NEWSPAPER 



57 17 



THE NEWSPAPER AND ITS INFLUENCE 



O. B. Dlfohleo, M.A., Author ot TU H*w*papr 



In addition to the companion articU on Journalism, the reader is 



.i,s, ami "ther great newspapers, 



both British and foreign, and to those on Deli and other 



eminent journalists. See also Northcliffe, Viscount 



A good definition of a newspaper 



is impossible. It is a periodical 

 publication which contains a re- 

 run I i if public events and a selec- 

 in current happenings. It 



mill. nil-* comments "II matters Of 



pulilif interest, criticisms of litera- 

 ture musie. and art, and diM-u.-Mon 

 of commercial and financial ques- 

 tions. It is thus at once a news 

 sheet, a pamphlet, and a review ; 

 vet t his is only one-half of its func- 

 tions. On the business side it has 

 generally a considerable system of 

 classified advertising which links 

 together the business world and 

 affords publicity to all kinds of 

 commercial enterprise. 



While, in London, probably the 

 daily morning papers are pre- 

 dominant, in the provinces the 

 public get their news chiefly from 

 evening papers, while a vast part 

 of the population read their news- 

 paper only once a week. On the 

 O>ntiiient morning and evening 

 newspapers have, perhaps, almost 

 equal rank. In the U.S.A. the 

 daily morning paper seems to carry 

 all before it; but the part played 

 in Europe by popular weeklies is 

 taken by the huge Sunday issues 

 which every daily paper in America 

 carries with it. Outside Europe, 

 the U.S.A., and the British empire 

 there are few papers with an in- 

 ternational reputation, and per- 

 haps the only exceptions are La 

 Prensa and La Nacion, of Buenos 

 Aires, and El Mercurio, of 

 Santiago, Chile. 



Neglecting the fanciful ancestry 

 of a fugitive sheet in Venice and in 

 the England of Elizabeth, the 

 foundation of the press must be 

 attributed to the early 18th cen- 

 tury. The brilliant group of writers 

 who succeeded the pamphleteers 

 of the Civil War were the real 

 fathers of the newspaper. From 

 the pamphlets of Bolingbroke and 

 Swift arose the political leading 

 article ; from the essays of Addison 

 and Steele the columns of social 

 chat, literary and art criticism. 

 Foundation ol The Times 



But the first complete master of 

 English journalism was Daniel De- 

 foe, and the first newspaper to be 

 considered of any account was The 

 Review, which he started in 1704. 



After Defoe, the next outstand- 

 ing figure in Anglo-Saxon 'ournal- 

 ism was John Walter, who founded 

 The Times in 1785. He stereo- 

 typed the form of the newspaper 

 which is still predominant and was 



for 100 years practically the only 

 prevailing type for a daily news- 

 paper in Great Britain. He bad 

 enterprise, both as an editor and 

 purveyor of news and as a business 

 man, and he seized the opportunity 

 alTonled by the opposition of the 

 commercial classes to the rigorous 

 government of Pitt and his succes- 

 sors to build up The Times into a 

 great power. The wars of the 

 period afforded him enormous 

 scope in the prime duty of collect- 

 ing news. Having been refused 

 the use of the post for his foreign 

 news packets, he established his 

 own system of communication and 

 beat the government with im- 

 portant items of news on several 

 occasions. The Times, for example, 

 was the first to announce the news 

 of Waterloo. 



Development in the U.S.A. 



In the hands of John Walter's 

 son and successor The Times con- 

 tinued to grow in power, and made 

 itself specially prominent and suc- 

 cessful in exposing the malad- 

 ministration of the Crimean cam- 

 paign through the publication of 

 the letters of W. H. Russell. In the 

 provinces the same type of news- 

 paper was reproduced in great 

 journals like The Scotsman and 

 The Manchester Guardian. 



The change that was to bring 

 about a partial revolution in the 

 daily press of the Anglo-Saxon 

 world started in the U.S.A. Here 

 two men, James Gordon Bennett 

 and Joseph Pulitzer, successively 

 developed an entirely different 

 type of journalism, which carried a 

 complete change into the nature 

 and organization of newspapers. 

 In their day primary education 

 was better developed and spread 

 over a wider area of the population 

 of America than in the United 

 Kingdom, and they found a public 

 of vast dimensions able and eager 

 to read, but with no further educa- 

 tion. The new public was un- 

 critical as to matters of taste, and 

 perhaps even veracity, and de- 

 manded news and amusement. The 

 tide, therefoie, set strongly in the 

 direction of sensationalism, and 

 the American system of reporting 

 was developed ; this, in its industry, 

 avidity, and enterprise, regardless 

 of expense, exceeded in efficiency 

 the news-collecting organizations 

 of any other country in the world. 

 In the same period, too, was de- 

 veloped the American Sunday 

 newspaper, an omnium gatherum 



NEWSPAPER 



of every conceivable kind of 

 subject and illustration. 



The effect* of this change were 

 in time to cross the Atlantic, but 

 tin- I'.iiM-h daily prem, modelled 

 on The Time*, remained secure in 

 it* supremacy until almost the 

 close of the 19th century. The 

 seeds of tin- < -hange, however, were 

 ^iwu in l*7n liy Fonter'i Educa- 

 tion Act, which slowly began to 

 provide a vastly inc reaped but un- 

 critical public, which demanded an 

 immense change in popular journal- 

 ism. During these 30 years there 

 began to grow up a duality in 

 Kn'i-h journalism, which can be 

 best described as a distinction 

 between journals for the classes 

 and for the masses. The new pub- 

 lic at first demanded jokes and 

 anecdotes and items of solid in- 

 formation, and these began to be 

 supplied by a new type of popular 

 weeklies, of which the three earliest 

 in the field, Tit- Bits, Answers, and 

 Pearson's Weekly, were started in 

 the 'eighties by the houses of 

 Newnes, Harmsworth, and Pearson. 



The success of the mass journal- 

 ism brought fortunes to its promo- 

 ters, and gradually their enterprise 

 was turned in the direction of daily 

 newspapers. The earliest success in 

 this line was made by the London 

 Evening News and the subsequent 

 establishment of a halfpenny 

 morning paper, The Daily Mail. 

 This had been preceded by The 

 Star and The Echo, evening papers, 

 The Morning and The Morning 

 Leader, and was succeeded by The 

 Daily Express Here was a fully 

 equipped halfpenny morning and 

 evening press, and about the time 

 of the S. African War its popular 

 success began to exert increasing 

 pressure on the great dailies. 

 Popular British Weeklies 



Meanwhile a similar change was 

 coming over the country by the 

 development of popular weeklies 

 with vast circulations. The move- 

 ment this time began in the pro- 

 vinces, where The Sunday Chron- 

 icle and The Umpire of Manchester 

 led the way, followed by The Shef- 

 field Weekly Telegraph, and some 

 Scottish weeklies in Glasgow and 

 Dundee. London soon Dana to 

 develop its Sunday papers. Llovd's 

 Weekly News, the Referee, The 

 People, The Weekly Dispatch, and 

 The News of the World ran up cir- 

 culations of a million or more, and 

 the number of these papers was 

 considerably increased by the 

 Great War, which also gave a great 

 impetus to illustrated daily and 

 weekly journalism. The Daily 

 Miin-r and The Daily Sketch are 

 predominantly photographic pa- 

 pers, as also are The Sunday Pic- 

 torial and The Sunday Herald. A 



