PROCESSION OF EDITORS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 897, 12 October 1956, Page 13

PROCESSION OF EDITORS

"WE"" AND ME, by J. W. Robertson Scott; W. H. Allen, English price 21/-. HOUGH the author has covered its general ground before, this book is unique, and likely to remain so. Robertson Scott, founder and editor of a famous country magazine, for which he still writes at ninety, here surveys English editing, with W. T. Stead for a start, his Pal] Mall Gazette chief in the eighties. Moreover, whether such a review is called for in the future, will depend on how editors fare, a question of great public moment. They are now less potent than they were. Of the four eminent editors who form the core of the book, J. A. Spender, master of the simply-written persuasive editorial, was so influential in the Liberal Party that he was called "Minister without Portfolio." Everybody in and around the official world read his Westminster leaders, but the sale was never more than thirty thousand, and the paper lost money steadily. A Balliol product, Spender had a restricted news sense, and stood somewhat aloof from the masses. H, W. Massingham, the leading radical journalist of his day, left the Star and Chronicle on questions of principle, and saw the Nation sold over his head, This famous weekly had a circulation of only fourteen thousand, and had been run at a loss for some time. Today the New Statesman and Nation, which absorbed two other weeklies (an ominous process) sells seventy-four thousand. Numbers of other journalists walk on to this stage, and there are many glimpses of the political scene. By reason of personal portraits, discussion of craft technicalities, and questions of journalistic responsibility, this book ranks as one of the most fascinating and important of its kind. Spender and Massingham set a very high literary standard, and Robertson Scott counters a stupid contrast between "soul-destroy-ing journalistic hackwork and literature" by quoting Shaw’s ‘dictum, illustrated from literary history, that "the highest literature is journalism." Many newspaper articles are literature, and much bad writing is accorded book covers. Robertson Scott drives home the simple truth, so often overlooked, that a newspaper or -periodical lives by advertisements. The landscape is strewn with the bodies of excellent ventures that died from this starvation. He tells us here how he started the Countryman against expert advice, with a capital of >500, and succeeded because he worked as hard over his advertisements as oVer his reading matter. Every reader knows that the Countryman’s "ads" are a real "draw." The quarterly has been run at a profit, and has a glittering and varied roll of subscribers. Lastly, there is a most interesting but disturbing chapter, -with examples

right up to the last few years, on differences that have led to retirements, and how such breaks might be prevented, Robertson Scott thinks that "almost the only editors perfectly at ease are the owner-editors, of whom there can never be many." Yes, indeed; the faculties of making money and of editing are quite different. It all adds up to the dictum quoted with approval by Wickham Steed, himself an ornament and a victim. that "the Press is the central prob-

lem of modern democracy."

A.

M.