Another paper which came gradually forward about the same time in some rivalry with the Times was the Standard. Founded in 1827 it came into line with the progressive press by being reduced to a penny in 1858. In politics it represented the clergy and landed gentry and aspired to greater power of literary expression than any daily morning paper except the Times. One of its claims to distinction was the fact that the late Marquis of Salisbury, most brilliant of free-lances, wrote freely for it in his earlier days. Owned at one time by Captain Johnston, it was left by him in the charge of a very able journalist and manager, who brought it to great heights of prosperity during the Disraelian period of power. When Mudford relinquished control at the end of the century it began a decline, which has taken it through several proprietorships.
A rival to the Times on another side was the Morning Post, whose history divides itself easily into two halves. Founded in 1772 its early days were tinged with great literary distinction. At the turn of the century it had frequent contributions from Coleridge, Southey, Arthur Young and brought out some of Wordsworth’s greatest sonnets. Mackworth Praed was later a regular contributor. But in accordance with a well-known commercial law that with too much brilliancy there is too little money it passed ultimately to a paper-maker named Crompton in satisfaction of a bad debt. Crompton made a good choice of an editor in Peter Borthwick but it was Borthwick’s son, Algernon, who ultimately raised the paper to great prosperity after having bought it on his own account at a time, when it was still a somewhat speculative venture.
The Morning Post through many vicissitudes had always preserved its extremely aristocratic and fashionable connections, to which Borthwick added tactful management, an eager desire for good and early news and a prudent distrust of mere ability. Five years after his purchase of the paper he had the courage to reduce the price to a penny in 1881, and in a few years reaped so assured a reward that he was able to improve his paper without damaging his property. At the present time it maintains a high standard of intellectual ability in many departments and contains more features of merit than any paper in its own rank. Borthwick became Lord Glenesk and the paper is still in the possession of his family. The editor is Mr. Gwynne and one of the noted men on its staff is Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, Professor of Military History at Oxford.
There have come down to us from the great days of the penny press two daily morning papers, whom the stress of competition has driven into the more popular ranks, yet which fortunately preserve several of their most valuable characteristics, as an inheritance of ancient days. The Daily Chronicle and Daily News together in 1904, took the final plunge to a halfpenny price, which will probably remain the ultimate minimum, unless we invent something equivalent to the three centimes price of one paper in Milan. The Daily Chronicle was the latest arrival among London daily morning papers, as it emerged from the Clerkenwell News in 1877 and for many years had a peculiarly strong local hold on London. It represented at one time a milder form of Liberalism, but just before the Boer war it surged up on a wave of aggressive independence of traditional views. The editor at that time, a brilliant journalist, Mr. H. W. Massingham, courageously held opinions about an editor’s rights, which would in effect have made newspaper proprietors rather more like mere annuitants, than some of them cared to be. The assertion of his views by resigning his position came at a moment when commercialism was not losing its hold on the press and his paper came under a more moderate régime during the early stages of the war. After it became a halfpenny paper the Daily Chronicle adopted more popular features, shortening its articles and increasing its headlines. But it has passed through its change very reticently and this feature of considered progressiveness is carefully preserved by the present editor, Mr. Robert Donald. It is the private property of the Lloyd family.
The change in the Daily News had much the same material effect on its outward appearance. But the inward transformation was reversed. Mr. (now Sir Edward) Cook in 1900 had taken an imperialist line about the outbreak of the war, while the Cadbury family, who had acquired the paper, took the opposite view. The effect was the same as with the Daily Chronicle. The Daily News now represents with much ability the views of the left wing of the Liberal party, not at all Socialist and quite distinct from the Labour Press. Its policy is highly sentimental and inclined to a disinterested humanitarianism, which opposes narrow national views. It somehow fails to exclude this tinge of feeling from its presentation of news, particularly in foreign affairs, and some people hold this to be a serious journalistic fault.
The Daily News is a paper with a great past in spite of an unfortunate beginning. It was started by Charles Dickens at the height of his fame with some money from his hosts of friends and the more weighty confidence of his publishers. As has happened since on Bouverie Street account all the salaries in Fleet Street were raised. The story has been told more than once and a contemporary professional view of it was given by Russell of the Times. “The 21st of January, 1846, came at last and there was a wild rush for the first number. At the sight of the outer sheet, hope at once lighted up the gloom of Printing House Square, the Strand and Shoe Lane. I am not sure that there were not social rejoicings that night in the editorial chambers, which had been so long beset by dread. Dickens had gathered round him newspaper celebrities, critics in art, music and literature, correspondents, politicians, statists. Yea, even the miscalled penny-a-liner was there. But Dickens was not a good editor; he was the best reporter in London and as a journalist he was nothing more. He had no political instincts or knowledge and was ignorant of and indifferent to what are called Foreign Affairs; indeed he told me himself that he never thought about them till the Revolution of 1848. He had appointed as manager his father, whom he is said to have immortalized as Micawber....” Forster, who had been Dickens’ chief backer, took up the burden after three months for another three months himself but it was Eyre Crowe, as editor, and Charles Wentworth Dilke, as manager, who pulled the venture round into smoother waters. Their great success was made in handling the revolutions of 1848 and the complicated European disturbances which followed. Similarly it was the success of Sir John Robinson in dealing with the Franco-German war and the brilliant successes of Archibald Forbes, which brought the Daily News once more into the front rank of papers. The present editor is Mr. A. G. Gardiner.
In the history of English newspapers the most astonishing sky-rocket came with the advent of the Daily Mail in 1896. Its immediate and phenomenal success was one of those things, which can be explained afterwards, but was little expected at the time. It was the final result of a movement of great vitality in the press, which up to that time had remained unnoticed. What that movement was we shall see, when we come to discuss the various forms taken by our weekly press and the remarkable revolution, which started in the provinces and bore such astonishing fruit in London. The Daily Mail had just time to make an assured success in London and Manchester before the outbreak of the African war, an event, which has had the effect of making a fresh dichotomy in our politics and in all that depends primarily on politics including newspapers and to some extent society. It led to a new division between the sheep and the goats with a vehement acceleration in the old-time controversy, as to which was which. In that rearrangement of ideas all our newspapers bore their part but to the scientific management of all the arts of improved combustion of feelings and sentiments the Daily Mail added an energy which carried all before it. The use of the pens of Rudyard Kipling and of an exceedingly able special writer, the late G. W. Steevens, lent a striking advertisement to the popular passion but did not really create it. The years 1899 and 1900 offered an opening to a newcomer in journalism, which is not likely to be repeated. Here was a nation which had been talking about war for forty-five years without seriously experiencing it. Here was a journalism, not inefficient and not unobservant of new tendencies, but inclined to believe that dignity was profitable and that every wise man would look round twice before taking any serious step. The result to those, who had the privilege of taking advantage of it, was a commercial success at least equivalent to that of old John Walter, a century before, more easily realized and with possibly less far-reaching consequences. The editor is Mr. Marlowe and the property with several other papers is substantially in the hands of Lord Northcliffe and his associates.
With a brief reference to the Daily Express, the Daily Mail’s strong popular rival on its own side in politics, to the financial papers such as the Financial Times, and the latest addition to London dailies, the Financier and Bullionist, founded in 1870 and London’s chief sporting daily, the Sportsman, owned by the Ashley family, we must pass on to the evening papers of the Metropolis. At one time London was very considerably behind the provinces in the development of its popular evening papers largely owing to the great cost of distribution and also because Londoners had always been more addicted to the morning paper habit. But of late the Evening News and the Star have placed themselves in the front rank of successful commercial exploitation. But they can hardly be said to exercise any serious influence on opinion. This function is exercised however to a very considerable degree by the penny evening papers, who secure the attention of the commercial and professional classes on their way home to dinner and often exercise an influence equal to that of the most powerful morning daily. They are able also to use effectually all the material and comment supplied by the morning press.
Of the four London penny evening papers the oldest is the Globe (1803). In its young days it was Liberal and preponderantly literary. It sheltered both Thomas Love Peacock and “Ingoldsby” Barham. At the present day in common with the Evening Standard, once the St. James’s Gazette (1880), it more or less repeats the function of a morning paper, as being chiefly devoted to news, with comment, as a subordinate feature. The Pall Mall Gazette is the spoilt child of journalism. Founded in 1865 under the editorship of Frederick Greenwood, it sprang at once to the position of being the darling favourite of intellectual London, which it has never entirely lost in spite of alternate periods of hideous sensationalism and considered dulness, in spite of a complete reversal of politics and of every imaginable transformation of “make-up” and journalistic devices. In its early years it had a ring of noted contributors, such as George Eliot, Charles Reade, Sir James Stephen, R. H. Hutton, James Hannay, Anthony Trollope and Tom Hughes. Through the brother of the editor, James Greenwood, and his adventures as an “Amateur Casual” it first introduced to London the sensational realism, which was afterwards carried by a later editor, W. T. Stead, to intolerable lengths. Besides Stead, Lord Morley and Sir Edward Cook have been editors and Lord Milner was once a member of its staff. It is now the property of Mr. W. W. Astor and is edited by one of the most influential journalists in London, Mr. Garvin. It is safe to say that no Conservative morning paper wields more power in the councils of the party than the Pall Mall Gazette.
In this respect it meets a worthy rival on the Liberal side in the Westminster Gazette. Founded by Sir Edward Cook and the late Sir George Newnes as an offshoot of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1892, in consequence of the staff of the latter having to go into the street, because they could not manage a change of opinions with a change of proprietorship, it has always held a very remarkable position in its own party. It is the only penny daily paper in London, which supports the Liberal party and government. Its editor, Mr. J. A. Spender, has thus had a greatness thrust upon him, which few could consistently maintain. What his paper has to say every day on current politics receives an attention from the leader writers in provincial papers of the next morning, the extent of which they might be reluctant to acknowledge. The Westminster Gazette may be classed decidedly amongst those important things, which we are accustomed to call an “Institution.” For so young a paper its success has been phenomenal and one of the deep-rooted causes of its power is due to the fact, that it is probably the only paper in the capital on the Liberal side in politics, which is habitually read by an influential section of its opponents.