TV Partly To Blame For End Of "Junior Digest"

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30630, 22 December 1964, Page 18

TV Partly To Blame For End Of " Junior Digest"

The disappearance of the children’s magazine "Junior Digest,” after 20 years of publication, represented to a considerable extent, another casualty resulting from the Initial craze for television, said the editor, Mr C. R. Dunford, yesterday. In 1960, its circulation reached a peak of 22,000, but this had now dropped to 9500, he said. “We have a graph which shows the decline from 1961, the year in which television was introduced. Our investigations showed that a child was more interested in a television programme than in reading, and seldom did parents observe that this was happening or do anything about it” Television could not provide children with a substitute for reading, as the medium could not deal with a subject with the same breadth and detail. “I have observed that television has had its honeymoon stage in other countries, but after a while the sales of good literature and magazines for children returned to their former level.” No result had come from efforts to save the “Junior Digest,” he claimed. “No appeal I have made on behalf of the children—to governments. business men or trusts, has shown that these men have a genuine concern for. j or knowledge of what, children read.”

It had always been cost, profit or the balance sheet The digest was published by Dunford Publications, Ltd.,

| Christchurch. The publisher {claimed that everything in it was carefully edited with the needs of the child foremost in policy, and not his cravings and wants which some other juvenile literature developed. “I am angry and so are others, that syndicated trash is boosted in New Zealand while a magazine of genuine value to children is allowed to die,” said Mr Dunford. “New Zealand will lose an important medium for story writers, and, more particularly, a means to develop our youthful writers.” said Mr Dunford. Much of the maga- ; zine consisted of children’s [own literary criticism, letters Ito the editor, poems, stories, club reports, articles and drawings. Teachers who used it for extra class reading would miss it, as would Esperanto learners, philatelists, clubs and marching girls and other groups who used it as an aid to their activities. The magazine was in recess only, said Mr Dunford, but publication could resume only when television lost some of its initial impact on young people, and at such time when others entered the field with him. To children, meanwhile, he recommended that they continue in the activities sponsored by “Junior Digest” and look for similar reading as an alternative. Action, and a vigorous investigation into what was being substituted to their children, was what he recommended to adults. i