LORD NORTHCLIFFE,

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1921, Page 12

LORD NORTHCLIFFE,

A MARVELLOUS CAREER. ROMANCE OF NEWSPAPER LIFE. Viscount Northcliffe, who has been in New Zealand this past week, has had a career at once the most romantic and the most successful in the records of the newspaper press. At the age of 15, Alfred Harmsworth made his first venture into journalism by starting a school magazine. He is now but 56, and as the result of his own efforts he controls some 60 periodicals, including the most widely read and the most influential of English daily newspapers. In the first issue of the school magazine there was an announcement that is said to have been the keynote of his career. It read: “I have it on the best authority that this paper is to be a marked success.” His newspaper ventures have since been a series of marked successes. For a- time the Daily Mirror was the conspicuous exception. Of it Lord Northcliffe wrote: —‘T had for many years a theory that a daily newspaper for women was in urgent request, and I started one. This belief cost me a hundred thousand pounds. I found out that I was beaten. Women do not want a daily paper of their own. It was another instance of failure made by mere man in diagnosing woman’s needs. Some people say that a woman never really knows what she wants. It is certain she knew what she didn’t want. She didn’t want the Daily Mirror.” Lord Northcliffe then converted the publication into an illustrated daily for men and women and it became one of his most valuable properties. At the age of 16 Alfred Harmsworth was writing for the Young Folks’ Budget, and at 17 he was editor of the weekly paper Youth. In the following years he gained experience of daily journalism largely as a contributor until the state of his health drove him from London and he took an editorial appointment in Coventry. Here he published the first number of Answers, the popular miscellany, which laid the foundation of his fortune. He was then in his twenty-first year. At 22 Alfred Harmsworth was a successful man of affairs, head of a growing business that was on its way to become the richest publishing enterprise in the world. Long before he turned 30, he had a string of nearly two score publications ranging from Comic Cuts to the London Magazine. INTO DAILY JOURNALISM. Just as he was about to leave his strenuous twenties, Lord Northcliffe took hi? first plunge into daily journalism. With his brother, now Lord Rothormere. he bought the Cinderella of London journalism, the Evening News. The Conservative Party had spent between £300,000 ai.d ’.£406.000 on it. without result. It was the joke of the profession. Wags of the Radical press amused themselves by having its shares sold in bushel baskets, and then informing the world that the shares had brought a few pence each.

Lord Northcliffe thus, describes his connection with the Evening News: —In 1894 Mr. Kennedy Jones asjeed my brother, Lord )Rothermere. and me if we would adventure £25,000 in buying the Evening News.

f remember that after a hard day’s work in editing, managing, and writing for periodicals my brother and I met Mr. Jones night after night in the' ramshackle building in Whitefriars Street in the endeavor to find out what was wrong with the Evening News. Our combined efforts soon discovered the

faults. They were mainly two—lack of continuity of policy (there had, I think, been eight editors) and lack of managerial control. In a few months wo had established the paper in the public confidence and were beginning to plan my long-cherished project of a morning newspaper.

.BIRTH OF THE DAILY MAIL. The long-cherished project was the Daily Mail, which Lord Northcliffe launched on. May 4, 1896. It was a phenomenal success from the start. Of its birth Lord Northcliffe says: “We had prepared for an issue of 100.000 copies. We thought that we had made every provision for every contingency, but the only lack of foresight shown, if 1 may say so with modesty, was in not anticipating the immense demand which resulted.

The actual number of copies produced on the first day was 397.215. and it became instantly necessary to commandeer various neighboring printing establishments while more machinery was being made for us.

Those first Daily Mail days were strenuous enough. In my own case I did not leave the office for the first two days and night?, and then went home and slept for 22 hours, and should probably have slept longeb had not my household got alarmed at this mysterious somnolence and had rne awakened. During the Boer War the sale of the Daily Mail rose to over a million copies, and in 1900 the novel projeet-»was tried of producing the journal every day in replica in Manchester. The publication of a Continental edition in Paris followed. To-day the Daily Mail is the most, widely-circulated newspaper in the world.

RECENT ACTIVITIES. Tn 1908. only 12 years after the establishment of the Daily Afail, Lord Northcliffe won his next newspaper triumph by securing a controlling interest in the Times. Since then he has. except for his manifold war activities, been devoting himself largely to the interests of that great newspaper. From the date of his first experiment in daily journalism only 14 years elapsed till he was in full control of the most famous and most influential of British newspapers.

Throughout his life Lord Northcliffe has sought and won success through unorthodox and original onenns. His newspapers have always aroused opposition, and especially during the war their political campaigns and criticisms of public men provoked violent hostility. The Daily Mail was burned on the London Stock Exchange, the Times and its controller have been attacked fro' " end to end of the United Kingdom. So much of ibis as is not the outcome of partisan prejudice is a criticism of method "not of purpose, for it cannot in sober argumentbe disputed that Lord Northcliffe is a patriotic Englishman, that in all his war-time activities he displayed an Englishman's will and desire to win through to victory, and tlkHt if he was careless of the reputations of high-placed personages. it was because he believed strongly that they stood in the way of the triumph of British arms.

oi his newspapers he took a

great part in war work. He •'was chairman of the British War Mission to the United States, director of the Civil Aerial Transport Committee, and director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries. In the last-mentioned capacity alone his service was outstanding. He had unique qualifications for organising the collection, compilation, and distribution of news and arguments in the form most likely to impress enemy countries, and he carried the work through with the skill, the thoroughness and the vigor which has been characteristic of ail his actions.

Lord Riddell, one of the best known of London newspaper owners, said of Lord Northcliffe the other day: “During the war I was brought into very close touch with Lord Northcliffe, and had special facilities for seeing what Lord Northcliffe did and what his organisation did. From the first to the last Lord Northcliffe had but one motive and object in view—his only object was victory. No sacrifices were too great on Iris part or on the part of those who worked with him in order to secure the end. Indeed, I think I am justified in saying that the breakdown of Lord Northcliffe’s health was due in a great measure to a trip which he took to America for the purpose of performing most important public duties. I am confident of this, that when history comes to be written Lord Northcliffe’s work in the war will hold a high place in the records of British achievement.”