On few subjects are the public under more misapprehension than on the
absolute and relative circulation of several portions of the London
daily press. The greater part of the people would startle were they told
that The Times circulates probably under 7,000 a day on an average; the
paper is seen, as one may say, in every pot-house in London, and all
over the country; and yet this is all its number.
The property of a paper is a matter of which most people have a very
vague and imperfect knowledge. I believe I am very near the truth when I
state the gross proceeds of The Times at 45,000l., a year. The present
proprietor of The Morning Chronicle gave for it, I believe, 40,000l. The
absolute property of The Courier, according to the current rate of its
shares, is between 90,000l. and 100,000l. Estimating the value of The
Globe on the same scale, the absolute property of it is probably
somewhere about 35,000l. The profits of a paper arise almost entirely
out of its advertisements, and hence the difference in value between the
two last, notwithstanding their circulation is so nearly equal. A
newspaper gets its advertisements by degrees, and, as it is supposed by
the public, its numbers increase; but it retains them long after the
cause by which they were acquired has vanished. It is thus that The
Courier, which got its advertisements when it basked in all the sunshine
of ministerial patronage, retains these when its numbers are reduced by
one-half, and the countenance of government is no longer held out to it.
These, however, it must be admitted, are the prizes in the lottery of
newspaper speculation: and in this, as in every other lottery, there are
more blanks than prizes. Mr. Murray, after having expended upwards of
10,000l. on his Representative, sold it to the proprietors of The New
Times for about 600l.: and The British Press, after having ruined I know
not how many capitalists, was sold to the same concern for, I believe, a
considerably smaller sum.--_London Magazine_.
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