The resignation of Sir Francis C. Burnand, for twenty-five years editor of London Punch, reminds one how little it has been subject to the vicissitudes of journalism. As if by fore-ordination, the admirable parodist, Owen Seaman, takes the head of the historic table, and Punch will, if anything, be more Punch than ever. Others may change, but Punch retains a kind of Olympian uniformity. From its first number, sixty-five years ago, to the last, its outward appearance and inward savor are practically identical. England has been in conspiracy to provide it with talent.
During the editor's term of office the paper lost such artists as Charles Keene, Du Maurier, and Sir John Tenniel; but it also saw the rise of Mr. Linley Sambourne's forceful caricature, of Mr. Raven-Hill's delightful rusticities, of the nervous and most expressive art of the lamented Phil May. In fact, barring an inclination to overindulgence in rather trite doggerel, Punch's jorum has rarely been more tasty than in the past quarter century. Its only serious rival in the comic field has been Fliegende Blätter.
There is, of course, the prevailing American view that Punch is dull. Dull it is, in the sense that the best fun of the most jocose family may be merely tantalizing to the outsider. A nudge to the initiated may be sufficient to recall jokes proved by a thousand laughs; the uninitiated needs a clue. Now, Punch's family is London—a family whose acquaintance is tolerably worth while—and probably no one who has not imaginatively made himself familiar with the mood of London has any business with Punch at all. It is the homesickness for London that extends the subscription list to the bounds of the empire; it is the desire to know what London thinks of itself, of the provinces, of the world, that makes readers for Punch in every land. It represents London in the mood of intellectual dalliance as thoroughly as Fliegende Blätter does non-Prussian Germany. This representative quality gives to these two comic papers something of the solemnity of institutions.
THE OLD JOURNALISM COLORED BY THE NEW.
Norman Hapgood Declares that Yellow
Journals Have Shaken the Newspapers
Out of Their Old Rut.
"Yellowness," in the newspaper sense, means sensationalism; sensationalism means exaggeration; exaggeration means wrong proportion and the distortion of truth. On the other hand, it is pointed out that yellowness means interest; interest means closer attention from a larger audience; the larger audience means wider editorial influence.
Aside from the main arguments for and against yellowness, there are noticeable effects which the new journalism has had indirectly upon the old. Speaking recently before the League for Political Education, in New York City, Norman Hapgood, the editor of Collier's Weekly, attributed the increased boldness and popular tone of the conservative newspapers to the influence of yellow journalism:
Yellow journalism has its faults, but it was the first to shake the newspapers out of the old rut and give them new vigor. Before the advent of this class of journals there was no organ among the conservative press to speak down to the people. It was the consequence of a growing democracy and had for its purpose the establishment of a press wherein the laboring classes would have expression.
HOW TO ASSIMILATE THE BEST IN BOOKS.
John Morley, the English Statesman and
Scholar, Tells the Secret of Making
One's Reading Pay.