II
The Nature of Stentor
What is a newspaper? Ask any editor or proprietor, and he will tell you that its primary function is the dissemination of news, and its secondary, but none the less immensely important, task is that of commenting on the happenings of to-day or forecasting those of to-morrow, with the object of educating the community and guiding public opinion. So we are frequently informed, in rotund periods, by noble lords who respond to the toast of The Press at public feastings.
What, actually, is a newspaper? To begin with, it contains advertisements, mainly of women’s dress, soaps, face creams and powders, chocolate, beer, whisky, tobacco, and motor cars. Democracy’s needs.
Then there is a page of pictures, gathered at great expense from the ends of the earth, often transmitted by aeroplane, and providing a feast of new hats and evening wraps from Paris, railway accidents, shipwrecks, upturned tramcars and motor lorries that have fallen into ditches, the more or less recognisable portraits of men and women performing at the Divorce Courts or for some other reason temporarily in the public eye, photographs of film actresses, and pictures of the diversions of the Rich at the races, on the moors, on the Lido, and on the Riviera. Democracy’s peep-show.
After these hors d’œuvres come the leading articles, letters to the editor, “nature notes” straight from Fleet Street, an instalment of a serial story depicting a life such as was never lived on land or sea, pictures which are believed to amuse the children, and “leader page articles” largely contributed (or at least signed) by doctors, divines, the wives of ex-Cabinet Ministers, Russian Princesses, actresses, and—occasionally—journalists.
There are also articles in which women are instructed how to dress, cook, arrange a luncheon table, plan schemes of interior decoration, pack their trunks for a holiday, economise in the household, and retain the affection of their husbands.
The residue is news.
But not all of it.
For much of this residue is news only in a specialised and restricted sense. City notes, produce market notes, the movements of shipping, and golf, bridge, gardening, or motoring notes do not appeal to every reader. Nor, for that matter, does literary criticism, or the critiques of plays, films, concerts, and picture exhibitions.
But the residue of the residue is news. And that includes “gossip” by ladies and gentlemen apparently on terms of the utmost intimacy with Royalty and the nobility and gentry, the deaths of centenarians, the bright sayings of witnesses at police courts, the witty sayings of judges, the wise sayings of magistrates, and the futile sayings of coroners.