The modern newspaper caters for all classes. It is severely sectionalised, and while the interests touched upon are more comprehensive than they were twenty years ago, the space de voted to general news of the day is very much less. Except in the case of a few newspapers, speeches are not reported at any length, and politics is treated as a subject of minor interest. Newspapers have become more or less imitative, and no journal is permitted to get more than a day ahead with a new feature or a new de velopment. While minor changes are numerous, there has been no revolutionary change in the characteristics of daily journalism since the days of Lord Northcliffe. The popular cross-word puzzle, the general knowledge questions, and the comic strips which have been almost universally adopted, are importations from America.
The widening of interest in the contents of newspapers, col ossal sales, amalgamations, and local monopolies do not fully explain the phenomenal financial success of newspapers since 1918. As compared with pre-war times newspapers have doubled their selling price and quadrupled their charges for advertise ments, but there has not been a commensurate rise in the cost of raw materials, of labour, or of transport.
The chief factor in making for newspaper prosperity has been the increase in advertising. Newspaper advertising has become a vital factor in national industry and salesmanship. There has been a quickening of the business sense, a determination to open up new markets, to increase consumption. Simultaneously there took place in England a revolution in the methods and style of advertising. The advertising agent, instead of being a mere con duit pipe, has become a highly scientific expert. More firms have been induced to advertise, and the experience of scientific pub licity has been followed by larger allocations for this branch of salesmanship. The newspapers have reaped the benefit of the resource, thought and enterprise which the advertising consultants apply to their business.
All these factors in recent newspaper development have made the newspaper business more and more dependent on finance. The consolidation of the press has continued without a break since 1918,—amalgamations, syndicates, trusts have followed upon each other. The impetus given to advertising enabled companies which were over-capitalised when promoted to return handsome profits. The only break in the movement towards trustification came in 1928, when Lord Rothermere launched his scheme for competitive evening newspapers in the provinces. How that scheme, which was
welcomed by advertisers and journalists, will develop remains to be seen. Only a man with powerful financial resources behind him could undertake such an enterprise. Few new newspapers will be started, because the syndicated press is firmly entrenched and can exhaust the resources of any ordinary competitor.
The future of the British newspaper, therefore, becomes a question of finance. It is estimated that three-f ourths of the newspapers in England and Scotland, and a greater proportion of newspaper sales are controlled by large corporations or by local monopolistic companies. These big corporations are not going to dissolve, and local monopolies will not be challenged except by a corporation.
Multiple ownership of newspapers possesses all the commercial and financial advantages of other big businesses, but mass produc tion and centralised control destroy individuality. As members of a big combine newspapers lose character: they tend towards a standardised type. They may be better productions than is possible under isolated ownership, but the old conceptions of a newspaper as an institution with a soul of its own, which could not be measured by ordinary commercial standards, is gone.
The paramount interest of press trusts is to earn dividends for shareholders. It may be that four or five corporations with several hundred thousand shareholders will compete vigorously, but fights for supremacy usually end in understandings, in division of territory, in agreements and amalgamations. It is quite prob able that the whole press of England may fall under the control of two or three trustified ownerships acting in co-operation.
Irish Free State.—Newspapers in the Irish Free State are settling down to dominion conditions, but it cannot be said that the new political freedom has stimulated newspaper enterprises. The Dublin morning papers are now The Irish Times and The Irish Independent, and the evening papers, The Herald and The Dublin Evening Mail. In 1910 there were four morning papers and three evening papers in the Irish capital. The historic Free man's Journal passed through many vicissitudes, and finally dis appeared in 1923, after i6o years of existence. There is one morning paper and one evening paper in Cork. British news papers, daily and weekly, have a considerable sale in the Irish Free State.