Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-02-02
French and American Newspapers

Bradner Matthews has in recent
number of the Century an article on
''Parisian Newspapers" which he be-
! gins rs follows:
Zone of the most characteristic
| street-cries of London and of New
| York is never heard in Paris, nor is
one of the most picturesque figures in
| the streets of London and of New York
| ever seen in the streets of Paris, for in
| France the noisy and pertinacious
newsboy is unknown. The functions
| Of this unstable dissemination of intel
| ligence are filled in Paris by the stad
old dame who sits at the receipt of
custom in a kjOSque. A Partisan kios-
que has nothing oriental but the name.
1t is little sentry-boX of glass, just
large enough to shelter the news
vender from the changeable weather
of the French capital. On little
stand in front of the kiosque are
tiny heaps of the countless newspapers
OF the city. and on strings on each side
are pendent numbers of the chief IL
lustred journals, artistic and comic
These Mosques are scattered all over
the boulevards, and from them the
Partisan buys his Figaro in the morn
ing and his Temps at five in the after
noon
This difference of attitude between
the hurrying American, who has to
have his paper brought to him in haste
hotfrom the press, and the leisurelv
Frenchman, who is content to pick up
his paper when he goes abroad this
difference is far more than external;
it is essentially typical of the irrecon-
cilable difference between the French
journal and the English or American
newspaper. For one thing, the French
journal is not a newspaper in the
American sense of the woodland of
truth it does not pretend or desire to
be. The Figaro now and again makes
a ludicrOus claim to the ubiquitous
omniscience of the London Times or
the New York Herald, but this is not to
be taken seriously. The fact is, that
while the primary quality of good
English or American daily paper is
news, the primary quality of good
French paper is not news, but criti-
clsm-crlticism of politics in the first
place, of course, and in the second,
criticism of commerce, of law, of
finance, of science, of art, of literature.
and of the drama. The aim and ideal
of the best French editors is to present
not so much the minor details of
fact, but the best possible opinion on
the fact. OF mere brute news, minute
particulars of scandals, crimes and
horrors, such as we here in America
have dumped upon our breakfast-table
every morning, with all the accom-
panying repetition and accumulation
of embarrassing fact,-of all this the
reader of the Partisan journal sees lit
tie or nothing. The childish or unin-
telligent thirst to know what has hap
pened, regardless of the Importance of
6 event, has not yet been developed
In france by the rivalry of scramb bling
editors; and it may be asserted with
out fear of contradiction that even if
they could have it without cost and
without trouble, French editors would
refuse to print most of the trivial trash
which cumbers the columns of even the
foremost American papers
at is not that some Partisan papers
do not print trivial trash and trash
worse than trivial; the difference is
rather in aim, the French editor think
ing first of criticism and the American
editor only too often thinking of mere
news-first, last, and all the time. Yet
the leading principle which should
govern even in gathering is bet
ter understood in Paris than in Lon
don or New York. This is the prinei-
pie which has been aptly called the
perspective news and by virtue of
which trifiing accident in the imme-
date neighborhood is of more import
ance than a great calamity a thousand
miles away. As Villemessant concise
ly put it. a doc run over on the Roule- |