Connecticut western news., 1884-01-02
A CHAT WITH OUR SUB-
 SCRERERS.

founded but 1t has never been necessary to offer premiums, club with other papers, give two years subscription for one, or get up a lottery scheme in order to retain its subscribers, as many pub fishers are doing at the present day. Its aim has been, and still is, to give value received in exchange for each subscrib- CTS money and it is to-day furnishing its subscribers more reading matter than ever before.
 A comparison recently made with other journals shows that the NEWS is to-day furnishing 50 per cent more reading matter than the majority of county papers and the price of many ot these papers is S2 per year. Many publishers are filling up their columns with all classes and grades of advertise ments and crowding out the reading matter. This saves the editor and com positors much work, but it is an injust ice to the subscriber.
 The NEWS is rejecting many proposi tions from advertisers throughout the country and is striving to make clean, bright and newsy paper.
 To keep the accounts correct, should we club with other papers, would require so much time we could not do justice by our own paper and would result in no benefit to our subscribers or the NEWS either
 Many publishers are asking us to club their papers with the NEWS, but we refuse for the reason just given. While we do not club with other publishers, we can recommend the Yankee Blade, published by Col Albert Clarke, Boston, Mass. His proposition is headed Journalistic Frauds and so correctly describes the dodges resorted to by many publishers that we gladly append it as follows:
 It is time that people should be warned against the extraordinary offers made by certain papers-mostly story papers-to induce subscriptions. The publishers devote 8 certain sum to advertising, @ certain sum to premiums and trust to developments for publish ing the paper. The public is told that the premiums will cost more at retail than the whole price asked for paper and premium and that the publisher can afford this because he places an enormous order with the manufacturers, thus getting bottom prices, and because, also, he derives more from advertising than the paper costs. Of course, people who think they can get $3 worth of something for g are caught and before the year is half out they are sorry.
 Such papers are almost invariably 'tfash" and every few weeks some one of them " flashes in the pan." The latest dodge IS to offer premiums on the plan of a lottery, so that the subscriber IS wrought up in expectation of drawing $10,000, or IS strongly hopeful of a gold watch, or is quite confident of a pair o1 $5 sleeve buttons, or is absolutely sure of $2 ring-all with paper that is the biggest, brightest, most absorbing and altogether delightful in the world
 Now all this may be business, but 1t Is not journalism. It costs a large sum to produce good paper. Nowhere near enough can be derived from advertising to pay the cost without spelling the paper for its readers. Premiums cannot be given to subscribers without taking so much value out of the paper, unless the price is high. The only proper use of premiums is to pay subscribers for acting as agents. This is the only use to owhich publishers of good and reliable papers put them. It Is a well worn maxim that in the great economy of the universe something cannot be done for nothing. It applies to newspapers and prizes, All is not gold that glitters. You get cheated in both the prizes anu the paper. And besides, what would you think of $200 horse that man Is so anxious to have you buy that he offers to throw in with 1t $500 carriage?
 There is another feature of journalism less reprehensible than the foregoing, but almost equally disappointing. Publications are offered very low-say for 50 cents year-and their general excellence is highly commended. The price and the quality catch subscribers and by and by they awake to the fact that they are taking Q monthly. The publisher did not deceive them, but they were so careless as not to think of it and to compare the paper with $z weekly containing five or six times the amount of valuable reading. A low price is desirable, but a cheap paper IS
 
 monthly is distressingly slow, especially if there Is anything in 1t that you are waiting for
 Did the reader ever stop o'think that when he takes good weekly paper, like the Blade for instance, he gets more for his money than he can in any other way in the world? We announce for the coming year 12 elegant serials; at $2 8 year these will cost less than they would sell for as pamphlet novelettes. But in addition, we shall publish more than 200 short stories. If there were nothing else in the paper, these would cost the reader less than cent apiece But there is much else-the cream of current wit, poetry, games and puzzles, chat with correspondents, valuable miscellany and once in while an edi- torial that Is worth reading. All this interesting variety fills something like 2400 columns during the year, or reading enough for 200 solid hours, One cent an hour is the cheapest entertainment in the world.
 So, we have no fears that our readers will be drawn off by the glaring and shrewdly contrived schemes of the publications which have to depend upon something else to float them, but we hold it to be the duty of all honorable journals to warn the public against a very spacious imposition.
 THE citizens of Falls Village, Lime Rock, Salisbury, Lakev1lle, Ore Hill, Millerton and North East are requested to meet at the Wononsco house, Lake vile, on Thursday, Jan. Sd, at o'clock P. M, for the purpose of organizing a thief and burglar detective association.