The Newspaper

Sogmarsh Wireless Presents — being thirty minutes of the free press, printed on a wet Tuesday.

A back room become an "editorial office." A borrowed press, a spike for the copy, an air of world-shaking importance over a puddle.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless presents The Newspaper; in which Mr Horace P. Dudgeon, President for Life of No. 4½ Sump Lane, founds a great organ of the free press, and learns what news the realm actually wants.

Interior. The office. HORACE, editorial, sleeves rolled. DOLLY QUICK, his sharp and only reporter. MERCY, doubtful.

HORACE. Mercy. The realm has the Pass-Around — that thumbed rag of problem-pages and penny-reeds. It is not journalism. I am founding a newspaper. The Sump Lane Clarion. Fearless. Searching. A paper that holds power to account and makes its editor a personage of — (catches himself) — that serves the public interest.

MERCY. (flat) What's your first story?

HORACE. (grandly) SCANDAL, Mercy. I have it on good authority that the Bucket-Warden — the goat — was elected irregularly. A goat! In office! The realm must be told. (to Dolly) Miss Quick — the headline. Something that thunders.

DOLLY. (dry, pencil poised) "Goat." That's the headline. "Goat." Everyone knows about the goat. They voted for it. It's a very popular goat.

HORACE. But the irregularity —

DOLLY. There's no irregularity, Horace. A goat stood, a goat won, the realm's delighted. That's not news. (beat) You want to know what's news? I'll tell you what came in this morning. Mrs Pell's roof's gone again. Old Rudge isn't home and his lamp's been lit two nights. And there's Tea Weather forecast for Thursday. That's the news. That's what they'll read.

HORACE. (appalled) A roof? A man's lamp? The weather? Miss Quick, that is not journalism, that is gossip —

DOLLY. (evenly) It's the news that matters to the people it happens to. Whose roof, whose lamp, whether there's tea. (beat) Your "scandal" matters to nobody but you. That's the difference between a newspaper and a man wanting to be important in print.

Interior. The office. HORACE, ignoring her, has printed his scandal edition. He reads the front page aloud, thrilling to it.

HORACE. (declaiming) "CROWN IN CRISIS: GOAT'S ELECTION A SHAM — Warden Unfit, Says Clarion — Full Investigation Demanded —" (to the room) THIS, Miss Quick, will shake the realm.

SFX: the door. ASK VANCE, damp and unimpressed, holding a copy.

VANCE. (flatly) Dudgeon. Your "Crown in Crisis." I've looked into it, as is my habit. The goat was elected perfectly regularly. It got the most votes. That's the whole of the constitution. (sets paper down) There's no crisis. There's no sham. There's a goat, doing a modest job, modestly, and a man in a back room who wanted there to be a scandal so badly he printed one. (beat) It turns out to be the weather, Dudgeon. It always turns out to be the weather. There's never a conspiracy. There's just rain, and roofs, and who's not home.

HORACE. (deflating) ...But a paper must have scandal —

VANCE. A paper here must have whose roof and whose lamp. That's not less than scandal, Dudgeon. It's more. Ask Mrs Pell whether her roof or the goat's election kept her up last night.

SFX: DOLLY, quietly, has set the real news in type. A different edition.

DOLLY. (mildly) I set the other one and all, Horace. While you were thundering. (reading) "MRS PELL'S ROOF DOWN AGAIN — Neighbours to Gather Thursday, Bring Straw. OLD RUDGE HOME SAFE — Lamp Out, He'd Gone to His Sister's, Tell His Street. TEA WEATHER THURSDAY — Get the Good Cups Out." (beat) That's the one they'll read till it's soft, Horace. That's the one that does a job. Mends a roof. Turns off a worried lamp. Warns a street to make tea.

HORACE. (quietly, taking it in) ...Yours mends a roof. Mine shakes a realm that does not wish to be shaken. (pause) ...Print yours, Miss Quick.

DOLLY. (already at the press) Printing.

Interior. The kitchen. MERCY. HORACE, a copy of the real edition in hand, subdued but oddly settled.

MERCY. Good first edition?

HORACE. (quietly) ...Not mine, Mercy. Mine demanded a full investigation into a goat. Miss Quick's got Mrs Pell's roof mended by Thursday and turned off a lamp that had a whole street worried. (beat) One of those is journalism, and it is not the one with my thunder in it. (sets the paper down, almost tender) "Old Rudge home safe." Three words. Turned off a lamp. I have written a great deal in my life, Mercy, and never once turned off a worried lamp.

MERCY. (fond, flat) You could learn. Miss Quick's a good teacher, if you can bear being taught.

HORACE. (a rueful, warmer beat) ...I shall be Proprietor, then. And Miss Quick shall be Editor. The Proprietor provides the thunder — (beat) — which the Editor removes, before it does any harm. It is, I find, the natural and proper division of a free press.

ANNOUNCER. Sogmarsh Wireless has presented The Newspaper. The Sump Lane Clarion appears weekly, weather permitting, and carries no scandal, there being none. It has mended one roof, reassured one street, and correctly forecast tea. Its Proprietor provides the thunder; its Editor, mercifully, removes it.

The press, turning. The drip. Slow fade.

— end —