“war correspondent” became at one time enormous, and his evolution from the days of H. Crabb Robinson, who wrote to The Times from Spain in 1807–1809, has been traced by busy pens with all the precision of a special interest in history. Certainly nothing finer in active English journalism was ever done than in W. H. Russell’s letters to The Times from the Crimea, or the work of Archibald Forbes and others in the Franco-Prussian War; but more recently, although first-rate abilities have been forthcoming, the news agencies, often favoured by the military Press censor, have generally been ahead of the “specials,” and the individual work that might have been done for isolated papers has been much hampered by restrictions. This is due partly to the increased competition, partly to military jealousy and officialism, partly to the vital importance of secrecy in modern warfare: but the result has been to a considerable extent to reduce the value of the “war correspondent” as compared with what was done in the Press in the days of Russell and Forbes. A letter arriving weeks after the telegraphic account, however meagre, is largely shorn of its interest. Given a brilliant foreign correspondent, the form of letters sent home from abroad on general subjects is still, no doubt, very effective. But the telegram is necessarily the backbone of the news service of the daily paper. The Press, be it added, is frequently able to acquaint the public with what is going on while a government itself is still uninformed. The work of officials and statesmen is admittedly increased and sometimes embarrassed by the new strain imposed upon them in consequence, but the public are on the whole well served by their emancipation from the obscurity of purely official intelligence and by the obligation of straightforward dealing imposed upon governments, which in their nature are apt to be secretive.
Connected with the increased attention given to news is the greater vogue of the newspaper “poster” or contents-bill, which is exhibited in the streets. The poster has acquired commercial importance for indicating the possession of some special news without revealing its whole nature, and the tendency has been to have fewer lines and fewer words in larger type, in order to catch the eye more impressively. Rotary machines for printing these posters enable them to be turned out with greater rapidity; and in the case especially of evening papers it is possible at any time during the afternoon, should important news arrive, to issue a new poster and thus secure a large street sale by the insertion of a few words only in the “stop press” or “fudge” without the necessity of changes in the plates. The catch-penny style of the poster has transferred itself also to the newspaper itself, in the shape of the “scare” headlines. And there has been a tendency for the news to be so “displayed” in the headlines as to make any further reading unnecessary.
Apart from the publication of “news” and reports, and occasional original articles of a descriptive and miscellaneous character, the chief function of a newspaper is criticism, whether of politics or other topics of the moment, or of the drama, art, music, books, sport or finance. As regards sport, the comments of the various newspapers are mainly descriptive; but a prominent feature in the United Kingdom has been the attention paid to “tipping” probable winners on the Turf, and the insertion of betting news. The publication of the “odds” some time before a race, and of starting-prices, undoubtedly helped to foster the increase of this form of gambling, as was pointed out in the report of the Select Committee on Gambling in England in 1902, but the efforts to induce the English newspapers to keep such matter out of their columns have not had much success. The Daily News (London) in 1902 started on a new proprietorship under Mr Cadbury with a declared policy of not referring to horse-racing or betting; but when its principal proprietors in 1909 became largely concerned also in the Star and Morning Leader, they were apparently content to retain the “tipster” elements which bulked large in them, and this inconsistency aroused considerable comment. The sporting interest (i.e. the desire to know results of racing and cricket, &c.) largely inflates the circulation of most of the London and provincial halfpenny evening papers.
Between about 1870 and 1880 the English newspapers began to pay increased attention to literary and artistic criticism; and gradually the daily Press, which formerly applied itself mainly to recording news, and to political, social and financial subjects, became a formidable rival in this sphere to the weekly reviews and the monthly and quarterly magazines. Books are “reviewed” in the Press partly for literary reasons, partly as a quid pro quo for publishers’ advertisements; and the desire for “something to quote,” irrespectively of the responsible nature of the criticism, became in the early ’nineties a mania with publishers, who in general appear to have considered that their sales depended upon their catching a public which would be satisfied by seeing in the advertisement that such and such a book was pronounced by such and such a paper to be “indispensable to any gentleman’s library.” Unfortunately the enormous output of books made it impossible for editors to have them all reviewed, and equally impossible for them to be certain of discriminating properly between those which were really worth reviewing or not. The result has been that the work of book-reviewing in the newspapers is often hastily and poorly or very spasmodically done. But there have been some honourable exceptions. The “Literary Supplement” (since 1901) to The Times is the most ambitious attempt made by any daily paper to deal seriously with literature. The Daily Chronicle started a “literary page” in 1891, and it was imitated in varying degrees by other English papers. The Scotsman and some other provincial papers have also for some time devoted much space to excellent literary criticism. The “literary supplement” has also been developed to excellent effect in some journals in the United States, such as the New York Times, where this feature was indeed originally started. As a form of serious criticism, however, the review has, in the general newspapers of later years, taken a lower place than must be desirable, partly owing to the cause named, partly to a tendency among reviewers either to indiscriminate praise or to irresponsible irrelevance, partly to a suspicion of “log-rolling”; and to a large extent it has become the practice merely to treat the appearance of new books as so much news, to be chronicled, with or without extracts, according as the subject makes good “copy,” like any other event of the day.
The modern tendency, resulting from the enormous amount of newspaper production, has been to make journalism less literary and at the same time literature more journalistic. Either as reviewers, leader-writers or editors, many of the principal “men of letters” have worked for longer or shorter periods as writers for some newspaper or other, and much of the published literature of the time has appeared originally in the columns of the newspapers, in the form of essays, poems, short stories or novels (in serial form). Publication in this shape has many advantages for an author besides that of additional remuneration; it offers an opportunity for a new writer to try his wings, and it helps to introduce him at once to a large public. Moreover, the newspapers read by the educated classes profit by the superior class of journalist represented by writers of a literary turn. But the increased popularity of the newspaper, and the close tie between it and the literary world, have on the whole impressed a journalistic stamp upon much of the literature of the day. However popular at the moment a writer may be, the infection with journalistic methods—while rightly employed by journalists, as such, in dealing with contemporary events and for strictly contemporary purposes—is apt to be responsible for something wanting in his work, the loss of which deprives him of the permanent literary or scientific rank to which he might otherwise aspire.
The new point of departure for the more popular style of English journalism (apart from the influence of American models) is really to be found in the publication of Sir George (then Mr) Newnes’s Tit-Bits in 1881. This penny weekly paper, with its appeal to the masses, who liked to read snippets of information brightly put together, showed what enormous profits were to be made by this style of enterprise; and the multiplication of journals of this description—notably Mr
