Massingham Laments

Mr. H. W. Massingham, recently retired editor of The Nation (London), who now conducts a weekly column in The Christian Science Monitor (Boston), made some pertinent comment upon the recent British newspaper amalgamation, whereby Lords Rothermere (brother of the late Northcliffe) and Beaverbrook (a Canadian Peer) bought from Sir Edward Hulton & Co. that group of papers known as the Hulton Press and comprising The Sunday Herald, The Sunday Chronicle, The Daily Despatch, The Empire News and The Evening Chronicle (all Manchester), The Daily Sketch, The Daily Despatch and The Evening Standard (London).

Wrote he:

In future the popular press of Great Britain will, as to about five-sixths of its issue, be in the hands of two men, both of them inferior to Lord Northcliffe in journalistic flair, and one of them, Lord Rothermere, of a purely commercial type. In itself, the union marks a further lowering of a not very high standard of London daily journalism, for the Evening Standard, which belonged to the Hulton group, was the best edited evening newspaper in London, adapted to a rather higher standard of culture than any of its rivals, while the Sunday Chronicle, published in Manchester, often gave independent expression to advanced views on social question. The considered appeal to the more cultured community in London now rests mainly with The Times, the Westminster Gazette, and the Morning Post, while the Daily Telegraph, with its immense and unbroken advertising connection, stands for the medium of commercial opinion, Philistine in type, but in the main reasonable and open-minded.

This is all very true and concisely expressed. Both Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook are distinctly inferior journalists to the late Lord Northcliffe. Lord Rothermere was always identified with the financial arrangements of the Northcliffe Press. At the time Lord Northcliffe, then Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, started his first newspaper venture (Answers), Lord Rothermere, then Harold Harmsworth, was in the Civil Service. He was accounted a brilliant mathematician and his advent to his brother's firm may safely be said to have laid the cornerstone of the Northcliffe fortune. Northcliff e had the journalistic gift and lacked, not business enterprise, but business ability; Rothermere lacked the former but was a positive genius in the business affairs of the firm. Lord Beaverbrook's journalistic career was mainly connected with Canada until he bought The Daily Express. A priori it seems that the British press is on the downward slant, since both these men will control the largest newspaper combine in Britain, whose newspapers will reach about 90% of the British reading public.

Mr. Massingham made his journalistic debut on the Norfolk News, but it was not until he became editor of the Daily Chronicle that he made bis name in the newspaper world. Under him the Daily Chronicle was accounted the best journal in London from every point of view, and since those days Mr. Massingham has acquired a great deal of respect and even admiration in newspaper and literary circles. Nor was this popularity confined to Liberal thought, as was shown recently by the acceptance of articles from Mr. Massingham by J. St. Loe Straehey, editor of The Spectator, which used to pose as Liberal-Unionist, but is now distinctly Conservative in tone. Many of The Spectator's die-hard readers took exception to Mr. Massingham's articles, but it was distinctly to Mr. Strachey's credit that he opened the hospitality of The Spectator's pages to such an intellectual, sane and distinguished journalist as Mr. Massingham. On the same score The Christian Science Monitor is to be congratulated in obtaining the services of a well-tried British journalist whose views are healthy, just, reliable.