With regard to our one established humorous journal Punch, founded in the same year, 1841, as the Gardener’s Chronicle and by the same printer, it is as impossible to say anything new about it as to leave it out. Famous men without number have written and drawn for it, of whom I may mention, Mark Lemon, Douglas Jerrold, John Leech, Sir John Tenniel, Charles Keene and Du Maurier. The present editor, Mr. Owen Seaman, is a supreme master of polished and pointed verse.
After this brief and inadequate account of the technical press we must turn a moment’s attention to the general weeklies of London, which have the largest circulations in the world and represent the really popular tastes of the clerk, the artisan and the growing boy. Their history is peculiarly interesting because it includes the origin of the most vital and astonishing revolution that our press, at any rate, has ever seen. But before I come to describe this revolution we must notice first the three or four metropolitan weeklies, which supply the news, mostly of criminal or sporting matters, to the seven and a half millions, who live in and around London. The oldest is Lloyd’s Weekly News, established in 1842, which has reached a circulation of one and a quarter millions in round figures. The News of the World (1843) was at first a family paper published at threepence with a large circulation for those times, which fell away under old-fashioned management almost to nothing. But it came into the hands of two able business men, the proprietors of the Cardiff Mail, the late Lascelles Carr and Sir George Riddell, who modernized it, not without some loss of sedateness, and raised its circulation to two and a quarter millions a week, in all probability the largest in the world. Reynold’s Weekly News (1852), an extremely Radical popular organ and the People, allied with the Globe, each have a large following. Finally the Sunday Chronicle of Manchester is the best representative of some very widely circulated papers in the provinces with issues running up to a million in many cases.
The revolution in the English press, which has extended to every corner of journalism, except the “heavy weeklies,” originally started in the provinces and spread to London with three rather insignificant gossipy and anecdotic penny weeklies. But the causes of the movement were very far-reaching and may be said to have had their true origin in Forster’s Education Act of 1870. This measure brought into existence as new readers an enormous number of immature minds ready for the simplest information and oldest stories, as yet quite unsophisticated and disinclined to raffishness or vice. The older newspaper proprietors utterly failed to see the growth of these new and potential readers and made no effort to meet their needs. In fact one may say that it was almost impossible for journalists of the old school for the first time to cater for the untrained ineptitude of people who were equipped with mobilized wits and eager minds. The task was undertaken by entirely new men.
The pioneer of this movement was the late Sir George Newnes, who made the fortunate venture of starting Tit-Bits in Manchester in 1880. The name exactly describes the paper. The next in order was Answers, started in 1888 by the two young brothers Harmsworth, one of whom is now a peer and the other a knight. This paper was originally intended to contain answers to correspondents but, as no one corresponded, the paper had to become something else, so it became a fair imitation of Tit-Bits. The third Pearson’s Weekly, was begun by C. Arthur Pearson, who was for some time Newnes’s manager in London.
If the movement had stopped there, it would not have had an important influence on the British press. But these pioneers were all men of exceptional ability, activity and insight. Their rapid success gave them command of great sums of money and the power of obtaining more of it from the public. They had moreover an inside view of the public mind, which enabled them to see, not only what the public mind required at the moment but what it was likely to want next year. Because it must be borne in mind that the newly-invented public of the Education Act, which was satisfied with Tit-Bits in the eighties wanted something more in the next decade and a further advance in the new century. So the houses of Newnes, Pearson and Harmsworth became great publishing firms bringing out new periodicals, books and ultimately daily papers in great profusion. All three firms came to considerable fortune and left their mark on the daily press. Newnes established successfully the Westminster Gazette, Mr. Pearson the Daily Express and the Harmsworths the Daily Mail. The latter house has obtained the most striking and comprehensive success. Their enterprises have divided themselves into two groups. One, the original proprietors of Answers consisting of Lord Northcliffe and his brother Sir Harold Harmsworth, has produced a series of successful but trivial papers and has overlaid on that a popular educational publishing system on a grand scale, which is of much greater benefit to the public than is usually recognized. Their second venture in conjunction with Mr. Kennedy Jones embraces the Evening News, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror and other papers. This energetic, self-assertive and ever-increasing popular press excites in many old-fashioned readers something akin to a disgust, that is quite needless. These good folk should recognize that what is suited to a million readers can hardly cater also for the tastes of a restricted cultivated class. If the great American circulation-monger Hearst comes over to England, as rumours repeatedly assert, it will be apparent at once how much better the Daily Mail is, than it need be.
Perhaps the only branch of the weekly press, which has not yet found a niche in our Valhalla, is the group of ladies’ papers. The doyenne of these is certainly the Queen, started by Serjeant Cox and more or less followed in style by the others, which devote approximately the same proportion of space to illustrations of fashions and brides and titled hostesses. As they are mainly high-priced, well-printed journals appealing only to wealthy readers, they are doomed to a fatal mediocrity and give a male reader, who should imagine that women read nothing else, a painful impression of their intellectual status. Happily there is no reason to suppose that this is the case. Besides the Queen, we have the Lady’s Pictorial (1880); the Lady (1885); Woman (1889); the Gentlewoman (1890); and the Ladies’ Field (1898). On the other hand lady journalists, writing for papers of all kinds including the leading dailies, have already made a very considerable mark on our press. In some respects they have shown a greater aptitude for this calling than men, but they are not able to get about the country to all kinds of places so well as men and they cannot be expected nor even asked to endure the manifold hardships often required from reporters and correspondents.
CHAPTER VIII
NEWSPAPERS IN THE PROVINCES AND IN THE EMPIRE
One of the important facts about the home country that a Londoner can never get to understand is that there exist throughout Great Britain and Ireland, prosperous, successful and wealthy dailies, which in many respects are equal to and in some even superior to the great organs of the London press. Especially in the political influence they exert, they have the advantage over their metropolitan contemporaries, because there is so much give and take in the whole London press that both sides of a question are heard by most people, even if not generally accepted. In the provinces on the other hand, while there used to be as a rule two important dailies in every large town representing each side in politics, there has been a tendency in each centre to concentrate business on one of these dailies to the loss and perhaps extinction of the other. There has resulted therefore a considerable weeding out of provincial dailies and generally in each district there is one presiding genius of journalism, which wields an immense sway in local politics and has very considerable influence even in national affairs.
For instance the power of the Scotsman about any matter affecting Edinburgh would be considerably more effective than even that of the Times in any question which was of importance in London. And not only in civic matters does the Scotsman hold sway but owing to its unique position in the capital without a rival and the provident business talent which gave it an extensive circulation throughout all Scotland, it has come to be the national newspaper of the country. Founded in 1817 it led only a precarious existence under the régime of a 3s. 6d. tax on advertisements, the penny stamp on the paper and the paper duty. But when these were gradually reduced and removed the paper began to forge ahead. But the predominant position which it now holds in Scotland was due to the combined talents of two very remarkable men. One was the brilliant and untiring journalist, Alexander Russel, who sat in the editorial chair from 1848–1876. He took a leading part in the initial Free Trade controversy. His remarkable knowledge of church questions endeared him to a theological people but probably it was his gift of humour and his hatred of bigotry and shams of all kinds, which gained the paper its wide popularity. The other factor was the close attention to detail and remarkable foresight in affairs of Mr. James Law, probably the ablest newspaper manager in the kingdom, who has held the reins of business control for over fifty years. His achievement in placing the Scotsman in the forefront as a national paper is the more remarkable, since the home city in whose midst it grew up was greatly exceeded in wealth and population by Glasgow. The Scotsman now stands as one of the most solid newspaper properties in the whole country. Its ownership is in the hands of the Findlay and Law families and the present editor is Mr. Croall.