It’s in this context that I offer a pertinent observation made a long time ago by a master wordsmith, a prophetic pundit in his own writetime: the great British author H. G. Wells. As a visionary with his science fiction (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Shape of Things to Come, and much, much more) he had a huge impact on the thinking of the reading public in another era.
And the ways of newspapers were significant in his crystal ball-gazing, for Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) saw the rise of the early media barons, and with them the “popular press”:
“It is upon the cultivation and rapid succession of inflammatory topics that the modern newspaper expends its capital and trusts to recover its reward. Its general news sinks steadily into a subordinate position: criticism, discussion, and high responsibility pass out of journalism, and the power of the press becomes more and more to be a dramatic and emotional power to cry “fire!” in the theatre, the power to give enormous value for a limited time to some personality, some event, some aspect, true or false, without any power or giving a specific direction to the forces this distortion may get going.”
This Wellsian view is quoted by a more contemporary writer, and one time British Labour leader, Michael Foot (who was a friend of Wells in his youth) in his 1995 book, H.G. The History of Mr Wells.
Foot said of the quotation: “Not a bad definition of the millionaire press when it was hardly out of the womb.” One wonders what comment H.G. would have on the approach shown by our present mass media offspring. Long past the womb certainly, although hardly grown-up.
In his views Wells had his sights on Alfred Charles William Harmsworth (1865-1922) - Lord Northcliffe - who with his brother Viscount Rothermere built a vast chain of newspapers, founding Britain’sem> Daily Mail (in 1896), the Daily Mirror (1903) and acquiring The Times (1908).
Another eminent British journalist, Hugh Cudlipp, wrote (in his delightfully titled The Prerogative of the Harlot: Press Barons & Power) in 1980 that Northcliffe exulted in being known as the Napoleon of Fleet Street, even trying on the French emperor’s hat during a visit to Fontainebleu - only to find it too small.
But back to the perceptive Wells, this time a comment, via Cudlipp, on another media mogul, Sir William Maxwell Aitken, otherwise Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1966) of the Daily Express. Contemplating where the Beaver might be heading when he shed the mortal coil, Wells said if it was to Heaven then he wouldn’t last long:
“He will be chucked out for trying to pull off a merger between Heaven and Hell . . . after having secured a controlling interest in key subsidiary companies, of course.”
Quipped Randolph Churchill (prominent Conservative MP and father of the even more notable Winston) of Beaverbrook: “It would be damned ungrateful of him if he didn’t believe in Hell, seeing that they’ve been getting the place ready for him specially all these years.”
The paths of glory and all that sort of thing . . .

THE OLD BEAR
The development of an expanded new format for Tasmanian Times adds further proof of its value as an outlet for opinion. And long may this website continue to provide an alternative to the trivial that often masquerades as news in the mainstream media.

As one who has logged many a year in differing forms of the media, both print and electronic, I’m mindful of the consistent mantra espoused by TT - as a “cheeky, irreverent challenge to the mass media’s obsession with popularity, superficiality and celebrity”.
All the news that’s fit to print has become it’s not all the news that’s fit for print; “pap” has become today’s embodiment of the word news"pap"er. It’s more in your face than ever, but it’s an extension of an obsession that has long been with us, one way or another.