COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 2, 26 February 1945, Page 23

COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER

By 538687

One evening a few months ago, our gang wandered into the Y.M. for supper. We sat around the fire, and some one started an argument. But some one else had left a Korero on my seat. I flicked a page, idly, and there was a report on one of New Zealand’s smaller newspapers. Before, the war it was my job to run just such a country newspaper. Smaller, in fact. It came out once a week, on Thursdays, for one of our rural towns and the farming districts nearby. Let it be nameless here. Price 2d., circulation 1,800, but don’t let that give you a false impression. It has been dead since war became more important than printing. We were a young staff and there was no alternative, anyway. The presses, the linotype, the platen, the guillotine, staplers, perforators, type cases —all these lie quietly beneath their dust covers. I like to think they are waiting for peace to give them life again. But life will mean problems, and they face small newspapers everywhere. If the homely little journals with names like Bugle and Examiner and Record are to survive in a hustling world and play a useful part, they must face up to these problems. In facing up, they may lose some of their quaintness, which will be a pity, for there is charm in quaint ways. But sometimes there is decay, too. The list of such publications dwindles from year to year. I can think

of a dozen for whom the difficulties became too great. Perhaps you live in a city and (unless you are a big shot) never see your name in print. You see Sleepy Hollow’s Bugle only when Aunt Emma sends the family a copy with a story about her sewing circle. You study it as you would a curiosity, and laugh at the strange emphasis on small things and ordinary people. The main headlines are as far from your world as country was from city fifty years ago. Well, there is the main problem. To-day, country is never far from city. Rapid transport, good roads, express deliveries— things have made suburbs where before there were towns. Motion pictures, radio, mass entertainment —these things have standardized our tastes, inclinations, most of our desires. Sleepy Hollow, with its individual traditions, colourful personalities, and characteristic ways, is slowly losing its identity, being moulded into the same flat pattern that makes the city. And as the trend develops it will be in danger of dying spiritually, socially, and commercially. It is a problem which causes concern in New Zealand, as it does elsewhere. Some of our leading educationists have seen the danger. They have placed the emphasis on the small community. They hope to see the day when centralization is abandoned, and we live not in crowded, hustling cities, but in separate groups in the country, where we can be close

to the hills, the trees, the grass, the soil, our dwellings clustered about a social and cultural centre. This way, Sleepy Hollow may come to life again. This way, there is a challenge to the Bugle. Community centre projects are still rare in New Zealand. It happened, nevertheless, that our little weekly newspaper was published in a town which was helping to show the way. Let me tell you how we met the challenge. As jt was.—We had a newspaper, price 2d., circulation 750, published twice a week. It went into approximately 45 per cent, of the homes in our town and district. It suffered from most of the ailments which to-day afflict the smaller newspapers-—in normal times, of course. . Metropolitan competition was serious. Radio advertising had cut down the appropriation available for the smaller journals. An insufficient staff (the small newspaper must make every penny count) meant an overworked staff, and an overworked staff means journalistic necessity more than journalistic enterprise. To all those who, after hearing “ Editor’s Daughter ”

on the radio, feel that it would be fun to produce a country newspaper, I can only say, try it, not once or twice, but every week year in and year out. You will have no spare time. Even keeping linotypes going when they are thirty years old requires unlimited ingenuity and is likely to produce grey hairs. Put bluntly, the metropolitan morning daily could make it impossible for us to live, if it chose. We could hold ground only on the slender advantages of local preference, local emphasis, more detailed news-gathering, and the plain loyalty of our readers. We were down on circulation, and we were down in that important factor in news presentationtime. . But don’t think it is like this with all country newspapers. We were still young, and we were still struggling. Newspapers are institutions and, like other institutions, they gather strength from the years. Some of them grow to be real old grannies, and even when they can no longer see very clearly they" go on about their daily business, wrapped in a shawl of time and tradition and the affection of their subscribers. We were rather too close to the city, and perhaps we were suffering more than is usual from that trend I spoke about. It seemed we could make no further headway, so we took the plunge. The Changes We made.— ln 1938 our town decided for a free library. Instead of the old subscription library, available only to those who could afford it, the new venture was supported from rates, thrown wide open to every man, woman, and child who cared to use it. A live association with the Country Library Service made the best books. available to every member of the community. Even before this, plans were materializing for the establishment of a community centre attached to the local high school. Carnegie grants had enabled a valuable collection of art prints and literature, music records, &c., to be assembled. Plans were drawn for the necessary buildings. Government assistance was promised. We began to argue with ourselves. What is our place in all this ? How can we play a useful part in this development of community life ?

Several things were obvious. We were by inheritance the voice of the community. In the scheme of things to come we could play a vital and useful part. We had . the machinery, hoped we had the drive to put it to the best use. The first thing to go by the board was that 45 per cent, circulation. How could we serve a community if we were reaching less than half of it ? The library was our cue, the answer was a blanket delivery to every home. A hundred problems came hard on the heels of that decision. Newspapermen will shudder at the thought of such folly. We did our share of shuddering, too. But in the event, I don’t think we lost any “ prestige ” ; I think we served the community better than ever before, and we certainly made friends. The financial results were inconclusive, because of the war which was to interfere, but they were promising, and we were certainly no worse off than before. Nights of planning, estimating, innovating produced answers to most of those hundred problems. They also produced an inch-high pile of typewritten manuscript, and every morning an office table littered with scribbled scraps of paper and cigarette ash. The problems ? We had decided to become a “ free ” newspaper. How could we do it and face our friends ? The thing we get for nothing has no value ! You can’t sell your newspaper, so you are going to give it away ! What were the counters to these gibes ? First of all, our readers would know of no other reason for the change-over but that we were determined to play what we saw to be our role in the development of community life. To the name of the paper, on the front page and over the leader column, and on all our stationery, we added the words, “ The Community Newspaper.” The price, 2d., was retained. A subscription was retained —a voluntary subscription. (We expected nothing from this, and were surprised.) We tied up even more closely with the community centre, the high school, the free library, the churches, the local bodies. An attractive “ ballyhoo ” folder was prepared for advance distribution to

every home. It was important that we be well announced. Finance was the next big problem. Would the venture pay, or would it bite the dust ? Against the loss of regular subscriptions and the increased cost of production and delivery, would advertising revenue balance ? We studied it from every angle. Careful estimations were made of the - probable increase in “ casual ” advertising ; “ contract ” advertisers were “ sounded.” The reaction seemed favourable. We made our calculations, and this time we were not surprised. The front page was rearranged, labelled “ The Notice-board of the Community.” In action it was a honey. For the first time, Mrs. Brown could advertise her lost watch, the tennis club its forthcoming ball, the Borough Council its general notices, and know that every home was getting the message. It was a good service, and it earned the right reward. Business houses using contract space were also quick to realize the advantages of over-all coverage. They contracted for more space, paid a better price for it. Biggest headache was the news side of the venture. There is a lot of news

in a borough and a dozen smaller places scattered about the district, some up to twenty miles away. But it is “ small ” news, hard to gather. The traditional method of collecting this news is to find in each village some public-spirited person who is “ in ” everything to act as correspondent. He or she is paid so much per column. But these days it is often impossible to find such a person, and when a choice is made it is often unsatisfactory, especially when the novelty has worn off. In any case, our budget allowed for one reporter only, and he would be fully occupied in the town and at the office. There was one way left. We could rely on the voluntary contributions of readers in these country districts. Newspapermen will shudder again. They know how easy it is to get Mrs. Smith to promise a report of her daughter’s twenty-first birthday party. They know, also, how close to the impossible it is to lay hands on the actual copy. When a week has gone by and you meet Mrs. Smith in the street, she hasn’t had the time, or she didn’t know how to start, she’s so sorry, and you say it doesn’t matter. But you didn’t get that story. In a small newspaper little stories like that are news. Some way we had to make it easy for amateur reporters to work for us. The answer was : forms. We devised forms to cover every standard function ; weddings, birthday, parties, dances,

kitchen evenings, ; meetings of all kinds ; sports events, cricket, tennis, golf, football, basketball matches. These forms made it easy for people who previously never got past chewing the ends of their pencils. Around them we built a system of keeping check, mailing, elbow-jogging, and so on. It worked, better than we had expected. The forms went out, and most times they came back again, promptly, in their preaddressed envelopes. Over to the reporter, it was his job then to be a rewrite man. Sometimes a smart linotype operator wrote the forms straight into lead. The first issue was marked by a change of “ dress,” some new features, including an inexpensive illustration service from Copenhagen (of all places), and a general brush-up. Later we installed one of the new “ legibility ” type faces, a big improvement. We were determined to maintain a standard ; in spite of the removal of the circulation incentive, there would be no slipping back. From week to week we printed the homely, intimate story of what people do who live in a small town and in the townships and on the farms nearby. But in addition we carried to every home this kind of story : reviews of interesting new books available at the library ; a record of the beginnings and hopes of our community centre ; a column from the churches, which carried their message beyond four walls. Not many NewZealanders write good books ; . one, favourably received here and abroad, first saw print in our pages. These things were not bought and paid for. They were contributed by readers for readers. We were the medium. We became twice as effective, three times as useful. We had met the challenge, and as far as events allowed we had succeeded But less than a year later, there was war. All thoughts of community development, except along necessary lines, were dropped. Plans for the centre went on the shelf. All our newspaper staff were eligible for military service ; one by one they went into camp, and soon I followed. We had already suspended publication for the duration.

Is this the answer for the Bugle ? Is there new life for country journalism this way ? Perhaps it is only one way of many. Perhaps the wrong way. Let us be the last to suggest that we

flew any brave new banners in the newspaper world. But we did fly a modest pennant in our town, and no wind blew it down except the hurricane which is still blowing.