WHEN THE ANNOUNCEMENT Was made that Illustrated is to be
merged with John Bull, I was not surprised to see the excuse 'Television claims one more victim'; but I was surprised to find it made by the normally sensible writer of the Man- chester Guardian's 'London Letter.' The writer appears to imagine that TV kills picture papers, the sole exception to the rule being Paris-Match. But in fact television has greatly stimulated pic- ture papers almost everywhere except in Britain ; in most continental countries and in the US they flourish as never before. If they have failed here, it is because of their own defects. Picture Post went partly because it could not find a good editor, partly because no good editor would stay to be subjected to interference from upstairs. By the time it collapsed it had become' a cheesecake travesty of its original self. Illustrated has gone partly because it never became much more than a pale imitation of Picture Post. partly because its trend took it away from (instead of towards) topicality, Paris-Match style. Either paper could have been saved if the owners had been willing to sell it to people who would have run it properly : but in Picture Post's case (as in John o' London's) the owners preferred to maintain the comforting illusion that if they could not make a success of it, nobody else could. Illustrated and Picture Post set so poor a standard after the war, compared to their continental counterparts, that their disappearance is a goodish riddance; and it certainly cannot be blamed on TV.
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