The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 27. ABOUT NEWS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 40, 27 May 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 27. ABOUT NEWS.

Newspapers have become necessities to the peo.ple of all civilised countries—and have helped to civilise some of them, the best of daily papers are mer« ephemerae, and their lives shorter than the life of a butterily. The average reader gives as little thought to the wonder of a newspaper as to the wonder of the butterfly. His most general comment, supposing his particular department has not been catered for in his pennyworth of news, is, "There is noI thing in the rag,'' and the work of many | hundreds of people becomes a sudden firelight. All over the world the great business of collecting news goes forward night and day, summer and winter, ceaselessly. The ibusliman in the great lumber camps does not, perhaps, give much thought to the pulp that will" result from his work, or the news that will ;be printed on the log he is chopping. The reader, because he lias be«* educated to expect the most perfect result for his penny, quite naturally has no time to spend in wonderment. Today, in the badkblocks of Taranaki, the settler is reading of what took place in Madrid yesterday. He is m touch with the heart of the British Empire; hs knows what has occurred in the Balkans; he reads words hot from the lips of King' George in England, President Taft in America," Sir Wilfrid Laurier in Canada, or General Botha in Africa. H« forgets to he astonished, 'because human enterprise 'has made such things a common circumstance. The man who scans tin inch-and-a-half cablegram from Home, the seat of a great war, or from the interior of a lone land, probably does not appreciate the infinite work or the probable danger necessary to give him a moment's reading. The great news machines roar night and day wonderfully, but the wonder of feeding them with news is much greater. There is no business where such constant devotion to work is necessary as in the gathering of news. Infinitely the most important ■person in the production of a newspaper ■is the-reporter, who, when he undertakes his task,. practically gives up his life to ! it 2nd is bound to abjure home life, social joys, and the eight hours idea. He is the personification of perpetual motion. That we may have news hot from the great world of events, innumerable scribes have been bound to perform feats of endurance and detection, and have undergone physical and mental strain. The scribe who is the father of the story of the morning's murder, the report of the latest outbreak of war, or tlie record of a new discovery, requires to be as much at home on a cor,pse-strewn beach as in a drawingroom. He ought to be as strong as a horse and as inquisitive as a police spy. He should be able to understand men—and women—tactful, determined, restless, dogged, and clever. He may work in a hopeless cause, for although the, average person quite believes that it is difficult to obtain enough news for a. paper, the real fact is that the quantity available is too great for any paper. The town councillor who cannot conceive why his unimportant remarks are not I wildly welcomed by a great ditily paper | might ponder over this point even in [ connection with the production of lesser j papers. From the standpoint of general importance, a speech 'by Mr. Asquith lias a better chance than a tirade about a culvert or the annual report of a football club; but the man who makes the tirade does not think so, and the football club is also in doubt. Nearly two thousand years ago, somebody said "of j the making of books' there is no end, ' but to-day, without any books at all, the average person could get much more mental pabulum than he could digest from the endless variety of newspapers. The disgust of the modern person who picks up a paper twelve hours old is absolutely pathetic. There is much sale for stale books, but a stale newspaper is unthinkable. The energy of ephemeral writers the world over makes it possible for the tremendous happenings of yesterday or the day before to be printed in New Plymouth, and thus the kind mother and the soft-hearted father feel no special horror when it is recorded that dynamite blew up a few hundred people in Japan; that a typhoon swept a million Chinese into the water; or that there were several thousand casualties ! in the Balkans.. A hundred years ago the news of such events might remain local or percolate a little further per medium of adventurers. Tn the early days New Zealand would have mourned for King Edward a year after he had | l)een buried. The anxiety of folk to | learn the 'latest" is wonderfully demon- | strated by the questions of seafarers [ who land at a port after voyaging. Who j lias not heard the query over the rails, "What won the Cup?" or other queries j typifying the interest of the questioner. The leading idea of modern journalism is to set before the people the most recent happenings at the earliest possible moment. It is not quite known whether the ordinary person realises the tremendous work involved in the matter, or whether he believes news and newspapers make themselves. This certainly is known: the person who does not make newspapers believes the process is as simple as falling off the proverbial log. He does not see correspondents thousands of miles away galloping for the distant telegraph office, writing with a rock for a table, or getting a mate to strike matches for him while lie completes the news item that will reach the Taranaki farmer to-morrow. He does not see reporters battling out to wrecks, the scenes of murders, or the house of a Prime Minister. He does not realise J that it is a rarity for any newspaper i not to accomplish what it sets out to do, j irrespective of every, circumstance, the

vagaries of machinery ami of'human lif». The eight hours growler who likes his growls to get into newspapers, in comparison to the newspaper man is fitted with a jewelled sinecure, but he believes himself to lie perfectly competent to instruct the person who works round the clocik so that he can see what won the Cup and what the Judge said in the carpet-beaters' arbitration case. New Zealand is the best newspapeml country in the world. The intelligence of the people demands that they shall be well served in this respect. There have been times when strivers held that the public was rather too well treated. In case any unthinking person this morning should take a hasty glance over the earth's news and wind up with "Huh. there's nothing in the rag!" will he kindly remember that, first and last, ithas taken many hundreds of people the world over to produce the Taranaki Daily News for Friday, 27th May, and that there is no business in which so much devotion to duty is necessary as in the gathering and setting forth of news.