The Press: Happy Exception

Among Britain’s ten national dailies, circulation figures are frequently high where journalistic quality is low. Thus the sin-and-crime-loving London Daily Mirror tops 4,000,000 copies a day, while the respected Manchester Guardian sells a mere 160,000 and the famed London Times only 280,000. One happy exception to the rule is Viscount Camrose’s London Daily Telegraph, whose circulation of 981,566 makes it the world’s largest quality newspaper. Most of the Telegraph’s readers on both sides of the Atlantic (it has 600 U.S. subscribers) consider its all-round news coverage about the best in Britain.

Lord Camrose, 70, whose empire also includes 41 periodicals,* keeps a sharp eye on his paper. But for 25 years, Editor Arthur Ernest Watson, a quiet-spoken man who insists on crisp, accurate writing, has made most of the day-to-day journalistic judgments at the outspokenly Tory Telegraph. Not long after Watson moved into the editor’s chair, the Telegraph had only 84,000 readers; in 1947, its circulation hit 1,000,000. (Later, in the postwar newsprint shortage, the Telegraph made a voluntary circulation cut of 100,000, has been moving steadily back toward the million mark since more newsprint became available.)

Right Hand. A fortnight ago, in the Telegraph’s erudite gossip column, “London Day by Day,” by “Peterborough” (Hugo Wertham), an unobtrusive item recorded an exceptional occurrence at the Telegraph itself. After 48 years on the staff, 70-year-old Editor Watson was retiring. His successor, who took over last week: grey-haired Colin Reith Coote, 56, deputy editor and Watson’s right-hand man for the last five years.

A star rugger player at Rugby and Oxford, Colin Coote was a captain in the British army in Italy in 1917 when he was elected to Parliament to fill a vacancy caused by the death in action of another M.P. At 24, Coote became the youngest member of the House of Commons. But the general election of 1922, recalls Coote, “was the first time the voters really had a crack at me—and that ended my political career.” Ex-M.P. Coote became a foreign correspondent and later chief editorial writer for the Times; in 1942 he moved over to the Telegraph. A knowledgeable wine lover, he has written articles for both the Times and the Telegraph on wines, has also co-edited an anthology (Maxims and Reflections) from the writings and speeches of his close friend, Winston Churchill.

Byline-Bagger. The Telegraph got off to a fast start 95 years ago by charging twopence when rival dailies were selling for fivepence. Soon after, it halved its price, became London’s first penny daily; in 1888 its circulation soared to an unheard-of 300,000.

The Telegraph joined forces with the New York Herald to send Stanley in search of Livingstone, has helped underwrite many other expeditions and has run exclusive, circulation-catching stories about them. A newspaper with a heart, the Telegraph has raised thousands of pounds for disaster victims, collected £135,000 to help build a new Shakespeare Memorial Theater at Stratford-on-Avon after the old one burned down in 1926.

Over the years, the Telegraph has boasted some notable bylines, including Teddy Roosevelt, David Lloyd George, Thomas Masaryk and T. E. Lawrence (whose Seven Pillars of Wisdom was first serialized in the Telegraph). As deputy editor, Colin Coote himself promoted the Telegraph’s biggest prize, the Churchill wartime memoirs, a project shared also by LIFE and the New York Times. New Editor Coote plans no major changes in the Telegraph’s impartial news coverage or its Conservative editorial policy. Says he: “We have succeeded to some extent in being serious without being dull. I hope we shall never fall into the disastrous policy of trying to be [editorially] impartial.”

* His brother, Viscount Kemsley, 66, publishes 42 dailies and weeklies of his own.