INSIDE A NEWSPAPER

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 223, 19 April 1933, Page 2

INSIDE A NEWSPAPER

Views of Owner Publisher DIFFICULTIES AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES Requests for Free Publicity Newspaper production and the factors that go to make a successful daily were the subject of an interesting address delivered recently by Mr. P. D. Ross, of the Ottawa Journal. The Journal is one of the Dominion's prominent papers and its publisherowner a recognised authority on everything that pertains to the Press in Canada. The guiding principles with which Mr. Ross deals differ only in unimportant details from the position in New Zealand. It is not necessary to reproduce the address at length, but the extracts below will serve to give some idea of the difficulties that those who control newspapers have to contend wi'h. We quote: '•The exposition must start, from a consideration of what sort of an enterprise a modern newspaper is. There are two extreme ways of looking at it. One is that it m merely an ordinary business enterprise. The other idea, is that a newspaper is, or should be, in the main a sort of philanthropic enterprise to help things along. Both ideas are wrong. Let us lake a glance at both of them. First, as to' the business end.

"A newspaper should mean wellbut if it carries that idea too far it won't live long. A newspaper must be a successful business enterprise first of all. Reading space in a newspaper is necessarily limited, and if a newspaper does not use. it. well, that is business failure. The space should he used for good news. If used for anything else, some portion of good news is lost to the newspaper, and, correspondingly, some portion Of its appeal to the public.

"There is no great misapprehension among the general public, I imagine, than the idea that a newspaper finds it difficult to get enough reading matter. There is hardly a daily newspaper in existence which does not condense or even absolutely throw away columns, sometimes pages, of good news or reading matter every day of the year. Our eternal problem in newspaper editorial rooms is to cet space enough to publish all we would like to publish. We never can afford to do it.

"So one thing that bothers the aver ago newspaper editor is the multiplicity of the appeals, or requests, he gets to help grind somebody else's axe. Won't the editor help? Well, when we give the space, it. is space that costs us money, and that shuts out news which is part of the life Wood of the paper. You would not dream of going into a shoe store to ask for a tree gift of a pair of shoes, would you, 01 into a butcher's to ask for a steak as a present, would you? But when anyone usks for free reading space in a newspaper, for his own purposes, it » p?ettv much the same thing. Unless -and here is the joker-his own pinposes include the public good.

Political and Personal Axes "There is no end to pressure on a newspaper for other P^ B X?°cS Sometimes the owners of great c) papers, like Pulitzer and James. Goi don Bennett, make it a partßeason why they go to live somewhere els than in New York, leaving then ed ors with instructions to v ply the news and to publish tvuy Sing no matter whose ox «■ BOKjd "Politicians are particularly prone t t 0 persuade a newspaper to go tCwhole hog ih all party matters SSeSTi Sir Join, he would always support him when he was right, 'I don't give a dam friends who will support m She,. I'm right/ said Sir John: I wan mends who jegenj am wrong. Tnat is sllu , u many men in active politics and j gives some of us newspaper men a good deal of trouble. But it urn t as ha** f t Ca uS ed to be, before as strong as they •^j/^JU posed to be eiuia , ld fov Vative, and to d« th< best u c its party not only od« every other way. f«t sort of No newspaper in Canada to day merely a party organ, rhtre "Another interesting subject sie gards points of view, one nsidcthe other outside, a newspaper office * what should be the quality of 10 , a very class and education 1«J Ui( , you, of course, when he pick i paper, pounces upon U mUrd s anxious to sec evi l i , r , st ing to improve *c morals o be { ol the commumty. No* ■ e will give you *h« Canatti*« „, erman's point of c ; ~ )V p„t,lislv C arn his bread and buttu Dy l ing a decent newspape but attempt UH>nnp^ddc ;i Ji« ivopy •ivp limits to ncwspapei ij» anywhere, and he knowswnat *os< Ulltits aro it. Canada The Times would not Jvo a year f coUntry . There »sn t he co sti * little Bn S; d i„ W a"motor-car forty verse in a day in am mil . J? 1111 "?* E a - educated people lions of them, ai . affairs; interested in all the w«J fe and in such an areaa a > PJ . the London Tunes can mi*. Canada ten milhon Pe oplc icy mattered, and in no one in this country as y,s tttcl - £ il S '; lC f St be caUed a high-brow port ™ D ft i The Canadian newspaper newspaper. iu« y , ap peal must be publish- d injv. y ; - t T'° ° V t try t proS the sort of \Vc must tiy w i" fcl mOS t newspaper which will J e merest to.the, gieacs >lse we will die. vv« d the try to please the p>he an„, professional man, ™\™ tll( , cotl l but we must: try to P d heaver and the domesti hcivan SstVyt"lease the children.