357 - 364.
journalism has already killed literature ; he often feels himself
persona non grata among those whose society he naturally seeks, and he realizes that he is sought " for advertising purposes " by those whom personally he would avoid ; he is told that persons
are blamed for yielding to his requests for an interview ,— T. W . Reid is quoted as saying that W . E . Forster was the first English man to be interviewed and that he " was fairly generally blamed
at the time for having submitted to this interview ;" 37 he may find even his own confrères comparing the faculty for interviewing “ with a kind of twin faculty for shop -window dressing;" 38 he
may frankly dislike interviewing, — “ interviewing was ever an abomination to me," says Whiteing, “ and I made a firm stand
against it as soon as I could ," — 39 and hemay be plainly told that the novelty of the interview has worn off and that since the public is no longer interested in interviews the best editors no longer wish to print them . The interviewer has his own difficulties and
his own disappointments, - not the least of these are when the interview has been secured with much difficulty and prepared for the press with great pains and then the person interviewed posi tively prohibits its publication , or when the troubled conscience
of the interviewer decides against the publication of an interview that he knows ought not to have been given .40 But in spite of all the adverse criticisms that may reasonably be
brought against the interview , it still forms a part of the news paper. But the function of the interview has changed in the fifty years since it was definitely introduced and naturally its relative
importance has changed . At the height of its glory an exagger ated significance was attached to it, — “ the history of the past
thirty years could not be written without the interview ," wrote one enthusiastic interviewer in 1890 , - but it has now become a popular feature of the press rather than a corner-stone. The interview is changing and it is changing for the better.3840
H . Leach, Fleet Street from Within , p . 96 . R . Blathwayt, Through Life and Round theWorld , p . 155. R . Whiteing, My Harvest, p . 98. These have been well stated by E . Foster, “ Difficulties of the Inter
viewer," chap. X in An Editor 's Chair ; F . Banfield , “ Interviewing in Practice," National Review , November, 1895, 26 : 367 -378 ; E . L . Banks,
Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl, chap. XXIII, “ The Story of a 'Failure'."
