JOURNALISM IN LONDON AND THE PROVINCES.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 89, 22 January 1872, Page 3

JOURNALISM IN LONDON AND THE PROVINCES.

CONCERN NO the position of the metropolitan Press, the Economist says : —Unless we arc greatly mistaken —and we have watched the process for many years, and have no interest to blind our judgment — a great change is passing over the position of the metropolitan Press. It is decidedly and visibly losing influence, vigour, and circulation. Tne number of daily papers published in London declines, their proprietors are less energetic, and the regard of flic mass of the pcop'e for their opinions daily tends to diminish. We are inclined to believe that, apart from accident, the fall of the London Press, and rice of the Provinc’al Press will continue until we see something like the state of things in America, where each journal however good, finds geographical limits to its circulation, and the journals of the greatest city have no universal influence, and only a nominal precedence in the newspaper world. In what way that change will affect the profession, we must leave for future discussion ; but one of its main results must, we conceive, bo to increase the power of journalism in the aggregate while diminishing the power of any individual journal, a change which in England will be a very great one indeed ; —and another to make provincial opinion —the opinion of the great trading cities — much more influential than that somewhat overcautious and feeble, hut acute, set of ideas usually described as ‘London opinion.’ There is crudity very often in the opinion of the province, but it is masculine and broad, which opinion, at present, in London certainly is not.”