Chapter V: The Newspaper of To-Morrow

The professional will not, of course, be entirely eliminated from journalism. Despite their love of the amateur, newspaper proprietors realise that his place is not among the reporters, the news editors, the sub-editors, the financial editors, or the “art editors”――whose concern lies not with art, but with news photographs. As to editors, that is another matter. The rôle of editor tends more and more to become that of conduit pipe between staff and proprietary, whose views and policy he is called on to expound and further. So that the amateur will add the editorial chair to his Press conquests. Indeed, he has already made a beginning.

One figures the popular “dailies” of the next decade, with their signed articles by film stars, politicians, jockeys, footballers, tennis players, and racing motorists. One visualises their Women’s Page, Beauty Hints, and Guide to the Fashions, ostensibly conducted by popular actresses whose time is already fully occupied in meeting the conflicting claims of the Stage and of “Society.” One foresees the daily sermon by the proprietor’s pet divine, and the daily health article by the medical man who regards the stylo as more lucrative than the scalpel. One foresees also an immense increase in the number of photographs and other pictures, aided by the development of telephotography, television, and air transport. The motorist, the golfer, the collector of antique furniture, the amateur gardener, the investor, will find more space devoted to their special interests. There may even be room for an increase in the amount of space (if not of the quality) devoted to book reviews, although this forecast is admittedly optimistic. (What the public is supposed to want is not literary criticism, but “gossip” about the personal habits, the clothes, the recreations, the holidays, and the monetary earnings of authors.)

The leading articles will remain, partly through conservatism, and in part because of their utility for purposes of propaganda and “uplift.” The serial story will improve in quality, since that is one of the logical sequences of the passion for well-known names. More and larger prizes will be awarded for guessing contests and other competitions. The scope of newspaper insurance will be extended, although this function may ultimately be curtailed or even cease when the process of Trustification has gone so far that individual journals will no longer be under the necessity of trying to abstract each others’ readers. The pictures and stories for the nursery (and what the nursery really thinks of some of these efforts for its entertainment would surprise their purveyors) will be raised to the dignity of a whole page, complete with editor, the latter probably the wife of an ex-Cabinet Minister. The Sabbath will be kept holy by an increase in the space devoted to autobiographies of contemporary criminals and the retelling of old crimes. In short, the Newspaper will have travelled a stage further on the road to supplant the book, to supplement the playhouse.

It is pertinent at this point to refer to one of the seeming paradoxes of the modern Press, the diminution of its influence as its circulation and wealth have increased. Strictly speaking, the process has rather been one of a shifting of the centre of influence. When circulations were small, readers belonged to the influential classes. A leading article in the _Times_ could cause the Cabinet to reflect, could influence European chancelleries, could even exercise a definite effect on projected legislation. In much the same way as the importance of the individual voter has diminished with every broadening of the basis of the franchise, so has the nature of the old influence of the Press on public affairs declined with growth in circulations.

“Government by newspaper” has been denounced by politicians when the views expressed by a journal have not happened to coincide with theirs, but hitherto it is the endeavour rather than the realisation which has been criticised. A newspaper can and does influence the Cabinet in relatively unimportant matters, such as the propriety of commercial advertising by post-mark; it no longer succeeds in swaying the Administration in the matter of a first-class legislative measure, or in inducing it to sanction a reform or a change desired by the majority of electors; despite almost unanimous newspaper criticism of the retention of certain war-time regulations, such as those governing the hours during which it is licit to sell chocolate or cigarettes, the Home Secretary is still able to say that he is so far unaware of any widespread public demand for a relaxation of these restrictions.[9]

[9] Since this has been written, a committee has been set up to
inquire into the regulations in question.

But against the decline in the direct political influence of the Press there has to be set the growth of its influence over the community. The expansion both of circulations and of the field of interests catered for by the newspaper, already touched on in these pages, has helped immensely to develop the “newspaper habit.” It is a matter of elementary psychology that the average man and woman cannot help being influenced by the day-to-day exposition of political and other questions in the columns of their newspapers. Let any journal adopt the consistent policy of blackening the leaders of Soviet Russia or belauding Mussolini, and the infamy of the Bolsheviks or the disinterestedness and greatness of the Italian dictator becomes a creed to hundreds of thousands. Let the whole Press unite in the same shout, and that is the tendency under its present controllers, and the result is mass suggestion of a nature and intensity which causes the Press to mould the public opinion of whole nations. So that although an individual newspaper or a combination of newspapers may be powerless directly to affect the policy of a Cabinet, it is daily operating to sway the minds of the people and thus, indirectly, to sway Governments through the ultimate effect of mass suggestion in action during the period of a general election or a political crisis.

And this is the work of a handful of men who――it is no reproach to them――are temperamentally unfitted for the enormous responsibilities which they have assumed so light-heartedly, so casually――as casually as though they were “cornering” chewing gum.

Newspaper proprietors assert that in fact, their editors have a free hand, and attempt to prove this contention by pointing to differences in policy or treatment manifested by newspapers under the same control. One is at some difficulty in deciding whether this argument is the fruit of ingenious or of merely ingenuous minds. The _Evening Standard_, for instance, may not see eye to eye with the _Daily Express_ in such matters as the morality of modern dancing or the retention of old churches in the City of London, but a strike, a political crisis, a general election, the issue of war or peace, will witness a unanimity of editorial comment which goes beyond the limits of sheer coincidence. The _mot d’ordre_ has been given.

The Press of to-morrow will have to regard wireless and the kinema as potential rivals. Both occupy a position analogous to the newspaper, inasmuch as their popularity is largely due to the lack of mental resources in the average man and woman, and their active disinclination to read anything calling for concentration or sustained effort. The Popular Press, Broadcasting and the “Movies” are alike variants of the “Daily Dope.” Furthermore, the Press has itself largely helped to popularise its potential competitors through the immense publicity which it accords them.

In England, broadcasting has hitherto not trenched on the province of the newspaper because of the archaic restrictions imposed on the transmission of news by wireless, which is virtually limited to a brief re-hash of the evening papers, together with weather forecasts. But it is impossible that these restrictions will be allowed to prevail indefinitely, even if only for the reason that “listeners-in” are able to compare the service with that provided by Continental broadcasting agencies, who are not fettered by the Mandarins of the Post Office. As a matter of fact, the new British Broadcasting Corporation, which is a Government Department, possesses powers to do almost anything that can be done by a newspaper. Some of those powers it will certainly use, and there is nothing to prevent the Corporation from adding to its functions that of purveyor of propaganda for the Government of the day. The transmission of official news, and the development of an Inter-Empire news service it will certainly undertake.

But these are relatively minor matters. The real competitive possibilities of wireless lie in the fact that it brings the outer world into the homes of the millions at precisely those hours between the publication of the latest evening paper and the appearance of the morning paper at the breakfast-table. As the bulk of the contents of a morning paper are printed well before midnight, wireless transmission of news from seven o’clock in the evening until eleven or twelve would skim the cream off the next day’s papers. Whether the Press should retaliate by establishing a wireless service of its own (impossible in England save by means of coöperation with the British Broadcasting Corporation, which possesses a double-riveted, State-enforced monopoly) or by issuing later editions of the evening papers than is now customary, will become a matter for the consideration of its conductors.

For, insofar as concerns the dissemination of news, the wireless can clearly do as well as, if not better, than the newspaper. And it can do it at smaller cost to the subscriber. No one would, of course, seriously suggest that wireless transmission of news will drive the newspapers out of business, or even that it will seriously affect their circulation or revenue. But it is obvious that if broadcasting compete with the Press in the publication of news (and the Press will be powerless to stop it in England and unable to do so elsewhere unless wireless be brought within the scope of Newspaper Trusts) then the Press must strengthen its hold on the public in those fields where wireless cannot compete, or cannot compete so well. So it will enlarge its field of comment. It will become more and more of a miscellany. It will devote more and more attention to crusades and “uplift.” It will become more and more of a pulpit, and a lecture theatre for the physician. Above all, it will more and more strive to mould public opinion.

The rivalry of the Kinema will be of a subtler and less direct nature. Both the Popular Press and the “Pictures” appeal largely to a class which is easier to reach through the eye than through an appeal to the intellect, which demands a little imagination. The popular newspapers have lately begun to break out in a pictorial eczema throughout their pages. But the kinema, with its extremely well-organised service for recording and exhibiting events of the hour, leaves the newspaper miles in the rear. An evening paper can print photographs of the Derby or the Boat Race within a few minutes of their being taken. But it cannot show the whole progress of the race within a couple of hours after it has been run. Television, already a scientific achievement, and to-morrow a possible “commercial proposition,” will also come to the aid both of the Kinema and the Wireless. How does the Press propose to meet the actualities of the picture theatre and the possibilities of new inventions for the photographic recording and reproduction of events?