THE LOCAL RAG

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 June 1940, Page 14

THE LOCAL RAG

MALIGNED PROVINCIAL PRESS. In an article in the London Spectator, Mr. Scott James drew attention to the services rendered to the country by the Provincial Press. For a century or more, he said, these papers had played a very important part in the life of Great Britain, and he described them as a national asset. What Mr. James said of England .is just as true of New Zealand, and for that reason the remarks of the World’s Press News in commenting on the article are of interest. It is quite common (the writer says) to hear the townspeople talk about “our local rag” and belittle the efforts of the proprietors. And yet it is this very “rag” which presents a picture of the conditions prevailing in that town or city to merchants and manufacturers abroad. More than 60 per cent of the advertisements in the great majority of provincial papers are national and not local in character. And yet for the price of a penny or 2d. the local reader expects to receive each day a paper equivalent to its London contemporaries, with a full complement of home and foreign news, commercial, sporting, general, and local affairs. The lack of Ideal support for the Provincial Press is the more to be regretted, as to-day it is faced with a competition which threatens its very existence. What provincial paper can spend thousands of pounds weekly in canvassing and’ gift schemes, costly competitions, and free insurance policies? Local patriotism should rise superior to these inducements; and local readers will do good service to their localities if they try to safeguard the existence of the paper, which is the mirror of their daily lives.