orts of the debates in the Houses of Parliament are constantly
growing smaller and smaller in our newspapers. Perhaps this is partly
because the speeches are growing duller and duller. I think in some
degree the two things act and re-act on each other. For fear of the
newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for
the newspapers. The speeches in our time are more careful and elaborate,
because they are meant to be read, and not to be heard. And exactly
because they are more careful and elaborate, they are not so likely to
be worthy of a careful and elaborate report. They are not interesting
enough. So the moral cowardice of modern politicians has, after all,
some punishment attached to it by the silent anger of heaven. Precisely
because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not
worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be
read, nobody reads them.

Thus we may concede that politicians have done something towards
degrading journalism. It was not entirely done by us, the journalists.
But most of it was. It was mostly the fruit of our first and most
natural sin--the habit of regarding ourselves as conjurers rather than
priests, for the definition is that a conjurer is apart from his
audience, while a priest is a part of his. The conjurer despises his
congregation; if the priest despises any one, it must be himself. The
curse of all journalism, but especially of that yellow journalism which
is the shame of our profession, is that we think ourselves cleverer than
the people for whom we write, whereas, in fact, we are generally even
stupider. But this insolence has its Nemesis; and that Nemesis is well
illustrated in this matter of reporting.

For the journalist, having grown accustomed to talking down to the
public, commonly talks too low at last, and becomes merely barbaric and
unintelligible. By his very efforts to be obvious he becomes obscure.
This just punishment may specially be noticed in the case of those
staggering and staring headlines which American journalism introduced
and which some English journalism imitates. I once saw a headline in a
London paper which ran simply thus: "Dobbin's Little Mary." This was
intended to be familiar and popular, and therefore, presumably, lucid.
But it was some time before I realised, after reading about half the
printed matter underneath, that it had something to do with the proper
feeding of horses. At first sig