Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/80

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– 21, 30-31.


object which it was founded to promote , and it is often shorter lived . The merging of two or more papers in one,and the control of several papers by a single owner is not a new tendency although specially pronounced at the present time.62

Every new controlling interest that arises in any group of persons quickly finds expression through a new type of periodical.

In England in the first third of the nineteenth century the legis lative restrictions placed on the press a century before gave rise

to radical newspapers that protested against these restrictions.

When the conditions giving rise to this class of newspapers were altered , the newspapers themselves disappeared. If society has been honeycombed with slander, intrigue, and scandal, a dis

reputable press has appeared that has purveyed to all these evil tendencies. Protests against these tendencies have in turn found expression through the press . The People' s Review , says McCabe, in writing of one of Holyoake's ventures, “ was a novel departure even for an age that seemed to have exhausted the possibilities

of journalism . Speaking somewhere of the monthly apparitions of new journals, and their frantic vicissitudes of form , color, size,

price , etc., he (Holyoake) says: 'Like flags carried in battle, they The Globe was started in 1803 by London booksellers and in the course of years it “ absorbed a whole crop of journals.” — J . C . Francis , Notes by the Way, 179- 180. The consolidation of two or more newspapers in America has long been a custom and its frequency is evident in the hyphenated names of many papers. The Louisville Courier -Journal represents the consolidation of

three dailies . — “ Marse Henry," I, 175. Different newspapers in different cities are sometimes controlled by members of the same family.

In 1913 it was asserted that two Berlin firms controlled five-sixths of Berlin 's total output in daily and weekly papers, and that these were the medium for semi-official utterances. - About the same time, shares in the

Lokal- Anzeiger were transferred to a group of firms representing the Kaiser's interests. — New York Sun , November 30 , 1913 .

See especially John Mez , “ The Portent of Stinnes," Atlantic Monthly, April, 1922 , 129 : 547–555; H . Brinckmeyer , Hugo Stinnes, pp . 102- 108.

62 O . G . Villard , “ Press Tendencies and Dangers," Atlantic Monthly, January , 1918, 121: 62 –66 .

J. A . Spender , writing in the Westminster Gazette on “ The Editor versus the Proprietor, ” notes the present tendency towards few newspapers with enormous circulations and these few controlled by still fewer proprietors.

While there has been a great increase in the number of newspapers sold , it has in reality meant but the multiplication of the same things, without

corresponding increase in brains and ability. - Cited by the Literary Digest, April 13, 1918, 19: 29-30.