The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-02-26
IWorcester Spy.I
Printing the News.

Our friends of the Plymouth Church ex-
press considerable annoyance and some anger
at the publication of the names of the princi-
pal subscribers for the payment of their debt.
We regret that their satisfaction in which we
share, begging them to accept our hearty con-
gratulations, upon the success of their en-
deavor to relieve themselves of that burden,
should be marred by an occurrence in any way
unpleasant. They will understand, of course,
that though from our point of view their COM
plants seem unreasonable, we freely admit
that they have much appearance of Justice.
The case is this: Certain facts of interest to a
large portion of the local public were an
nounced to an audience of one thousand per-
| sons or more, each and all of when were at
liberty to repeat sthem to anybody, but we
were requested not to repeat them to every
body. The facts coming to our knowledge
under these circumstances could scarcely be
considered as communicated in confidence
which we were bound in honor to respect.
The request was addressed to our courtesy; it
deserved courteous reception and fair con-
sideration. 1t is always unpleasant and often
difficult to refuse request SO made by gentle
men whom we respect, and whose good opin-
ion we value, but it is one of the things which
most men have to do sometimes; and the pub
lishers OF a newspaper more often than most
others. 1t would be more difficnlt If we did
| not have almost daily practice in it. We do
not pretend to publish all the news Many
things take place here and elsewhere, ac-
counts of which we might easily procure with
the certainty that they would be eagerly read
by thousands, but which for various reasons
we do not publish. In deciding what to select
from the news at our disposal, we are guided
hu nuYn inf1n pf
ly by business considerations, of course, for
newspaper publishing is our business, by which
we must prosper, if we prosper at all, and in
| part other motives.
| The news which our Plymouth friends de-
| sired us to suppress was acceptable to much
| larger number of persons than the thousand or
more who assented to the request for its sup.
preston, and not few of the latter number,
as was proved by their applications which we
| regret to say were fruitless because the de-
mand for this particular bit of news has been
| unexpectedly large. If we had yielded to the
! request of our Plymouth friends we should
| have disobliged some of them, and much
| larger number of other readers, who have an
| equal claim upon us. We regret, of course,
the severance of relations which have been, on
| the whole, we presume, mutually pleasant and
profitable, or they would not have continued
| so long, between ourselves and a few members
| of the Plymouth society, and we trust that the
interruption will be brief. and that, even
| while our direct intercourse with them seems
! to be suspended, we shall continue to indirect
| ly supply them with the news of the day,
which they cannot conveniently do without,
or if their resentment will not permit SO much
as that, we shall hope at least to be missed
They will understand, however, that we dc
not recognize them as pa .rons in any proper
! sense OF the word, and that our view of OuI
mutual relations is, that while we supply what
they want, and cannot so advantageously OBJ.
tain otherwise, they will read the Spy, though
they may not always agree with our opinions
nor approve our discretion.