A State Owned Paper.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 6, 5 February 1903, Page 18

A State Owned Paper.

The foundation of a state-owned paper is not bo chimerical as it would seem without exposition of the details. The suggestion was actually made some years ago in the New South Wales Parliament by Mr George Black, the labor member for one of the suburbs of Sydney but it was never realised, probably because the Ministry was unwilling to face tho inevitable hostile criticism of the exisling newspapers. Shortly, the idea was this :—The State already spends so much per annum on ' Hansard,' so much on the ' Government Gazette,' so much on publications emanating from various departments, so much on advertising, and so on. It was proposed to send a free copy of the paper (which would be published three times a week at first) to every householder in the State. The difference between the present cost of all these publications and the *-">Der which wouM take their place was estimated at £15,000 a year. This was after allowing a certain income from advertising, but it would be obvious that a paper having periodical and regular entry to all the homes in the Colony might almost name its own price for advertisements. Assuming, these calculations to be approximately correct, and allowing, for a proportionate decrease according to population, s)uch a paper ought to be produced in New Zealand at an annual first cost of £5000 per annum. A journal of the kind might be expected to contain every sort of information likely to be valuable to the wage-earner and producer—the farmer, vine-grower, orchardist, shearer, drover, pastoralist, apiarist, poultry breeder, fisherman, sailor, waterside worker, miner, navvy, shipowner, exporter, importer, manufacturer, and mine-owner. It would contain all the information available about the labor market in every part of the State ; mining, discoveries and returns ; tides ; arrival and departure of vessels ; the state of roads and rivers ; wind and weather reports and indications ; market pryes for produce at

home and abroad, and so forth. It might at length become a paper of daily issue ; might eventually compete with the other dailies as a disseminator of news, but its development in these directions would be advisably a matter of evolution.