Journalistic Enterprise.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 248, 17 January 1889, Page 4

Journalistic Enterprise.

A London correspondent writes: The publication of Sir Morell Mackenzie’s book, entitled, 11 The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble,” has afforded some fine instances of the extent to which journalistic enterprise is carried nowadays. The date fixed for the appearance of the book was Monday, and the advance copies were not distributed to the Press till Sunday afternoon; but long before then the public knew all they wished to know about the contents of the book. A week to* th® British Medical Journal published a series of comments based upon a tolerably full knowledge of the contents of the book. On the same day the Paris edition of the New York Herald published about six columns of extracts from the book, and next day the Standard and several other English news* papers copied the Herald's summary into their own columns. It appears that the New York Sun had paid the sum of £5OO for an advance copy of the book, and intended to publish the whole of it in a special edition on Sunday, the day upon which the advance copies of the book were issued to the English Press. The New York Herald got wind of this arrangement, and its London representative went to Messrs Sampson Low and Co., and offered them £lOOO for a copy a day earlier than the same would be supplied to the New York Sun, a proposal which Messrs Sampson Low and Co., of course, declined to entertain. Mr Gordon Bennett’s paper then set to work to get hold of the book without the assistance of the publishers, and in this endeavor it succeeded so well that it was a couple of days in advance of its contemporary. But, sharp as the New York Herald was, its chief rival in New York, the World, appears to have been sharper. The Herald published the extracts in its Paris edition on Friday, and intended to bring out the same in its New York edition on Saturday, that is a day in advance of the Sun. But the London correspondent of the New York World, on learning of the appearance of the extracts in Paris on Friday, cabled over to New York to know whether the Herald had published the same there, and learning that it had not, Sirchased a copy of the Paris edition, of the erald, which was on sale in London early on Friday afternoon, and cabled the whole of the extracts off to America, where they appeared in the World on Saturday morning simultaneously with their publication in the columns of the Herald. Thus the World not only deprived the Herald of a great part of its kudos, but purchased for a few pence what it must have cost the Herald many hundreds of pounds to obtain. The whole story is an amusing instance of diamond cut (’iamond, and throws an instructive side* light on the ethics of newspaper enterprise. How the surreptitious copies of the book got abroad no one professes to know. Messrs Sampsod Low and Co. took extraordinary precautions to prevent any knowledge of its contents leaking out beforehand. They had the work printed in a country office, the name of which was not allowed to transpire, and they state that only three sets of proofs were allowed to leave their office, one for the revision of the author, and two for the use of it German translators, because it had been determined to issue the work simultaneously in English, French, and German. The New York Herajd is understood to declare that it obtained its copy in just the seme way that it is accustomed to get anything else that it wants, namely, that the book was offered to it for sale, a price named, and the price was paid.