44 The Newspaper Wot Id, newspapers are better guides than their London contem- poraries. London leading articles are too often merely an echo of club gossip ; provincial leaders, speaking generally, acquire their value from the fact that the writers are men liv- ing and moving in the political atmosphere of the country, actively interested, probably, in its various political organi- zations, and knowing the views of leading statesmen better than their London brethren. Then the provincial newspaper gives the day's local news, which it is often most important for the country resident to be acquainted with, and if he knows that the Provincial morning paper will give him not only the world's news but the news of his own locality in the same sheet, he will be strongly inclined to prefer a paper issued from the nearest big town to that which comes from the metropolis. The tendencies of the age are favorable to the Provin- cial Press. In matters of Government the movement is towards decentralization, which means increased impor- tance for the country centres. With the population growing in numbers, in wealth, and in education, the daily newspaper is no longer a luxury but a necessity. While Provincial newspaper conductors supply the higher and middle classes with the morning daily papers, they have also led the way with the halfpenny evening newspapers which have of late overspread the land, and given to our artizans a daily medium of communication with the world. Nor in the general advance have the weekly Provincial papers been behindhand. Once the County weekly news- paper was synonymous with dullness, to-day it contains a budget of reading as interesting as any to be had in the ablest magazines. The best novelists of the day supply some weeklies with fiction, and every topic of home life and amusement is treated, to say nothing of numberless illustrations. To whatever department then, of Provincial journalism, attention is directed, we find a display of enter- prise worthy of the best traditions of the free English Press.
