Pictorial journalism

“ There is no question that the public loves pictures, and the development during recent years of so-called newspapers from which the public gleans the daily news by means of halftone illustrations, is, in a way, a reversion to the time before the printing press, when the masses received their education wholly through pictorial design. ”

“ Until some method is invented of sending sketches by electricity the pictorial press must endure this disadvantage, but in the meantime it spares no pains to overtake the march of events. Wherever there is any ‘moving accident by flood or field’ the ‘special artist’ of the illustrated newspaper is found ‘takin’ notes.’ No event of interest escapes his ever ready pencil. He undergoes fatigues, overcomes formidable difficulties, and often incurs personal danger in fulfilling his mission. ”

“ But the difference is this: that the paper comes out so quickly that even its mistakes are important, while the encyclopaedia comes out so late that even its discoveries do not matter. The newspaper should be the best account of the daily impressions of an intelligent man on one side or the other. If it is anything else but this, it is, or tends to be, a fraud. Honest milk is milk that is milky; honest wine is wine that is wine, and nothing else; honest journalism is journalism that is journalistic. ”

“ The Pictorial Taste Universal—The Early ‘News-books’—Development of the Newspaper Press—General use of Newspapers—Establishment of Illustrated Journals—Wandering Ballad Singers the First Newsvendors—The English Mercurie of 1588—The Abolition of the Star Chamber and its Effect on the Press.
The inherent love of pictorial representation in all races of men and in every age is manifest by the frequent attempts made to depict natural objects, under the most unfavourable circumstances and with the slenderest means. ”

“ How an Illustrated Newspaper is Produced—Wood-engraving—Boxwood—Blocks for Illustrated Newspapers—Rapid Sketching—Drawing on the Block—Method of Dividing the Block for Engraving—Electrotyping—Development of the Printing Machine—Printing Woodcuts—Machinery for Folding Newspapers—Special Artists—Their Dangers and Difficulties—Their Adventures in War and Peace.
In describing the production of a modern pictorial newspaper, I take the Illustrated London News as the type of its class, because it was the first paper of the kind that was ever established. ”

“ In France, Italy, and Germany journalism is a career in which an eloquent and cultured youth may honourably win his spurs. In many countries this way of earning one's bread can still be turned into an art by the gifted and high-minded; but in England thanks in the main to the anonymity of the press cunningly contrived by the capitalist, the journalist or modern preacher is turned into a venal voice, a soulless Cheapjack paid to puff his master's wares. Clearly our "Professor of aesthetics and Critic of Art" is likely to have a doleful time of it in nineteenth century London. ”

“ Especially disastrous fires, which can often be photographed while they are happening, the effects of train wrecks or other accidents, personages prominent in the news of the day, all these are grist for the camera-man’s mill. Parades are the bane of the pictorial editor’s life, for he knows that lengthy views are not of great interest, yet he is often forced to use them because of the scarcity of views of real news events. ”

“ None, indeed, who have ever known it, can wholly forget the generous rage with which journalism inspires its followers. To each of those young men, beginning the strangely fascinating life as reporters and correspondents, his paper was as dear as his king once was to a French noble; to serve it night and day, to wear himself out for its sake, to merge himself in its glory, and to live in its triumphs without personal recognition from the public, was the loyal devotion which each expected his sovereign newspaper to accept as its simple right. ”

“ The two last were both engravers. All these men have done good work on the pictorial press, and some of them first won distinction through its medium. Both the Illustrated London News and the Graphic may claim to have done good service to art and artists in this respect. Their pages have always been open to young artists of ability, and while 357 they have helped forward struggling genius they have opened up new sources of enjoyment to the general public. ”

“ Even to-day the news pictorial is one of the most interesting and profitable of motion-picture subjects. Five of the picture companies have representatives stationed all over the globe, gathering material for these “animated newspapers,” while there are scores of small companies covering limited [Pg 29] territories with a direct appeal to local picture theaters. The news pictorial camera-man must be as alert as his stepbrother, the reporter, for the competition is every bit as keen as that in the newspaper field, and a victory over a rival just as great cause for elation. ”

“ A great artist—Millais especially—could introduce the crinoline and the Dundreary whiskers, so that even to-day their ugliness does not repel you. But less accomplished draughtsmen, who followed slavishly the inelegant mode of the sixties, now stand revealed as merely journalists. Journalism, useful and honourable as its work may be, rarely has lasting qualities which bear revival. Aiming as it did to be a 'smart' and topical magazine, with the mood of the hour reflected in its pages, it remains a document not without interest to the social historian. ”

“ Perhaps the tendency of modern journalism is to epitomize too much. In the hurry of daily newspaper work and the press of matter upon our pages, very likely we are fatally brief, and sacrifice rhetorical beauty to naked and goose-pimply facts. ”

“ In our books no less than in the daily press, in what is written for adults equally with what is prepared for children, in technical journals and scientific monographs as well as in popular magazines, this progressive encroachment of picture upon text is apparent. The newspaper strives for illustration in connection with all classes of news, and its staff of photographers rivals the corps of reporters in numbers and importance. Every page has its pictures, and even the gist of editorial comment is sometimes indicated by thumb-nail sketches used as paragraph-spacing. ”

“ The subject indeed is a large one, if we reflect upon it, for many people would tell us that journalism is the greatest invention of our age. If this rich affluent has shared the great fortune of the general torrent, so, on other sides, it touches the fine arts, touches manners, touches morals. All this helps to account for its inexhaustible life; journalism is the criticism of the moment at the moment, and caricature is that criticism at once simplified and intensified by a plastic form. ”

“ Nothing comes amiss to their endless columns: scandal, politics, crochet-patterns, bogus interviews, puerile hoaxes, highly seasoned police reports, exaggerations of every kind, records of miraculous cures, funny stories with comic cuts, society paragraphs, gossip about foreign royalties, personalities of every description. In fact, they form the very ragbag of journalism. ”

“ It must not be inferred that the feature story, or any other kind of news story, should distort the facts. The writer in the Sun has merely attempted to reduce to the absurd the theory that journalism should put aside attractiveness in writing for a bare summary of facts. The modern newspaper, while its main purpose is still to inform, is coming more and more to be a source of101 entertainment also. It aims to instruct, but in such a manner that the reader will not be bored. ”

“ Strange indeed were their feelings when, upon looking at back files of newspapers, they read the history of their exploits, recorded with a degree of detail which must have taxed the imaginative resources of editorial staffs to gray hairs; and saw picture after picture taken with their own camera and sent across many a continent in the form of undeveloped film, now to bring before their eyes once more the realism of the moment when they were taken. ”

“ But the, people know in their hearts that journalism is a conventional art like any other, that it selects, heightens, and falsifies. Only its Nemesis is the same as that of other arts: if it loses all care for truth it loses all form likewise. The modern who paints too cleverly produces a picture of a cow which might be the earthquake at San Francisco. And the journalist who reports a speech too cleverly makes it mean nothing at all. ”

“ He's been taken seriously ill and may be dead just in time for the morning papers.' In this way do journalists speak. To them life and death, all the tremendous happenings of the world—wars, revolutions, or even weddings of revue actresses—are just so much matter for printed and pictorial display. ”

“ She had lost her faith in journalism as a drum for the rousing of the people against wrong. Its beat had led too often to the trickster’s booth, to the cheap-jack’s rostrum. It had lost its rallying power. The popular Press had made the newspaper a byword for falsehood. Even its supporters, while reading it because it pandered to their passions, tickled their vices, and flattered their ignorance, despised and disbelieved it. Here and there, an honest journal advocated a reform, pleaded for the sweeping away of an injustice. The public shrugged its shoulders. Another newspaper stunt! ”

“ With the quickening of the public conscience in regard to political and social conditions has come a keener appreciation of the importance of the newspaper as the greatest single source of information in our democracy, and a realization of the dangers of abuse of this power by editors and publishers. Whatever opinions may be held as to present-day standards in journalism, every one will grant that it is the duty of those who enjoy the advantages of university training in preparation for this profession to maintain the highest ideals in their own work. ”

“ Curiously enough, the only newspapers which have not lost the knack of propaganda are those which, in their origin, represented the revulsion against propagandist journalism, and set out to supply simply “what the public wants.” What I have called the newest journalism of the Nineties (that is, the most [303] solidly established journalism of to-day) has none of the moral fervour of the Parkes and Steads. ”

“ The greatest handicaps the news pictorial has had to overcome are the difficulty of getting the film to the theaters while the news is fresh, and the fact that the news picture’s life is short. A dramatic picture will live, that is, earn money by rentals to exhibitors, almost indefinitely, but the news-film that is two months old is practically ready for the shelf. ”

“ While not inclined to argue this point, it is my humble judgment that the newspaper begins its existence the moment the managing editor opens his desk for the day’s work. He is its main-spring! Whatever of distinctive character it possesses in methods of handling the news of the day it owes to him, and it is these very features that render one journal better or worse than others. He it is, as a rule, who establishes the chivalry of the press toward the public. It is he who decides the line of attack or defense when the vast interests which he represents are assailed. ”

“ But no young reporter can hope to attain success through originality and defiance of rules until he has first mastered the fundamental principles of newspaper writing. He can never expect to write "the story of the year" until he has learned to handle everyday news without burying the gist of his stories—any more than an artist can hope to paint a living portrait until he has learned, with the aid of rules, to draw the face of a plaster block-head. ”

“ If you want readers, you must meet the competition. Field had to have features, pictures and so on. He struggled to create his own comics and after three years felt he had achieved some readable ones, though by no means as successful as those controlled by the rival press. But news pictures can’t be invented. Without photographs, successful newspaper publication is impossible. Pictures, however, are as tightly controlled as news services. Even the Communist Daily Worker, the outstanding labor daily newspaper in the country, has to buy from the syndicates as they are. ”

“ If something comes up that brings the thing to the public attention, there the papers have the pictures all ready to print.
“Now they keep lots of photographs, just like these two, which they buy from cheap photographers. They buy a hundred in a job lot, and if they want a picture and can’t secure a legitimate one, or a snap-shot from the reporter’s kodak, they use what they have on hand.
“It would be extremely amusing to be present when these girls see their faces in the paper. It will prove almost as funny as seeing you two girls scorning these strange faces.” ”

“ Present-day morals have destroyed the original character of the newspaper. In the hands of men more concerned with their personal interests than the good of their country or the pursuit of truth, the Press has sacrificed everything to profit, for money is its object.{118} Newspapers are bazaars where everything is sold, calumny included. And the turmoil of life has made of the journalist a purveyor of sensational news, of paradoxes which falsify the popular judgment, and information as misleading as it is swiftly obtained. ”

“ The Tribune was the first newspaper to adapt for journalistic purposes the printing of the half-tone photograph. The innovation started the rising flood of news-in-pictures which is so distinctive a feature of the American press of 1923.... Some of the events of the day’s news can be visualized for the reader simply by the printed word. Others need the aid of a picture. Others still find presentation possible in a picture alone.... The universal appeal of pictures can be taken advantage of for sound informative and educational purposes, instead of for scandal and filth. ”