The Press: Fleet Street Flayed

To many a British journalist a U. S, reporter is a creature who chews black cigars, speaks to ladies without removing his hat, stoops to anything for the sake of a story. Many a U. S. newspaper man has a vague idea that the denizens of Fleet street are seedy essayists whose physiognomy entirely lacks a news-nose.

Week before last, in World’s Press News (English weekly), one Garry Allighan. Anglo-American newspaperman, compared British news tactics disadvantageously to U. S. methods. Journalist Allighan said that he had been 14 years in newspaper business on both sides of the Atlantic. Holding every position from reporter to managing editor, he had burgled a Detroit home for a photograph, caught neuralgia at a Montreal theatre fire.

Returning to England last year, sad Was he to see the lethargy and lassitude which had crept into British newspapers since he had worked for them. Said he:

“I have been amazed at the number of times reporters today come back to the news editor, with the casual remark: ‘Can’t get the facts of that story.’ And then I have been amazed at the number of news editors who casually reply: ‘That’s another good story gone West; ah, well, see what you can get on this,’ and he puts the reporter on another job. That’s not newspaper reporting as I knew it. . . .

“It is either mental laziness or old-fashioned stodginess that sends a reporter out to interview a dozen eminent and nationally-busy people on ‘Should kissing under the mistletoe be abolished?’ If that is the extent of original ideas that can be created in a newspaper office, the newspapers of the Hawaiian Islands* have got Fleet street beat!”

Holiest Daily

L’Osservatore Romano (The Roman Observer) is the name of the newspaper through which His Holiness the Pope anonymously makes known to the world what he thinks, feels, hopes about the world’s mundane affairs. It also can be depended upon, no matter how neglectful may be the Fascist press of Italy and the lay press of other countries, to print each & every syllable of each & every statement, pronunciamento, bull and encyclical which His Holiness may wish to issue on affairs secular or spiritual.

To be near the personage for whom it is mouthpiece, L’Osservatore Romano lately moved its offices from Rome into Vatican City. Last week, Pius XI entered his new U. S. made motorcar (six-cylinder Graham-Paige) and drove, accompanied by chamberlains and guards, 550 yards up the street from his private Vatican doorway to L’Osservatore’s new publishing plant, where the whole staff was drawn up to make obeisance. Smiling pleasantly at his novel experience, the Pope passed into the composing room, peered through his heavy-lensed’ spectacles at upside-down type plates, at intricate, clanking linotype machines. The presses were then set working in the Holy Presence.

In humble ecstasy the founder-proprietor of L’Osservatore, aristocratic Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre, knelt on his editorial doorstep as the Pontiff departed. Much like the Christian Science Monitor in format is the papal paper except that it carries no advertisements or cooking recipes, displays the triple tiara of the Pope and his crossed keys to Earth and Heaven. Though crime news is excluded, sensations are not. Thus a recent headline in L’Osservatore reads: Un bambino investito da un autocarro (“A little boy attacked [i. e. bumped] by an automobile”). Significant details were given. The car was un piccolo (a little one), the baby was un povero piccolo (a poor little one), and the cause of the accident was non bene accertate (not precisely known). Editor Count Dalla Torre weighs 186 Ibs. ; is blond, stocky, quick at gestures, intelligent but slow of mind. Of ancient Venetian lineage, he has been a practicing newspaper man nearly all his life. Sur rounded by Italy, he edits in a little isle of refuge from Fascist censorship, says anything he and the Pope pleases, but knows that if he goes too far copies des tined for subscribers in Italy will be .quietly destroyed by Il Duce’s police. Newest thing in Italian journalism is a 16-page tabloid sheetlet published in a secret place, written by persons unknown, furtively distributed throughout Rome. Its name : Loud Speaker. Its object : to attack Dictator Benito Mussolini with humor, malice, intimate information, startling lies, as he has seldom before been attacked. Fascist officials have sharp orders to apprehend and silence Loud Speaker’s perpetrators without delay or mercy, for ridicule is the one weapon no dictatorship can long withstand. Roman gossips, well aware of the breach over edu cation and other matters between Il Dnce and Pius XI, have slyly but of course quite erroneously suggested that Loud Speaker emanates from the same sanctified publishing plant as L’Osservatore Romano.

Ohio’s Oversight

While Ohio politicians droned through the last General Assembly at Columbus, newspaper reporters, alert or phlegmatic, hung over the rail of the press gallery. After each session, readers were told of whatever interesting governmental action their duly elected representatives had taken. Somehow the journalists were completely unaware of an amendment to the election, code which was of more moment to themselves and their employers than any other part of the drowsy proceedings.

Last week, Ohio publishers were astonished to find that Section 199 of the new State election code, in effect since Jan. 1, reads, in part:

“If any person, firm or corporation . . . prints . . . any matter pertaining to … any candidate for public office and said candidate desires to reply to the same, said person, firm or corporation shall, without charge, print . . . said reply in the next issue after demand therefor has been made in the same portion of the paper in which said article to which said reply is made was printed, which reply shall be printed in like type and in the same color ink as said original article. . . .” Penalty for violation of the law was fixed at not less than $500, not more than $1,000.

Bewildered editors were faced with the possibility of having to print any querulous office-seeker’s grievance in red-faced, “Second-Coming” type across their front pages. Said Editor Bellamy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “I will confess that . . . I was entirely scooped.” Lamented Editor Grove Patterson of the Toledo Blade: “It seems incredible. . . .”

No less bewildered was Secretary of State Clarence Brown, who had been ill in a hospital when the bill was passed. Apologetically said he: “I simply missed the play and fumbled the ball.” He went at once to Attorney General Gilbert Beltman, for in Secretary of State Brown’s opinion, Section 199 violates the bill of rights “and provides for confiscation of property without due process of law.”

Not until the Assembly meets twelve months hence may the legislative joker be officially removed from the statutes.

British Notes

> Last week, Punch, ancient funny weekly, announced it would print a monthly edition for blind people, in Braille type. Drawings will be explained by word-pictures.

> Last week the London Times, patriarch of the world press, announced, after due study and consideration, that it had decided that the public had shown such real and lasting interest in the phenomenon, that henceforth the Times would publish one crossword puzzle each day.

> Complete files of the London Times, from its first issue in 1785 down to date, are rare. Not even the Times’s own file is complete. The Royal Statistical Society’s file, complete from 1785 to 1930, lately sold for $3,000. Bidders from the U. S. and continental Europe last week competed for a file complete from 1800. The winning bidder: The Marx-Engels Institute of Moscow. The price: not reported.

* Biggest Hawaiian daily in English: Honolulu Advertiser, circulation: 10,489.