The Norfolk weekly news-journal. (Norfolk, Neb.) 1900-19??, 1910-04-29
KEEP YOUR TOWN ON THE MAP
Norfolk Club Member Urges State to
Buy Advertising Space.

oby TuNS'A'o''A opdSc'
Columbus, Neb, April 90. - The
Rosebud Indian reservation land be-
came the best known strip of govern
ment territory in the country because
of the advertising gained through
Bonesteel's notoriety during the first
land rush. declared n. A. Huse of the
Norfolk Commercial club in a paper
read before the Nebraska State Asso-
citation of Commercial clubs here to-
day.
The paper declared that every viii
lage and city Offering any inducements
to new industries should be spending
money advertising those facts, even IL
only through want ads in the metro
politan dailies.
1t was urged that Nebraska as a
state should appropriate fund for ad-
vertsing purposes, and every town
and village was urged, too, to encour-
age the maintenance of live CORE
spondent to the daily papers who
would send out every live bit of news
happening, for the sake of keeping the
town on the map.
lie paper Sdlu III part.
There are two kinds of town adver-
| tising-the kind you pay for and the
kind you don't pay for. The one may
range all the way from a 10-cent want
ad in the newspaper to a two-page
spread in the Saturday Evening Post
at $4,000 a throw. The other includes
! the good words spoken for town by
| it's loyal citizens away from home.
| the press agent stories sent out with
deliberate advertising intent and clev-
| erly slipped under the telegraph edi-
| tors guard, and the real telegraphic
news dispatches bearing the towns
dateline and used for their news val
ue by the big newspapers of the coun-
try. Under this last classification, of
course, must be included the news re-
ports of the good and the bad-and
more often bad than good, but even
though the story told be a disagree
able one and one to make citizens OF
the community in which the incident
happened shudder at it's awfulness-
even the very bad news emanating
from town will prove on the whole.
1t seems to me, to be remarkably good
advertising. And the bad stories have
this vrtue-the general public likes
to read the bad things that bad peo-
pie do and for that reason the tele-
graph editor will jump at this kind
of a dispatch and eagerly call atten
ton of thousands of readers to your
town in the dateline on the story
where he would probably find room
only in the waste basket for the re-
port of an uninteresting Sunday
School convention. An incident took
place in Kansas City not many weeks
ago which was in itself of a degen-
crate type, yet Kansas City got good
advertising out of that incident even
in spite of the low moral level from
which the strop sprang. For at least
day the name of Kansas City was
given conspicuous position in every
newspaper in the world, for two col
umns OF that story were cab!ed to
Europe. The story in itself was nause-
ating, but because of the prominence of
the people concerned and the senSa-
: tional features in the affair II was
given first page space in every big
newspaper and millions of readers
were made to realize indirectly, il
,, not directly that Kansas City was on
the map. By deductive and even un
conscious reasoning Kansas City was
made to appear in the minds of hun
dreds of thousands of people all over
the globe as city of riches, as city
+ where things happen and as a place
f which has so far developed in wealth
q and civilization as to afford the lux
4 ury of certain forms of aristocratiC
corruption which seem to associate
/, themselves only with the great over
fed, overrich center of population.
And in speaking Of the value of ad
c vertising gained through publicity Civ
t en- to the bad" things that happen il
e a community one might point NOR,
n ConCretely to the Rosebud Indian res
II ervation in South Dakota. During tn,
o Gregory county land rush 100000 PEG
pie went in droves from all parts o
the United States to take chances il
Uncle Sans big land lottery. Thous
ands of them went because they ha,
4 heard that land rushes hold the ele
IS ments of the sensational and the dra
n matte; thousands of them had hear
N of Bonesteel and they heard of Bone
h steel because of the bad things tina
=. happened there Through that frs
:. opening and the badness that croppe
: out at Bonesteel, the Rosebud reserve
&c ton was given greater publicit
Is throughout the United States tina
l and when Trip county was opene
I'd up farther west, a still greater throne
I'd to a large extent as a result of tn
II. publicity that had been given tn
shootings during the first rush, too
a chance in lottery No 2. The Ros
bud reservation never could hay
gained the national attention that wa
~ thrust upon it If there had been I
10 murder in Bonesteel at the beginnir
a of the first land rush and IL thel
Rn had hean no crooks and ex-convic