Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

But while I do not note in the newspaper Press, as it exists to-day, those signs of disintegration and wasting—that “old familiar declining and falling off”—which have been diagnosed by aged professors, I do observe the passing of certain stages of the evolution of the newspaper; and I can even read in those indications the foretaste of a time when the newspaper, as we know it now, will have ceased altogether to exist.

I will endeavour to explain.

It is not alleged by our Jeremiah that the newspapers have “declined and fallen off” in circulation. I write without statistics and making a mere intelligent guess when I estimate that there are at least four times as many copies of newspapers sold in a day in London now as were sold in 1870. Here, at least, there is no indication of decline; and if there be anything at all in the law of supply and demand, we are bound to infer that the proprietors of newspapers must be supplying that which the public demands. Public taste is not created or directed by newspapers. The clever editor is he who shrewdly anticipates the direction of the public taste, and caters for it. It is a flair which the editor may possess in common with the theatrical manager and the restaurateur. He exercises it in exactly the same way as George Edwardes exercises it or as “Jo” Lyons exercises it. “Find out what the fool of a public wants, and give it to ’em!” was the advice given me once by the managing director of a syndicate of newspapers of the North of England. And it was sound advice.

If this view of the whole duty of the modern editor be correct, it involves the admission that the newspaper of to-day has abandoned its ancient traditions, just as it has thrown aside the worn-out clichés. Half the disgust of the journalistic Jeremiah with the new order is caused, I believe, by the abandonment of those time-honoured clichés. He endures a pang of regret and resentment when, in reading the account of a fire, he finds no allusion to “the devouring element.” He is incapable of understanding that the public does not care any more for “the devouring element,” and that the penny-a-liner has been superseded by the crime investigator and other weird officials called into existence by the new reader of newspapers.

When our poor old Jeremiah was young, the newspaper was, primarily, the organ of a party—sometimes its official organ, but always, whether officially or unofficially, representing one of the great political parties. Nominally, indeed, it is so still. But there is no underlying enthusiasm, nor is there any continuity of conviction. Many of our “esteemed contemporaries” are, ostentatiously, rail-sitters. But the Press has ceased to have any influence with Cabinets, nor are editors any longer consulted by Cabinet Ministers. No editor will ever again hold the position with regard to Ministers held by Dr. Giffard of the Morning Herald, or John Delane of the Times. By the way, the Conservative party owed a great deal more than they were ever willing to acknowledge to the said Dr. Giffard. I suppose that they considered that they had wiped out the debt when they made his son Lord Chancellor and an Earl! One of these days we shall find politics left out of our papers save at election times, when the space will be hired by persons wishing to advertise their political convictions.

The new conditions under which the newspaper exists, and the new methods introduced by its conductors, were foreordained, though not foreseen, when Mr. Forster’s Education Bill became law, and the School Board education was offered to the youth of merry England. Paterfamilias bought his newspaper in the dark ages before Forster. The generations that developed under Forster’s Act demanded newspapers of their own, but they were not prepared to pay a penny for them. And, lo! the halfpenny Press arose at his bidding—the bidding of the Board School boy and the bicycle boy—and remaineth with us even unto this day.

Clearly, the halfpenny paper could only afford half the space to what is known as “original matter” that was accorded by its penny rival. Parliamentary and law reports were made taboo. The “snippet” habit was inoculated on to the vile body of the daily Press from virus obtained from the “Bits” papers. And so eager was the bicycle boy to swallow his tabloided doses of news that he never discovered the inroads gradually made by the advertiser on the spaces originally devoted to reading matter. Nay, so contented was he with the latest method of presenting the news of the day, that he did not even mind when further encroachments were made on his news columns, and a daily portion of the broadsheet was filched for the presentation of a solid chunk of fifth-rate fiction. In his present temper the bicycle boy appears ready to stand almost anything!

Meanwhile, and in face of this determined and successful competition on the part of the halfpenny papers, what has been the policy of the penny news-sheets? They have gone on enlarging their borders, increasing their bulk, and adding to their weight—adding to their weight, I mean, in the literal, and not in the figurative, acceptation of that phrase. The Parliamentary and law reports are more formidable in their length and particularity than ever. Book-reviewing is carried on to an extent hitherto only demanded in a literary weekly; essays on engineering, gardening, motoring, fishing, have regular days devoted to them. The advertisers are no longer satisfied with a modicum of space. The mural poster has been transferred to the pages of the penny morning paper. Oxbridge’s full pages have become an expected item in the day’s entertainment, and Coco’s illustrations of his physical perfections have become an integral feature of our daily portion. The result is that the penny paper has grown to an unwieldy bulk, awkward to handle, impossible to turn over in a train or in the open, and containing, in proportion to the small ha’pennyworth of what one does want, an intolerable deal of what one does not, and is never likely to, want.

The general conclusion to be deduced from these necessarily undemonstrable statements is that the fate of any given newspaper is in the hands of the advertisers. Editors choose to address themselves exclusively to their readers, and maintain a splendid official ignorance of the advertiser. This is the only pose possible to the well-regulated editor. Did he for a moment admit, even to himself, that his professional emoluments were derived from Oxbridge and the British and foreign tradesman generally, he would no longer be able to take the Press quite so seriously as he does; indeed, he would scarcely be able any longer to take himself quite seriously, and that would surely be a great pity.

Suppose for a moment that some other channel were discovered—we live in an age of surprising discoveries—which the advertisers regarded as more suited to their requirements than the present system. What happens? The small advertiser, whose three-and-sixpences form the real backbone of every newspaper enterprise, follows the big one. The papers shrivel up in dimensions, and down comes the price, or, in the alternative, up go the shutters. I am glad to reflect that the owners of newspapers have made such fortunes out of their enterprise that they can calmly face the future.