From far-off worlds, from dim eternal shores
Whose echo dashes on life’s wave-worn strands.
The people who are connected with journalism in Australia, as elsewhere, fall naturally into three classes—managers, sub-editors, and newspaper writers. There are numerous subdivisions, but these are the three cardinal ones. The outside public does not always appreciate the value of the classification just given. The outside public may, therefore, in its tolerance, submit to be informed. For modern journalism has become a vast and comprehensive and complex thing. It touches every one, interests every one, more or less attracts every one, more or less mystifies every one. The man who is not an outsider, but who has had the lot to
See with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine—
who has been caught up and whirled round by the wheels, so to speak—should be able to claim the privilege of describing his observations and his sensations.
The managerial class is deserving of much respect, and usually gets all that it deserves. Its members are few, but its influence is undoubtedly great. Only a short account need be given of the character and abilities of the handful of men who either own or manage the great “dailies” of Australia.
For them the anonymity of the profession does not exist. They live much in the public eye. They collect the praise; they accept the flattery; they grow rich on the proceeds. The blame, when there is blame, is also theirs. But what terrors can the breath of outside criticism have for men who sell their papers at the rate of 30,000 or 40,000, or 100,000 a day? What profit is there in kicking against the pricks? These men who control the city newspapers form a separate oligarchy, and a powerful one. They are not troubled with any misgivings as to their own potentialities in the cosmos. They have a practical working knowledge of the world, and a vast confidence in themselves. Sometimes they know how to write, sometimes they do not. In any case it does not matter. Whatever brains they want they can easily purchase. They live in large mansions in the suburbs, arrive at their offices at eleven o’clock in the morning, go regularly to Government House, and deal in Napoleonic fashion with complaints from the sub-editor, with suggestions from the commercial world, with expostulations from aggrieved politicians, and with applications for increases of salary from unsatisfied members of the staff. They have won their way to big positions, and they know it. It is an excellent and a pleasant thing to be the proprietor or the manager of a large newspaper in Australia.
The sub-editors, again, form a class by themselves; they resemble the managers in that they are not really journalists. Possibly at some stage of their individual careers they may have been, but they are so no longer. As a matter of fact they are the sworn enemies of journalism. They stand like the British infantry at Waterloo—a sort of cold iron palisade against which the effervescence of youthful journalistic enterprise dashes itself in vain. They represent not so much the literary, as the commercial instinct of the paper. They are the outposts which a cautious management sets to keep watch against the Philistines. The sub-editor has tremendous responsibility and very little power. Therein lies the tragedy of his existence. Before he begins his long series of vigils under the electric lamp, he knows that while he will get no manner of praise if everything goes right, he will get short and decisive shrift if anything goes wrong. He knows this very well; and the knowledge makes him what he is.
A strange existence, a strange personality is that of the sub-editor. He seems to resemble the patient, sleepless Eremite of Keats’s last sonnet; he is always there, and he is always “watching with eternal lids apart.” It is impossible not to admire him. He must, to be in any sense worthy of his post, possess great abilities. The machine that he controls is vast, unwieldy, and yet sensationally rapid in its flight. The Rio Grande of Paterson’s Steeplechase did not require a touch half so firm or half so fine to keep him in his course. Of the thousand objectionable, offensive, libellous, dangerous, unnecessary or unwise things that come under the sub-editor’s notice every week, how many get past him? How many does he suffer to see the light of day? It is impossible not to admire the sub-editor, but it is difficult to like him. He must be a man without pity and without remorse. If he made allowance for good intentions, if he judged otherwise than by results, he would ruin his paper in a month. If he did not effectively discourage the swarm of budding writers who attempt to rush him, he would speedily have to cease publication. If he were not constantly saying unpleasant things, he would inaugurate a reign of chaos. And yet there are one or two first-class sub-editors in Australia who are well liked, and by none better than by their victims. It is a strange anomaly, but there it is. In any case it is a great tribute to the personality of the man.