“The Daily News!” ejaculated the agent, in perfect wonderment: “the Express!” he cried, in horrified amazement. “Excuse me, my dear friend—but are you mad? have you taken leave of your senses?”
“I hope not,” responded Mr. Styles, in his usual calm, business-like manner. “What makes you think so?”
“What makes me think so!” repeated the agent: “why, the idea that you should for an instant entertain the notion of advertising in those contemptible abortions! They are a perfect disgrace to newspaper literature, sir,” proceeded the agent, who was speaking conscientiously, and indeed truly. “Did you ever happen to read the Daily News?”
“I have never seen the paper in my life,” answered Mr. Styles: “I had only heard of it.”
“And you are not likely to see it,” returned the agent, “unless you go into the heart of Wapping or explore the back slums of Whitechapel. No respectable newsman keeps it: not that newsmen are more particular than other shop-keepers—but they only keep what they can sell, Mr. Styles. As for the Express, it is a regular cheat of an evening paper—made up entirely of the articles in the Daily News, without even having the bad grammar and the typographical errors corrected. But both prints are the most contemptible threepenny things I ever saw in my life; and one would be inclined to fancy that all the real newspaper talent had been absorbed by the pre-existing journals, leaving only the meanest literary scrubs in London to do the News and the Express.”
“And yet I thought that the News had been started under the auspices of Mr. Charles Dickens—the immortal Boz?” said Mr. Styles, interrogatively.
“So it was,” replied the advertising agent: “but the name of Charles Dickens was rather damnatory than useful to a newspaper-speculation. Every one must admit that Boz is a great novelist—a very great novelist indeed—the Fielding of his age; but he is totally incapable of writing for a newspaper. The proprietors of the News made a tremendous splash with his name; but they only created a quagmire for themselves to flounder in. When their paper was first coming out, every body thought it was to do wonders. The Times was to lose half its subscribers; and the Chronicle was to be ruined altogether. But, alas! never did so labouring a mountain produce such a contemptible mouse; and people began to fancy that the wags engaged on Punch had started the Daily News as a grand parody on the newspaper press. The leaders were rubbish—the criticisms of new works, mere nonsense—the dramatic reviews, utter balderdash. It however seems that in the lowest depths there is a deeper still even with the bathos of journalists; for when the News tumbled down (which it soon did) to a two-penny halfpenny print, the rubbish, the nonsense, and the balderdash became more astounding still. There is a young man named Bilk who does the ‘moral department’ of the paper; and he is the most grovelling ass that ever was created. He undertakes to review a whole batch of cheap publications in a lump; but what he calls reviewing is nothing else than abusing the works with an insolence so cool, and a rashness so indiscriminate that he must be as consummate a coxcomb as he is an unprincipled ruffian. The News affects a moral tone, and entrusts its conscience to this half-buffoon—half-barbarian, in the hope that the lucubrations of the ungrammatical scribe may acquire for it the reputation of a serious, sober, and sedate journal. The despicable being to whom I allude is the son of the proprietor of the Assinœum—a paper which Bulwer mauled and exposed so terribly in one of his admirable novels many years ago. The articles in the Assinœum may be termed Twaddle upon Stilts——”
“You are really very inveterate in your denunciations of these prints,” observed Mr. Styles, who having an hour to spare, did not experience any impatience in listening to the agent’s remarks.
“Not at all inveterate—only justly indignant,” was the answer. “I am indignant, because I admire the newspaper press of Great Britain—I am proud of it—I glory in belonging to the country which possesses it; and therefore when I see journalism prostituted to the lowest and meanest purposes—when I behold such despicable abortions as the Daily News and the Express daring to show themselves in that sphere where respectability and talent alone existed until those threepenny things made their appearance,—I am angry—I am disgusted! Only see how the News has been tinkered and hacked about with the idea of making it a property. First it was five-pence—then it was two-pence halfpenny—next it was three-pence;—and yet with all this derogatory experimentalising, the owners have failed to make it a property. What a miserable thing does it look, with its beggarly three columns of advertisements! The Times has as many in a day as the News has had altogether since its sickly existence began. The very Parliamentary Reporters engaged upon the News are ashamed of their connexion with such a scurvy affair; and the doorkeeper of the Gallery of the House of Commons looks on them with kind commiseration, knowing how degrading it must be to their feelings to take their places in the seats allotted to the representatives of that three-penny hodgepodge. You never see the News quoted from nor alluded to by its contemporaries. It is not recognised as a member of the newspaper press. It has tried all imaginable kinds of manœuvres to force itself into notoriety,—sometimes currying favour with the superior journals, and at others abusing them; but all to no purpose. Its contemporaries will not notice it: they will not be bullied nor coaxed into such condescension. Why—would you believe that the very Editor is heartily ashamed of his post: but he knows that if he resigned it, he should be compelled to relapse into the lowest walks of penny-a-lining, whence he was dragged forth to conduct the thing.”
“How is it possible that such a contemptible journal continues in existence?” asked Mr. Styles.