HOW OFTEN?

North Canterbury Gazette, Volume I, Issue 1, 12 August 1932, Page 6

HOW OFTEN?

We have given a great deal of thought to the frequency of our own appearances, and it is right that our readers should be taken into our confidence to the extent to which that problem concerns and interests them. The decision to appear once a week only has been made, not because we think' North Canterbury unworthy of a more frequent service, but because we think a more frequent service unworthy of North Canterbury. It is a question of giving the best service that can be given to a community already supplied with another kind of service of which the district is in no further need. What North Canterbury needs is a North Canterbury newspaper, and that cannot be provided, and kept worthy' of North Canterbury, if energy is dissipated , in the attempt to produce some other kind of newspaper. The people of this district are entitled to the same respect in the things of the mind as the people who live in cities, and it is impossible to show them respect in the pages of a newspaper if the primary effort is to announce what happened ten minutes since. Our primary effort will be to announce wliat the people of North Canterbury most want to know, if not quite what they most require to know,, and while we shall announce it ns soon as we can, and as soon in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred as is necessary, we shall not sacrifice everything else to the sensation of the moment.. It will not be our claim that if it is not in the Gazette it has not yet happened. The position will usuallv be that if it is not in the Gazette it does not matter much to the people for whom the Gazette is produced.