19 MARCH 1948, Page 5

A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK

WHEN a prominent American journalist appraises the British Press at length in the columns of the New York Times his assessment deserves some attention. The writer, Mr. Walter Cum- mins, was formerly Chief Assistant Editor of the Australian United Press in New York. After a visit to Great Britain he has formed many opinions about conditions here, particularly about the state of the Press. On the whole his criticisms are sound and salutary. His chief point, with which I fully agree,. is that daily papers which are perpetually complaining about their meagre ration make shockingly bad use of the paper they do get. Mr. Cummins writes, for example: " On a recent date one of the leading newspapers had a total of 690 inches of column space ; out of this it gave 169 inches only to straight news, while 249 inches were devoted to sporting." A little later, after commenting on the lamentable paucity of news of international affairs in the London papers, he adds: " What makes me all the more despondent is the fact that the London editors find room for a large amount of light feature-matter such as poor fiction, comic strips, gossip and the like." All that is unfortunately perfectly true. In the popular Press information, in the sense of news of the events of the last twenty-four hours, is becoming more and more subordinate to entertainment. In pressing the Government for more paper in order that they may give more news the newspaper-proprietors would be in a much stronger posi- tion if they were giving more news now—which would, of course, be perfectly easy. It is not unreasonable to expect a newspaper

to put news first. * * * *