The Waipa Post. Printed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1926. NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING.

Waipa Post, Volume 31, Issue 1775, 26 June 1926, Page 4

The Waipa Post. Printed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1926. NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING.

THE modern newspaper is one of the wonders of the age. Of the millions of readers, how many thjink what thousands of complex interests it represents, or what vast labour and coordinated thought is entailed in bringing it into being. Early in the history of journalism the public recognised its value as a medium for advertising goods for sale, and, the numberless ways by which expression in its sheets would improve their business. The newspaper is now the essential to business success. There is a silent •and constant war going on in a newspaper office; its battle ground is space. There is an insatiate demon called the business manager, and his existence is occupied in securing as much room in the columns for advertising as the literary side of the concern will allow. Daily the demands of the display advertisement grow more preposterous until newssheets have become vast catalogues of the produQr tions of a civilisation that hourly increases the number of its necessities. There has come a time in which consideration of an organised resistance by the: journalist, in the interest of journalism, to the encroaches of commercialism, is justified. Huge advertisements, where numbers are huge', lose their force; all shou,t aloud nobody is heard,. In the interest of the public, who desire to secure informative reading matter without handling thirty-two square yards of printed matter, much of its flambuoyant notices of desirable building sites or millinery (illustrated) which is almost alarming in its revelations. A

maximum advertisement limit woulu be a wholesome reform. Space would result if unanimity were arrived at among newspaper proprietors and tariffs adjusted. How much suffering and loss the people of the world would •have endured by having faked nostrums foisted upon them by the unscrupulous advertiser 'God only knows. Many journals are not guiltless in this matter. They have information at their disposal that they might use to protect the public, did they so will. The cash advertisement wins out. How effectively the press can kill in a day a fraud was instanced but a short time" ago when the agents of an alleged curative mixture had started a great 'publicity campaign. A full report of its composition was published by an Auckland daily newspaper. Twentyfour hours afterwards the “ cure ” was universally repudiated by the press. As a commercial venture it was dead. There are many more of these ventures that could stand the same attention; the public would not be imposed upon and the atmosphere would he purer. The credulity of the sick is proverbial; the capacity of the public to absorb tales of cures infinite. The mischief that is wrought by the advertising quack is incalculable; the remedy lies largely in the hands of the great news-sheet proprietaries. United, they could destroy the evil. When “Secret Remedies” was published a good many years ago it swept numbers of fraudulent mixtures off the market; years afterwards some of these returned under a new name, and some still flourish. Everybody of mature experience understands the purport of certain veiled advertisements of noxious drugs. Some journals have cleared them off their sheets, to their credit, be it stated; but this abuse will not be corrected until the united press shows a united front to combat an evil that grows by advertising. There should be no difficulty in the way of the Department of Health issuing an advisory note that might he regarded as authoritative by the newspapers and be acted upon without the onus of setting u,p independent investigation. There is an urgent need throughout the world for sopie effective curb being put on the rapacity of nostrum-mongers, and the only way is through the medium of the united press and its power reflected on public opinion.