Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/449

ENGLAND.] NEWSPAPERS 419 Daily News. Stand ard. Daily Tele graph. London evening papers. (1794) of The Morning Advertiser, under special circum stances. It was the joint-stock venture of a large society of licensed victuallers, amongst whom subscription to the paper was the condition of membership. For nearly sixty years its circulation lay almost entirely in public-houses and coffee-houses, but amongst them it sold nearly 5000 copies daily, and it yielded a steady profit of about 6000 a year. Then, by the ability and enterprise of an experi enced editor (James Grant), it was within four years raised^ to a circulation of nearly 8000, and to an aggregate profit of 12,000 a year. Setting aside mere class-journals like The Financier and The Sportsman, the only existing London morning news papers which have been founded during the present century are The Daily News (21st January 1846), The Daily Tele graph (29th June 1855), and The Standard (29th June 1857). The lowest of the three in the point of circulation has attained an average issue of 170,000 copies; the highest has reached (by notarial certificate) to an average of about 242,000. In 1856 no London newspaper of any kind was recorded to have reached a higher average circu lation than 109,106 copies (attained in 1854 by the weekly News of the World] ; no daily newspaper had exceeded an average of 51,648 copies (attained in the same year by The Times), its next highest competitor, The Morning Advertiser, reaching an average sale of only 7644 copies. The Daily News became a penny paper in 1868. The great stride in its circulation did not come until 1870, when lavish use of the electric telegraph, combined with the great powers of a brilliant war correspondent, are said to have lifted the sale in a week from 50,000 copies to ISO.OOO. 1 Originally an evening paper, established in 1827 as the express organ of the opponents of the measure for the removal of the Roman Catholic disabilities, The Standard was at first edited by Dr Gifford. From the beginning it showed marked literary ability, but its commercial success was small. When sold to James Johnson its fortunes rapidly improved. He made it both a morning and even ing journal, reduced its price to a penny, and gave it a thoroughly good organization. Occasionally, in 1870, the evening sale reached 100,000 copies. In 1882 the aggre gate circulation, morning and evening, was certified to average 242,062 copies. The Daily Telegraph was originally founded by Colonel Sleigh, and for a few and unprosperous years was edited by Henry Barnett. It attained no success until a change of ownership placed it under the editorial care of Edward Lawson. In 1882 its certified average daily circulation exceeded 241,900 copies. London possessed no daily evening paper until 1788, nor did any evening paper attain an important position until the period of the war with Napoleon, when The Courier (established in 1792) became the newspaper of the day. For a few years its circulation exceeded that of The Times. The average amounted during the last three years of the war to 10,000 copies daily, a circulation not till then known to have been attained by any daily paper. Mack intosh, Coleridge, and Wordsworth were amongst its stated contributors. Out of an article in The Courier, from the from first to last, some 80,000, until 1870, when it merged in The Daily News; (5) in 1867, The Day, which lived only six weeks; (6) in 1873, The Hour, which had an existence of three years ; (7) in 1878, The Daily Express, an almost instant failure, although edited with much ability. Against these seven disastrous ventures, extending over nearly the whole of the present century, there are to be set but three successful ones, disregarding papers of a strictly commercial sort, and also, of course, those teeming local and suburban journals which are chiefly advertising organs, and of which only one, The Clerkenwell Daily Chronicle, has succeeded in establishing itself as a London morning papar of the usual type. 1 Hatton, Journalistic London, 1861. pen of the last-named, grew the famous pamphlet on the convention of Cintra. Among the successive editors of The Courier were Daniel Stuart, William Mudford, Eugenius Roche, John Gait, James Stuart, and Laman Blanchard. In 1827 one twenty-fourth share in the property is said to have brought 5000 guineas. But changes of editorship and keen competition were fatal to a paper that had rendered brilliant public service in its day, and for a time had headed the newspaper press of London. The metropolis has now seven evening papers, one of which The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette is exclusively commercial. Whilst, of the distinctively political morning journals, four are Liberal and only two Conservative, of the six political evening ones, four are Conservative (Globe, dating from 1803; Evening Standard, 1827; St James s Gazette, 1880; Evening News, 1881) and two are Liberal (Pall Matt Gazette, 1865 ; and The Echo, 1868). The last- named was the first London newspaper published at a halfpenny. The London weekly press has always worn a motley garb. London Weekly publication facilitates the individuality of a journal, both weeklies, as respects its editorship and as respects the class of readers to which it more especially addresses itself. From the days of Daniel Defoe to those of Albany Fonblanque and Robert Rintoul there have always been newspapers bearing the unmistakable impress of an individual and powerful mind. When to great force of charac ter in the writer and its natural result, an almost personal intimacy between writer and reader, Governments have been unwise enough to add the strength which inevitably grows out of persecution, the combination might well prove a formidable one. Cobbett s Weekly Register affords perhaps as striking an illustration of journalism in its greatness and in its meanness as could be found throughout its entire annals. And Cobbett s paper has had many successors, some of which, profiting by the marvellous mechanical appliances of the present day, have attained a far wider popular influence than was possessed by the Weekly Register in its most prosperous days. The Observer dates from 1792, and was conducted by one editor Mr Doxat for more than fifty years. It early distanced its com petitors ; its expenditure was lavish, and its profits large. There is record that the issue of The Observer which contained a report of the coronation of George IV. (published in two parts, each of them with a fourpenny stamp) attained a circulation of 60,000 copies, and that there was paid to the Government for that week s issue about 2000 of stamp duty. 2 The late well-known Examiner was founded in 1808, and had a career as one of the most prominent organs of the Liberals of nearly seventy years. That its literary reputation was great resulted naturally from a succession of such editors as Leigh Hunt, Albany Fonblanque, John Forster, and Professor Henry Morley. It had in its later days a distinguished competitor in the Spectator, founded (July 1828) and for more than thirty years edited by Robert Rintoul. Strikingly in contrast with newspapers of this class stand two which have much in common besides their identity of title and their extraordinary circulation Lloyd s Weekly Newspaper and Reynolds s Weekly Newspaper. The former started as an unstamped illustrated journal at a penny in September 1842. In 1843 it was enlarged in size, and the price raised to threepence. Curious ingenuity was shown in advertising it by all sorts of expedients. Amongst others, all the pennies its proprietor could lay his hands on were embossed, by a cleverly constructed machine, with the title and price of the new journal. The Times soon drew attention to this defacement of the queen s coin, and so gave a better advertise ment still. From a weekly sale of 33,000 in 1848 it rose to 170,000 in 1861. In anticipation of the abolition of the paper duty, the price was then reduced to a penny. The circulation became 347,000 in 1863 ; in 1865 it rose to 412,080. The skill of the American machine-makers was now put to a test which produced for this paper Hoe s first great web-machine, adopted immediately after wards by The Daily Telegraph and The Standard. In 1879 the weekly sale of Lloyd s Newspaper was certified to average 612,902 copies. Reynolds s Weekly Newspaper, which has also a large circu lation, dates from May 1850. Of the illustrated papers The Illustrated London News is the oldest, and has the largest circulation (about 95,000). Besides its pictorial merits, it has long been notable for its obituary notices and its abstracts of wills. It was founded in May 1842. The Graphic (commenced in December 1869) has attained considerable reputation for its literature as well as for its engravings. The Pictorial World dates from March 1874. 2 " The Newspaper Press," in Quarterly Review, October 1880.