Text 1Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the pastquarter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in thescope and seriousness of their arts coverage.It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty toimagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers.Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. To read such books today is tomarvel at the fact that their learned contents were once deemed suitable for publication ingeneral-circulation dailies.We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published inEngland between the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time whennewsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament to thepublications in which it appeared. In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that thecritics of major papers would write in detail and at length about the events they covered.Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly,like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they wereabout. These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published inthe daily press. “So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep theirown end up in journalism,” Newman wrote, “that I am tempted to define ‘journalism’ as ‘aterm of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are.’”Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. Neville Cardus, who...
