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Show Good reasons for a weekly press Surrounded by hefty daily newspapers, on-the-spot television tel-evision newscasts, frequent radio news broadcasts, all covering important events foreign and domestic what does the surban reader get out of his local weekly? What he gets, if his weekly week-ly is a good one, is a detailed detail-ed knowledge of the community com-munity in which he lives, in which his children are raised, rais-ed, in which his private life is passed. Daily newspapers, television televis-ion radio all are called the "mass media." And rightly so. They deal, as they should, with mass events, mass movements when an individual enters, he is, almost always, an individual in-dividual whose actions have had an effect on a large number of people for good or bad. But I am not a people. You are not a people. We are persons, you and I, and we need to know what is happening that affects us as persons, and what the persons we live among are doing that will touch our daily, private lives. The local paper also can act as a lever to raise standards stan-dards in local government, . to improve local familiarities, familiar-ities, to acquaint the individual indi-vidual voter with actions of his particular representative in government and to acquaint ac-quaint the representative with principal subjects of concern to local community. There are other functions for the slim, sometimes unpolished un-polished little sheet to perform per-form . it can trumpet the merits of your own home town, tell you where you can buy that dress without going miles away, warn against community blight, and tell you that Aunt Millie Mil-lie is back from Florida and your fourth grade teacher tea-cher is in the hospital maybe you should send her a card? All these things the dailies dai-lies television or radio cannot can-not do. Their news must interest in-terest everybody, must affect af-fect The People. They deal with the great of this world. For news about you and me, read your weekly paper! (Reprinted from Baldwin, N. Y. Citizen) |