DO we REALLY all mind so much about the passing
of Picture Post? Sir Gerald Barry's letter to The Times last week was a valuable corrective to a mounting pile of nil nisi bonum sanctimonious- ness. Of course one isn't pleased to see the live- lihood of a hard-working Fleet Street staff made more difficult, but to what extent is the magazine which finally expires next week really a loss? In 1938 Sir Edward Hutton quite by accident (it is said that the sort of paper he claimed Lorant was preparing for him was 'something that was going to knock the Spectator silly') made a jour- nalistic discovery as great as Northcliffe's. North- cliffe discovered that the masses could read; Hutton discovered that they could read intelli- gently, particularly if attracted by the vivid use of documentary photography. Unlike North- cliffe, Hutton threw his discovery away. When the battle for circulation really began again with the release of paper at the end of the Forties, Hutton took fright. He relegated intelligence and controversy to a subordinate position in Picture Post's content and played 'safe,' as he thought, with cheesecake and royalty. Many people at the time thought that he was foolish to sacrifice just that area of circulation in which he had no rivals for the sake of competing in an area where he had all too many, and to which was soon to be added the inevitable monster of television. But cheesecake and royalty were said to be orthodox circulation raisers—and the circulation declined continually until this month when it was half what it had been at its peak. It is not surprising that television has put the paper with its present personality out of business. Its original per- sonality was one with which television still com- petes all too little. The fact that papers like Every- body's and John Bull, which have raised rather than lowered their intelligence level, continue to hold their own, is proof enough of the vigorous health both of Fleet Street and of the readers of magazines. On the whole, goodish riddance to Picture Post.
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