Abstract
Professor Weiner chronicles a period of bewildering change, including a technological revolution accompanied by — in no particular order — vulgarisation, populism, sensationalism, obsession with 24-hour news, fabricated stories, sliding standards of reliability, questionable ethics, unsavoury gossip, pandering to the lowest common denominator, the sacrifice of fine writing in the interests of speed, obsessive pursuit of scoops, members of the lobby getting too close to politicians, intrusive coverage of celebrities, often through intimidation and deceit, and so on and on.
It is hard not to feel sad reading how the press lost its taste for the “logical narrative account and measured, cadenced prose” of William Howard Russell — who in the Crimea proved himself the first great war correspondent — and demanded instead speed and concision and to hell with accuracy. The Scot, Archibald Forbes, who used American methods, superseded Russell during the Franco-Prussian War. To him a successful war reporter was the one “who can get his budget of dry, concise, comprehensive facts into print twenty-four hours in advance of the most graphic description that ever stirred the blood”. In the journalist game, plus ça change, plus c'est la měme chose usually rules OK.
“No one's life is now private; the private dinner party, the intimate conversation, all are told,” complacently observed T P O'Connor, pioneer of the New Journalism in the 1880s in his Star and Sun. The spread of mass circulation newspapers elicited in 1882 an apocalyptic howl from Henry James that we now hear echoed every day in relation to the spread of social media. “The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the general anglo-saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big blatant Bayadère [a colourful, striped fabric] of Journalism, of the newspaper and the picture (above all) magazine who keep screaming: ‘Look at me’… Illustrations, loud simplifications and grossissements… these only, meseems, ‘stand a chance’.”
Joel Weiner, professor emeritus of History at the City University of New York, has dedicated much of his academic life to British press history. His books include The War of the Unstamped and Papers for the Millions: the New Journalism in Britain, 1850s to 1914. In The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s-1914 he looks at how the transatlantic press learned from each other.
There were crucial differences that are still evident today. America is still less hierarchical, more democratic, more vital and aggressive than Britain in its culture. Stringent British libel laws inhibit courageous investigative journalism. The sheer size and diversity of America encourage local journalism. The absence of what Weiner calls “a single certifiable political and intellectual center” militates against a strong national press. Washington still dominates politics, and New York business, culture and intellectual debate, while London has no domestic competitor.
This is not a racy read: Professor Weiner's book is a work of scholarship. But he is a master of the period, he is always fair-minded and this work is a very important contribution to our knowledge of the period. Not for him the simple-minded dissing of fallible press barons or self-aggrandising journalists: he revels in their achievements and is understanding about their failings.
What a collection of extraordinary people march through his pages creating, destroying, grandstanding and inspiring: William Randolph Hearst, Alfred Harmsworth, Joseph Pulitzer, W T Stead and indeed, Nellie Bly, we are all familiar with. But if I'd ever known anything about Morrill Goddard, I've forgotten. Yet he was the “greatest circulation go-getter on earth”, who for Pulitzer and Hearst pushed forward the boundaries of Yellow Journalism. I hope never to forget his great headline:
Weiner's mastery of the literature of the period provides many marvellous quotes. I loved, for instance, the description of Pulitzer's World by journalist James M Cain (author of The Postman Always Rings Twice) as having “an editorial page addressed to intellectuals, a sporting section addressed to the fancy, a Sunday magazine addressed to morons, and 20 other things that don't seem to be addressed to anybody”. Some things do change, however. American papers have become duller, British papers less literate, and there is less conviviality, risk and fun. On the plus side, British women now have the same journalistic opportunities as their American sisters. I don't suppose today's journalists are any more vain than their predecessors, but perhaps the biggest difference is imagining what Kelvin MacKenzie would think of the view of Harold Spender, sketch-writer at the Westminster Gazette, that “it is the high tradition of the British journalist to respect the position of the public man and scrupulously to avoid getting him into trouble”. “O tempora! O mores!” one can hear John Major cry.