OCR Text |
Show IT'S HUMAN NATURE People are continually going to a newspaper office with articles they want published or to keep something from being published. Usually they kow much more than the newspaper man about what should or should not be prnted, and their modesty doesn't prevent pre-vent their telling him about it. Often they take it for granted that all that is necessary to get something in the paper or to keep something some-thing out, is to make known what they want. Because they subscribe sub-scribe for the paper or carry advertising in it they feel free to dictate its policy under a threat of "stopping the paper" or discontinuing their advertising.. Such people forget that each of them is only one of the hundreds hun-dreds who are reading the paper, and that the other hundreds may want to read the very story that they want suppressed. They for- get that a newspaper owes fair treatment to ail of its readers and that it betrays trust if it plays favorites by printing news about some I people and withholding news about others. When they have done j something that does not reflect credit on themselves, ask the paper to protect their family or friends from publicity they have brought j on them, although it is as much the newspaper's duty to print the news as it was the duty of the offender to protect those near to him by doing nothing that would cause them pain cr sorrow. A newspaper must have and follow rules governing the character char-acter of matter it prints in its columns. The best rule ve know anything any-thing about is to print all the news tha is fit to print, just as we aim to make the paper woth the subscription price and our advertising adver-tising worth the space rate charged. Scandal and gossip are not news. And when it comes to preventing sorrow or pain, we expect can and still keep his conscience clear. |