I’m reading, in very small snatches, Modernism on Fleet Street, by Patrick Collier (picked up from the London Library “new books” section because it has a chapter on Rose Macauley, about whom I’d like to know more.)

It covers the interactions between newspapers and some intellectuals, including TS Eliot and Virginia Woolf, and the panics around the rise of the “yellow”, popular press. All the kerfuffle now about blogs and online media – well it all sounds so familiar when you read this, written in 1922:

So, about 30 years ago, the ‘New Journalism’ was born. Headlines, scareheads, “snappy pars” and “stunts” took the place of literature, serious news and discussion. The note of papers rose from modulated reason to the yowl of an American baseball match, calculated not to convince but to paralyze the opponent. Pictures appeared, with adjectival commentations: “A Delightful Photo of a Charming Little Hostess”… The change has been so complete that one no longer notices anything about it.” (p.12)

But what really struck me was this little anecdote about marketing. (For those not in the UK I should preface this by noting that the dailies here are now locked in a vicious, and economically crazy, battle to offer “free” extras – CDs, DVDs, posters, dinosaur stickers! and similar.) So this felt immediately familiar:

“One of the period’s more dubious innovations was the circulation-inflating insurance scheme, in which anyone who died while carrying a copy of the newspaper would be given a death benefit.”

But please don’t pass this on to any marketing people you know… I wouldn’t want to be responsible.

If, however, you should be seeking a plot for a noir detective tale set in the Twenties – well it would make a great motive for murder – the marketing man desperate for his ploy to work.