The Press Association.

Hastings Standard, Issue 143, 12 October 1896, Page 4

The Press Association.

AND THE HASTINGS STANDARD

Writes " Scrutator" in the N.Z. Mail:—" K tile Press Association lose the right of exacting a fairly substantial entrance fee for newly-started papers—au<l I am not so sure that this would be good for either the press or the public—it will be through the crass folly exhibited over the case of the Hastixus Standakd. llightly or wrongly the public hold the opinion that in attempting to exact the iniquitously high entrance fee of £SOO from the promoters of the Hastings Standard the directors of the Association were acting in the interests of the two Conservative papers of Nmpier, and it is the unfairness of this which has brought so many members of the House to demand the total abolition of the entrance fees. But speaking as not only a journalist, but a private individual, I feel convinced that New Zealand is already over-papered, and I am not at all certain that the much denounced 4i monopoly of the Association is not a very good thing in the interests of the public. P>ut the monopoly must not be almsed by its owners, and this, in the Hastings insiam-e at least, has most assuredly been the case. Thus the Evening News :—" The matter which has led up to the exposure of some of the glaring anomalies of the Press Association, and the setting up of a Parliamentary committee was a scandalous attempt made by its directorate to extort an entrance fee of £SOO from the Hastings Standard. Eight years ago when Hastings went in for a similar luxury the cost to the proprietors under that heading was •i'llX). It is questionable if ever that barefaced attempt at daylight robbery (in a Pickwickian sense of course) would have leaked out had not the President of the alleged Press Association, Mr E. W. Knowles (whose instincts by reason of early association run more to the commercial than the literary side of journalism) refused to make a reasonable arrangement with the proprietors for the payment of portion of the £SOO. Mr Knowles cannot be accused of taking the stand he did from entirely disinterested motives as he owns a Napier paper which used to have a fair circulation in Hastings before the advent of the Standakd.''