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Show YOUK NKWSI'AI'KIt. II. B. R. firings, editor of the Denver Express, in a talk before the Optimist Club the other day, while claiming some credit for good for tin: newspapers and admitting certain defects, told his audience audi-ence that the public was much to blame if the newspapers were not what the people wanted. He saiil in part: "Your newspaper is a complex, hy-bride hy-bride sort of animal - a cross between the ordinary business firm and a public utility. As a business it gathers raw materials (sometimes extra raw) and fabricates them into a product. It markets that product. It must, like other business, keep out of the "red ink." It must be a going concern or its a gone concern. "Rut added to that is its public utlity phrase. For its true success -to reader and advertiser alike is not manufacturing, manufac-turing, selling and financing. It is or should be -service. "For the reader, it takes the place of the old town crier, village gossip and royal proclamation. "It is the well in fromed acquaintance who tells you what's happened, adds some temperate, well-considered comment, com-ment, cracks a joke or two, visits with the rest of the family for a few minutes Bnd goes on his way. "Its relation to the advertiser is again n matter of simple, courteous services. It introduces him to the reader. In effect, it suggests to Mr. Reader that Mr. Advertiser has a business propo sition hemiuht like to consider. "If the newspaper is an honest friend of Mr. Reader, it will not introduce in-troduce an advertiser it knows or strongly suspects to be crooked. No more than you personaly would introduce intro-duce a crook to a friend. "This simple introduction is all an advertiser pays for or has a right to expect. The old days of a pair of suspenders with a suit of clothes are gone. "And the advertiser who seeks to suppress news or have a voice in editorial edi-torial policy is headed for very definite defi-nite negative enlightenments if he tries it with an honest newspaper. Very few do. "Blame yourselves, if you don't like the kind of newspapers you have. A city's newspapers are the composite reflections of it's citizenship, past history his-tory and present development. "You can have any kind of papers you want. If you prefer seven buckets buck-ets of blood and a fragrant spray of scandal why, help yourself. "If you want somthing better, encourage en-courage those who are trying to give it to you. "You are complacent when a news-paper news-paper switces its policy, between editions, edi-tions, on some important political or i .-dustrial .-dustrial question, but dam it roundly if it disagrees with you honestly on some such quistion. "One of the worst results of the 'war was the wave of hysterical, un-Arceri-canintolerance. Applied to newspapers, it workes out this way: "Depending on your personal. bias, a newspaper is "owned body and soul by Big Business" or "catering lo terrible! tide ef Bolshevism, red flags and pink whiskers." "Criticise your newspapers with constructive con-structive criticism. Help them with your suggestions. They are not responsible respons-ible for the entire moral uplift of the community, you know, Some of it rests on you. |