NEWSPAPER PROGRESS.
IT is not snowing papers.. The repeal of the paper duty has not let
loose the crowd. of speculators said to be always hankering for the prizes newspaper enterprise seems to offer on paper,. and some- times offers in reality, and only ten new journals have been registered. this month at Somerset House. Many of these are mere. names, and there seems a chance that the reduction of the duty will not add one new journal to London. The change has been felt only by older journals, most of which have reduced their rates, while all feel the effect of increased competition. or a stimulated activity. It is too early yet to predict the ultimate result of the movement, but some facts of importance are already observable.
The first is that the penny is as yet the pecuniary limit of original journalism. One bold man started the idea of a farthing paper, and even went the length, we believe, of paying for placards, but the project dropped still-born. A farthing is not a divisible coin, and the mere fact that nothing remains out of it for the dealer is quite sufficient to stop the newspaper mania from assuming that form. The halfpenny paper is nearly, if not quite, as unlikely to live. It can only live by plunder, and, fortunately for the journals which pay for their daily food, newspaper news won't keep. The time required for the theft makes the thing stolen stale. Even an evening paper cannot live only by robbing the dailies, and the weeklies which try that course soon find stale eggs do not pay even to steal. A half- penny daily has not been tried, and until some invention supersedes paper, the penny will, we think, be the last "great reduction."
The second fact is the utter want of originality in newspaper speculators. Among the papers started within. the last few months there is not more than one which presents any new feature of im- portance. They are for the most part bad copies either of Lloyd's Weekly News, and redolent of the police courts and murder, or imi- tations of Mr. Cassell's publications, and full of ridiculous stories. The exception, Public Opinion, is an effort to collect all shades of written opinion on the topics of the week, and though not absolutely new has at least no rival. The idea is a good one, and fairly worked out, but the class who care to read all sides of a question is, we fear, too limited for success. Of class papers we have not seen one ; the enterprising printers who start these things always wanting to attract the whole world, and the most real effect in the way of direct addi- tions to journalism will, we suspect, be in local journals. They are spreading in every direction. Villages with less than fifteen hundred inhabitants rejoice in newspapers of their own, filled gene. rally with news of the most minute character, the last Times article, the latest telegrams, and whole columns of letters from ambitious and quarrelsome villagers. The leaders are generally short and stupid, unless—and this is a marked feature in them all—clerical questions are discussed, when the tone becomes earnest and some- times angry. We should not wonder in a little time to see the dis- senting ministers add immensely to their strength by possessing themselves of the whole of these parish papers. They have a fancy for writing, leisure sufficient for the task, and none of the notions of dignity which keep the regular clergy from power. The local schoolmaster, certificated pupil, or village politician, stands no chance with a man who has a whole community to bring him news, and who can rely on the support of all other editors of his own opinions and habits of thought. The effect, if this process takes place, will be good for morality, country folk not being the Arcadian shepherds sentimentalists like to describe, but it will not be exactly bene- ficial to the Established Church. A vestry dispute is not likely to be less bitter because a writer familiar with all village names, antece- dents, and influences, is finding arguments every week for the Rector's Opposition. Otherwise, we see little harm these papers are to do, though farmers look askance at an innovation which they feel in- stinetively is more for their labourers than for them, and which they always pronounce, while they buy it, discreditable to the village. The common charge that the village papers circulate gossip is not altogether true. Gossip circulates anyhow, and the half-educated editor, who is responsible, is a much better sieve for gossip than the barber, the ale-house oracle, or even the Union surgeon, the three authorities who at present publish an unwritten journal among them. The only evil effect is to intensify all local quarrels ; your true villager never forgiving a sharp answer or palpable hit in print. We heard of a saddler the other day, in the wildiof Essex, who was- almost beside himself because his adversary in the village paper "bad quoted Latin at him." He took it as a personal insult. It is a curious little fact in connexion with these papers, that those who start them can never invent names. Three times in four the name adopted is the Smithville Times, varied only by the Seidl:Dille. Standard, Herald, Mercury, Freeman, or Free Press, the latter a very popular form. Two papers, new at the price, though old in idea, are making a great effort to live, and one,, the Illustrated Weekly News, may by possibility succeed. It is an imitation of the well-known, Illustrated News, bat is v.ery is better printed thann, most of the penny dailies. The letter-press is readable, but the indifferent paper spoils the "cuts," producing a general effect which. can only be described as "'smudge." The same defect is observable in Fun, a very feeble attempt to produce a Punch for the million, and is, we should imagine, incurable, at least so long as- popular prejudice runs in favour of white paper; coloured paper requiring no bleach, might be made stronger. The last fact observable is that the mechanical improvement of these penny papers must take some ngw direction. The proprietors have, of course, for their own interest, done all they can afford to allow better paper, and the result is by no means a pleasant one. The best of the penny papers is not half so well printed as the American Tribune, which is, to subscribers, no dearer, and the worst is simply unreadable. The test of printing- is to read it in a train, and railway passengers with any regard for their eyes still avoid_ the thin sheets, small type, and bleared ink common to these productions. The first paper which remedies this evil will have a. monopoly of the railway market, audit is possible to accomplish it without much increasing the weight of the paper used. A moderate reduction in the advertise- ments would enable a journal like the Telegraph to "lead"' all the original matter, an improvement which would make it, if not plea- sant to the eyes, at all events legible. There is plenty of room for saving space in the leaders, a point upon which competition is pro- ducing the worst effect. Three years ago three leaders were consi- dered enough for any reader to digest, but the Times now gives four, and the Telegraph often six. They cannot be read, and as no paper except the Times can afford an unlimited staff, the effect is crude and sometimes very forced writing, of no use to the paper or the public. Inventors will yet do much for the paper market, but im- mediate improvement must, we feel assured, be sought in better and wider printing, harder type, and above all improved ink. Nothing in typography is so susceptible of improvement as the last article, and nottine is so little attended to.
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