Dundee Courier: Production Of A Great Daily Newspaper

Commissioned by publishers DC Thomson, this silent film was produced by documentarians at the Gaumont film company. First shown in public in 1911, it was regularly screened to audiences across the Dundee area for years. The National Library of Scotland have it as part of their media collection, though you can only watch the full version at their premises.

At half an hour long it covers most aspects of the production of 'a great daily newspaper'. Celebrating 50 years of the paper, it's fascinating for several reasons. Some of these are technological: film was in its infancy but linotype was well established. Pneumatic tubes carry slips for classified adverts up for typesetting, and trams are seen on Dundee's streets. It is a steam train that carries the Courier across the Tay, however, and among the hot metal and electric lighting it's still shoe leather and string that gets papers to their readers.

Among the stories being drafted are football results, and there's some footage from the ground. Dundee has two teams today but they are each an amalgamation of at least two themselves. I believe that it's Dundee (not United) against Raith Rovers, but that's based on others' work. The introduction of the offside rule isn't the only significant modification in the last century.

There are some humorous moments, or at least ones that are wryly amusing. A few times there's nerves from what passed for health and safety. Realising that the white spatter across some pieces of equipment isn't paint but lead is perhaps more chilling than the camera's vertiginous plunge down a shaft sized for plates and not people.

Though it's relatively long it's so packed with incident and detail that it flies by. That's even though it's silent. I don't know if there was music traditionally played at showings but it manages without. There are any number of memorable moments. I think an 'Extra Speshul [Sic] board that reads "Courier Scottish Express Disaster" is about 1910's Hawes Junction crash, where a sleeper from St Pancras to Glasgow struck another train in Cumbria. Like the football club's badge it's one of several details that might spark further research. It's possible that amateur genealogists might catch a glimpse of a great grandparent among the sea of lads and lasses streaming out to sell papers. You needn't be a Dundonian to see how much high streets have changed in a century, though there is something about the reintroduction of trams that'd set many Scots off.

Gaumont's technical expertise is evident. While restoration means that there are a couple of intertitles that have lost text cut off on one margin or another, the images themselves are still quite clear. There are some interesting choices in composition. I'm not entirely sure that quite as many carts went by with paper for the Courier. At three miles a roll, and four per wagon the suspicion that some went by the camera more than once is probably unfounded. Running at 48,000 copies an hour takes a lot. That there's as good a picture of everything on either side of that took a lot too. As an artefact of corporate pride and commercial propaganda it's fascinating, and with every passing year its value as a historic document increases.