The Newspaper

by George Binney Dibblee

The Press Association in this country is almost as dominant as the Associated Press in America, but it does not include the London papers. It has for the provinces the same partnership with Reuter, as its cousin in America. The term P.A. is as much in the mouths of newspaper men on the one side as the A.P. is on the other. But it has one feature, as some people think, of superiority over the American organization in that it is a truly co-operative body; it welcomes any new member which wishes to join its membership and except for the London press, which remained voluntarily outside its scope, it includes every newspaper of any position in the country.

Reuter is so much a household word that an explanation of the function of Reuter’s Telegram Company is quite unnecessary. It was founded by the late Baron Julius de Reuter as a telegraph and foreign newsagency business and was turned into a public company in 1865 for the purpose of raising sufficient capital to equip a telegraph cable from England to Germany. This direction of development was subsequently altered and the cable sold and Reuter’s name became the trade-mark for semi-official foreign news all over the world.

Of domestic newsagencies in the United Kingdom there are many which come and sometimes go without making much stir in the world. The chief rival of the Press Association and Reuter is the Central News covering both domestic and foreign intelligence. Laffan’s service is also international in character and so is the Agence Havas. The chief domestic rivals of the P.A. are the Exchange Telegraph Company and the London News Agency, a newcomer founded by three or four experienced reporters, who found their old livelihood made by “penny-a-lining” being slowly undermined by the agencies. At one time these made almost a monopoly of police-court news in London, but this with other general news now passed almost completely out of private hands.

In addition there are the specialist agencies, whose names in most cases proclaim their work, such as the Commercial Press Telegram Bureau, the American Press Telegram Bureau, the National Press Agency, the Labour Press Agency, the sporting news services and firms like Tillotson’s, who do a great business in syndicating popular fiction for publication by newspapers in feuilleton form. Topical photographs are also a favourite subject of traffic by agencies for the benefit of illustrated papers. There is no question that this form of enterprise is largely on the increase, as the public is agog to have every sense tickled, as well as to have information as food for the imagination.

Some of the humbler servants to newspaper production, which escape the notice of those, who only know the big journals of the large cities on both sides of the Atlantic, are the agencies, whose business it is to furnish syndicated matter, supplied at a low price, not only already written and edited but even set up in print, stereotyped and ready for the press. Such a commodity passes in America under the name of “plate matter” and the trade in this branch of literary wares is enormous, especially there, where the small local papers cannot rely upon filling more than half their columns with the real news of their own districts. The organizations which supply this line of goods, sell the matter at so much a column or half column with or without illustrations. General news, fiction, truth, political opinions and jokes are all offered at the same “flat rate.” It is as near a thing to a Cervelatwurst, sold by the pound or foot, as one can get in the intellectual world.

There is one field for journalism, which is now peculiarly the property of the enormously circulated evening press. The halfpenny evening paper is the daily paper of the working man and especially so in the provinces, where in the small towns none but evening newspapers exist. For their immense mass of readers every conceivable matter of national or personal interest is subordinated to the overwhelming predominance of games, sports and betting. It is no exaggeration to say that five-sixths of the circulation of all the halfpenny evening papers is built up on amusements and gambling. The two for the most part go hand in hand, because, with the single exception of cricket, there is hardly any widely extended form of sport, which, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, is not the subject, and predominantly the subject, of betting. Incomparably the keenest competition in the newspaper world is developed as the result of rivalry to bring out the earliest news of sporting events. There is no indication of a reversal of this tendency, but since the mechanical facilities, which provide the means of this rapid production, are now the common property of all, it is no longer possible for any one competitor to leave another seriously behind.

The progress and development of these mechanical facilities are probably a matter of general interest, because, although the results of this break-neck rivalry are apparent to any man in the street, the methods, by which it is accomplished, are due to very elaborate devices of great technical perfection. I do not know that it is a matter to be inordinately proud of but this form of competition was first developed to its highest form of excellence, not in America but in England and not in London, but in the provinces. The old and common method of bringing out a special edition with the results of a race was by cutting a hole in the stereoplate from which the paper was printed and slipping in a small box with a spring, holding one or two lines of type. The process was dangerous and inadequate because it would be used only once for one announcement and that a curtailed one. Mr. Mark Smith of Manchester originally invented the device now in universal use. His invention is variously called the “late-news device” the “stop-press box” or familiarly the “fudge.” The object of this invention was to enable several small items of news, such as the result of a race or football match or the score at cricket, to be rapidly inserted in the paper, without the necessity of altering the body of the text and of going through the lengthy operation of recasting the large metal stereoplates from which all rapid printing has to be done. For this purpose a blank of about half a column has to be left on the main page, or on whichever page is selected for the latest news, so that, as the paper passes through the printing-press, that portion remains unprinted. Corresponding with the space thus left blank, there is attached to the printing-press a small supplementary cylinder, which can carry securely clamped a specially designed box to hold type or linotype slugs, so adjusted as to print on the portion of paper left blank during its passage through the main press. It is an easy and expeditious task to alter the contents of this small box without otherwise disarranging the plates and the process effected a material increase in the pace of production over the old methods, especially where a large number of presses were used to produce a big edition. The two to five minutes thus gained were quite sufficient to establish a decisive advantage over a rival not similarly equipped for publishing news of special interest. At the present time hardly any evening paper in any considerable town in America or the United Kingdom is without this invention.

At one time this device was protected by a patent, which was the property of a firm for which I was acting and I came across an amusing experience in connection with it during one of my visits to America. Some little time before, while my firm was engaged in difficult and expensive litigation over the validity of the patent in this country, there had been some question of the purchase of these patent rights for New York by the proprietors of the New York X. We had been asked in the course of this negotiation, whether we would defend this patent, if infringed. Having our hands more than full with litigation at the moment we declined, but offered to sell the entire rights in the invention to the New York paper for a moderate sum. The New York X broke off negotiations and knowing that the patent would not be defended adopted the device at once and spent a very considerable sum of money in adapting their presses for this purpose. There the matter was dropped for the moment.

Some eighteen months later, when we had successfully established our own patent here through a decision in the House of Lords, I had occasion to go to New York and found myself one evening in the office of the New York X. The occasion was of exceeding importance to the New York press. It was the night when the prize-fight to decide the championship of the world was to take place at Coney Island—a little way out of the city—between Jefferies and Fitz-Simmons and the island of Manhattan was agog from end to end with excitement to a degree, which sober Britons would hardly understand. On that occasion there was especial rivalry between the two popular papers in New York, the X, in whose office I was, and the Y. Both had made elaborate arrangements for special editions and the presses in both offices were furnished with very expensive installations of the special late news apparatus, which was controlled by our patent.

Mr. M. the manager of the X received me most cordially and showed me all over his office and the machine room. When I reminded him of our unsuccessful negotiation over the patent, he smiled genially and remarked that it was all right. In introducing me to various foremen in the building he said, jocosely: “This is Mr. D., whose patent we stole,”—the exact phrase was his own. Before leaving him that night I met him in his own spirit and said in farewell: “You have spent a lot of money on equipping yourself with this patent and the Y has done the same. What good has either of you got out of it? Do you not think it would have been better to have bought our patents for a moderate sum and have kept out the other fellow?” He smiled: “Now that you put it that way, perhaps you are right.” So we said: “Good-night.”