A CREDIT TO PROVINCIAL JOURNALISM. [To Via EDITOR Or TIIS
" SPECTIT071.71 SIR,—Many persons who appreciate a good and fair newspaper would welcome the letter by " Left-Centre " on this subject, even if they had no knowledge of the Eastern Daily Press. Almost everything that he said could be justly said of another excellent provincial daily, the Western Daily Press, so long published at Bristol, which journal not only keeps up its old tradi- tions,• but has issued a long series of illuminating leading articles on various features of the war, which• compare well.with the -best of such in any London daily paper. In your editorial note you remind your readers that " there are plenty of weekly ' local papers' which show that the profession of journalism is still one of which its members may be proud." I venture to think, Sir, that for " weekly" the word " daily " was meant ; for to-day there are a number of brilliantly and honourably con- ducted high-class morning papers, both Liberal and Conservative, between Newcastle and Plymouth and between Manchester and Ipswich. The fact that in some districts people do not seem to appreciate the excellence of their local dailies is indeed deplorable ; and it has been observed during recent years that the taste for " London journals of the baser sort " is largely that of women. The type of mind which thinks a London 'journal must necessarily be better than a provincial one is akin to -that which likes to imagine Paris a den of iniquity. The mental vision is about as broad and the prejudice about as great in either ease. A month before war broke out I heard at a .Scotch railway station a man of sixty, looking very pleased with -himself, ask for the Daily Mail. On being told that the Scotsman and Glasgow .Herald -only were on sale that morning, he replied that he had -never heard of them, and inquired if there were any London news in either. But before he would invest a penny in anything so provincial, I, as a disinterested person, had to tell him he would probably find all he wanted 'therein. •I was doubtless not alone in hoping that gentleman would prolong his holiday in Sootland.—I am, Sir, &c.,
STU_LuT THOiiPSon.
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