In one direction we may see means by which intelligent recreation may be supposed capable of vast developments. Already the study of the psychical side of man has been the means of extraordinary discoveries. Our knowledge of hypnotism, suggestion, thought-transference and similar psychological wonders, obscured though it has unhappily been by charlatanism and the importation into the subject of irrelevant follies, has great promise for the future man, whose psychical faculties will unquestionably develop at the expense of his animal instincts. It is hardly possible to limit our conception of the means by which thought will be communicated in the next century, but we may see just where the change will probably come. A printed essay, such as this, is obviously a successive translation of thought into words (in the brain), then of the words into letters, and then of letters into type, which is picked up by the eye, retranslated into words by one part of the brain, and finally transmuted into thought again in another part. If some method can be discovered of abolishing one or more of these processes, thought can be conveyed from brain to brain at an enormously increased pace, and with a delicacy of which we have no present conception. This development is not so inconceivable as it at first appears. We know as yet almost nothing of the processes by which (for instance) vibration, accepted by the ear as sound, is, in the brain-cells behind the ear, converted into thought. Speech and writing are purely conventional devices. If, instead of using these conventions, we can learn to transmit ideas immediately from brain to brain, the next step may be an extraordinary development of intellectual pleasures, in the case of those individuals whose tastes are capable of thus being ministered to. But to say this is not to imply that the ordinary means of human intercommunication will be dispensed with. For most occasions, and for all but the subtlest and most refined necessities of thought, no doubt books, newspapers and letters will remain a feature of everyday life—though of course with such modifications as the progress of the century will have called forth. The future of the newspaper in particular is a subject of such great importance that it requires to be discussed in detail.
[1] Not of course in the artistic sense of the word; nor is the supersession of art by optical process in the least contemplated here. The psychological interest of art will have appreciators more and more numerous in virtue of the diffusion of culture confidently anticipated. [↑]
[2] Ante, [Chapter I]. [↑]
CHAPTER V
THE NEWSPAPER OF THE FUTURE, AND THE FUTURE OF THE NEWSPAPER
Suspending, as hardly within the bounds of manageable conjecture, any attempt to follow up the suggestion with which the previous chapter concluded, we can very easily imagine the lines on which newspapers such as we know are likely to develop mechanically. A number of processes already existing in embryo can be shown to be capable of very great extension; and several discoveries which an intelligent anticipation is capable of predicting could, and doubtless will, be applied to journalism.
To foresee the future of the newspaper on what may be called the editorial side is a much more difficult task, because we have here to take into account the influence of the developed and rationalised education of the people, which is certain to demand very great changes. Daily newspapers of the present moment are in a more or less transitional state. It can hardly, I think, be denied that the papers which enjoy the greatest popularity exhibit retrogression in many respects when compared with the best newspapers of twenty-five years ago. But they are much more widely and popularly read. The collective influence of their largely-extended circulations is no doubt very great, though the influence of the newspaper on the individual is less, and is attained in a different way. The old newspapers aimed, and the survivors of their class still aim, at an influence based on argument. They used to report events, speeches and movements of their age more or less colourlessly, and to comment upon these things more or less one-sidedly, according to their respective political bias. They were ponderous, cultured, dignified, and a trifle dull. When an adverse statesman made a speech which they did not like, they reported it faithfully, and tore it to pieces in the formidable middle pages. The leading article was their most important weapon: they sought their chief effect by its means. But the day of the leading article is nearly ended. The newspaper of the early—perhaps the immediate—future will almost certainly dispense with leading articles altogether, and be much more a news-carrier than an educator. It will attack adverse opinion by simply not reporting it. It will sometimes, no doubt, minimise facts unfavourable to its political side by garbling them. But leading articles had a useful function not yet mentioned—that of explaining the news-columns. Things which the ordinary (but fairly intelligent) newspaper-reader was likely to have forgotten, or to be ignorant of, were (and still are, where leading articles worthy of the name exist) explained and amplified. In the newspaper of the future, little paragraphs having the same purpose will no doubt be, as they already begin to be, tacked on to the ends of news-items: and so far as comment continues to be given at all, on such matters as political speeches from the enemy, it will be given in this form. Speeches from the newspaper’s own side will not require comment. Newspaper space will have too many demands upon it to permit of a statesman’s arguments being first printed semi-verbatim (actual verbatim reporting hardly exists even now) and then marshalled forth all over again in editorials. Whatever attempt is made to influence opinion through political reporting will be made by selective processes. The arguments of the adversary will be simply suppressed.
Although the old newspaper was really a much more intelligent affair than the popular dailies of the present decade—and it is chiefly of daily papers that I am now speaking—it is not very likely that a reversion will take place. It is a curious feature of all progress, that however much an existing institution may be perceived to be retrograde in comparison with older institutions, reversion hardly ever occurs. We adapt and modify what we have. We do not revive what we have lost. And the regeneration of the newspaper will be forced upon the newspaper-office by the development of public intelligence. Comment will probably during the next few decades be eliminated from daily journalism altogether, and confined to serious weekly publications, somewhat on the lines of our monthly reviews, and to other publications summarising the latter, like the present Review of Reviews, perhaps the most useful periodical now being issued, with the single exception of The Times. Thus the daily newspaper will be entirely a vehicle for the propagation of news, correctly so called: and very likely it will become almost entirely colourless, politically, because a well-informed public will resent obvious garbling or clearly unfair selection. The newspaper reader will no longer (as now) want only to hear what is said on a side more or less emotionally and hardly at all reflectively embraced. He will want to know what is said on all sides, and will make up his own mind, instead of swallowing whole the printed opinions, real or momentarily assumed, of other people. Thus, though the frantic popular paper of to-day will no doubt increase and multiply, and replenish its circulation books, as long as the present system of blind half-education survives, the newspaper which satisfies the new age will be a very different affair. It will no doubt discard many of the trivialities now reported as news, when a black woman of Timbuctoo could hardly bring forth four piccaninnies at a birth without the fact getting into the halfpenny London papers; but it will record the really important news in ways far more graphic, and with a far more complete appeal to the imagination, than we have as yet any but the vaguest notion of.