Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsThe Evolution of the Modern Journalist 1880-1930This implies some element of schooling beyond the ordinary elementaryeducation available over the age of twelve, whether at public school,grammar school, or, in many instances, at university. Also implicit was theclose connection between journalism and literature, with career manualsparading the names of the masters before the neophytes, with CharlesDickens well to the fore. Two words combine to bring the ’literary journalist’forward in the perspective of Victorian journalism. One of them WilfridMeynell (1854-1948), published a career guide in 1880 (using thepseudonym of John Oldcastle) in which he noted that leading journalists onThe Times had salaries ’into four figures’. 9 Meynell himself averaged about£1,000 a year by his, anonymous, freelance contributions by:’paragraph-writing...half a column in Pall Mall Gazette, two columns in theIllustrated London News, three in the Athenaeum and two-and-a-quarter inthe Academy, as well as a page in Tablet and thirteen paragraphs in theDaily Chronicle...headed "From the Office Window. ’’~°Reporters considered themselves lucky if they received £2 or £3 a week,between £100 and £150 p.a. as did J. Alfred Spender (1862-1942) whenworking for his uncle on the Hull Moming News in 1886 ~ or the buddingdramatist, James Barrie (1860-1937) who received £3 a week in 1887. ~2By the early 1900s reporters were firmly classified as lower middle class,with earnings between £150 and £200 p.a., in a review of family budgetsundertaken in 1901 when the reporters were grouped with bank clerks andskilled mechanics. ~3 The article went on to reveal that a young reporter ona metropolitan daily newspaper received the same as a senior reporter ona provincial daily newspaper. Small, weekly, newspapers attracted verylittle prestige, while the highest centred on the London newspaperspublished in Fleet Street.The early years of the 1880s witnessed a widespread concern amongreporters about the need for some kind of professional body ’for thepurpose of forwarding the legitimate interests of the profession ’~4 and, afteran informal meeting held at the 1883 agricultural show at York, acommittee of nine was formed:’to take prompt and energetic measures for the establishment of a Leagueor Association of reporters, sub-editors, and others engaged on the Pressof this country. ’~The Manchester Press Club members referred to themselves as’pressman’ or ’reporters’ and not as ’journalists’ but it was the NationalAssociation of Journalists that was formed in 1884.Some of those attending the founding conference of the NationalAssociation of Journalists wished to enrol in membership ’gentlemenengaged in journalistic work’ while others wished to restrict it to ’gentlemenengaged in the literary work of newspapers’. ~6 At that time the ’literary work’of the newspaper was seen to include reviewing, leader-writing, and specialcorrespondent, because: ’following the rapid increase of provincialnewspapers in the 1860s and 1870s there was a tendency for wellestablishedmen to denigrate newer recruits by using a distinction between"journalists" - worthy of high prestige; and reporters - worthy of little. ’~7The work reporters were expected to undertake, as the nineteenthcentury neared its close, was described in one career manual as beingMOD100051179