Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quarter-century, perhaps the m ost far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in the scope and seriousness of their arts coverage.
It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. Yet a considerable number of the most significant c ollections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of new spaper reviews. To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once deemed suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies.
We are even farther rem oved from the unfocused newspaper review spublished in England between the turn of t he 2 0th century and the eve of World War Ⅱ, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts crit icism was consi dered an ornament to the publications in which it appe ared. In those far-off days, it was taken for granted tha t the cri tics of major papers woul dwri te 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 Bern ard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trus ted to know what they were a bout. These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published in the daily press. “So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in journalism, ”Newman wrote, “ that I am tempted to define‘journalism’ as ‘a term of cont empt appl ied by writers who are not read to writers who are’. ”
Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays ont he game of cricket. During his l ifetime, though, he was also one of England's foremost classical-music critics, and a stylist so widely admired that his Autobiography（1947）became a best-seller. He was knighted in 1967, the first music critic to be so ho nored. Yet on ly one of his books is now in print, and his vast body of writings on music is unknown save to specialists.
Is there any chance that Cardus’s criticism will enjoy a revi val? The prospect seems remote. Jour nalistic tastes had changed long before his death, and postmodern reader shave little use for the ric hly upholstered Vicwardian prose in which he specialized. Moreover, the amateur tradition in music criticism has been in headlong retreat. 【題組】25. What would be the best title for the text?
(A) Newspapers of the Good Old Days.
(B) The lost Horizon in Newspapers.
(C) Mournful Decline of Journalism.
(D) Prominent Critics in Memory.
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