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4.

position to tell us everything that happened from hour to hour, and to
have experts expounding its significance, what function would be left
to the press? Not racing and sporting news, or market quotations,
for radio can give those better and quicker than any paper. Nothing
would be left but advertisements, and that seems a rather flimsy
foundation for the future of the press. A friend of mine the other
day announced his intention of selling every newspaper share he possessed
and buying Canadian mining shares. I thought his view an extreme
one, but there is a certain surface justification.

Of course, things will never come to such a crisis. There
is ample room in our society for both methods of popular illumination.
In our traditional fashion we are certain to find kind of compromise.
But it is interesting to speculate on just what form this compromise
would take.

The subject matter of a newspaper and of radio is the
same, and may be divided into news and comment on news - that is opinion.
But opinion may take two forms. It may be advice on policy,
such as we found in the old Editorial. It may be special descriptive
articles amplifying and explaining news and relating to world interest.
It may be a special personal statement of some notable expert,
or of some public man whose mental processes interest the whole community.
At present, I think, we may say that the mere news fact is
the staple of the papers. It is that which sells special editions -
sensational foreign doings, the results of sporting contests, betting
news, market quotations, oddments of personal gossip. Now I am inclined
to think that here the radio is a deadly competitor, for it
can, if it likes, give news faster than the newspaper. What is left,