To-day, a melancholy man fumbling with type in a dim and dilapidated shack or garret is an anachronism —a relic of the bad old age when compositors were bondslaves to conservative printers and dull newspaper proprietors. The linotype does the former work of at least four hand-setting compositors “at the case.” As regards newspaper printing, the development within a century can only be described as gigantic. When Europe rang with the news of Napoleon’s downfall at Waterloo, the greatest newspaper in the world could then only print four small sheets at the rate of 1000 impressions an hour. To-day, when there is no great man to thrill the nations, a rotary press, such as THE SUN’S, the fastest printing machine in New Zealand, can imprint and automatically fold 40,000 average size newspapers an hour. TRANSMISSION OF NEWS The transmission of news across and around the world is swifter than the swallow’s flight, and soon may be almost as swift as thought itself. If a Cockney donkey in London suddenly resolved to adopt reprisals and so bite, say, a distinguished politician such as Mr. Winston Churchill, thousands of telegraph operators throughout all civilised countries would, within a few minutes, dot-dash the news up and down the whole earth; then sub-editors in every land would, in chuckling enthusiasm, dredge tlieir exhausted brains for the right, bright title for the story; a little later here, there, and everywhere, millions of eager newspaper readers would glow with satisfaction. Unfortunately (and this is why newspapers sometimes seem dull and destitute of thrills) donkey does not eat donkey. A MODEL OF INGENUITY In the making of a newspaper, the scientist, the engineer, the journalist, and many craftsmen co-operate with a completeness which Provides a perfect, if an ephemeral, demonstration of successful mass production. Before a newspaper can be placed in the hands of its readers, hundreds of highly-trained workers, quick and accurate observers, and clear thinkers in many different countries have striven together, in single-minded' purpose, though wide hemispheres apart, to give attractive form and life to the history of each Passing day. And their wonderful co-opera-tion would be futile were it not allied to the many marvels of mechanism employed in the Production of a newspaper.

A mosaic of news is really a model of modern ingenuity.