The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1920-01-23

papers have multiplied till the aver
age home was Uttered with them,
and they sold their advertising space
for patent medicine ads and ran
down in quality and service till they
were hardly worth picking up. The
circulation was boosted by popular
lady contests and various other
stimulants, and now there has, de-
veloped paper famine that prom
ises to put an end to the useful and
the useless papers alike, whichever
happens to be caught in the whirl-
pool.
Newspapers are likely to be thin
ned out until there is one wherever
their is real service to justify it.
In former chapters have described
the situation where there was no
real and legitimate need for a paper
and where there Is need for papers
but not business enough to support
them on any such scale of expense as
they have been operating on. Now
shall analyze the situation at Po-
catello, the gate city for eastern and
southern Idaho, with train service
reaching several lines of railroad and
mail quickly.
For something like twenty years
Pocatello has had a daily paper. The
town and especially it's business men
were ambitious to have a daily, and
they thought it better to have poor
daily than good weekly or semi
weekly or triweekly. For a long
time they tried to build up a great
daily that would circulate in the
towns up and down the line, but
large dailies with more news of the
world and to some extent, more news
of local character, could be OBJ
tanned from Salt Lake, as early as
the local daily, and in certain COM
binati0ns some twelve hours earlier
with the same news. All the efforts
that Pocatello daily made in build
ing circulation in other towns was
fruitless. 1t might give more pub
iicity to Pocatello firms in other
towns, but it did not bring much
business to Pocatello. A large part
of what it did pull to Pocatello was
taken away from merchants in the
smaller towns so there was very
little if any net gain Commercially
all such efforts have been failure
or near failure. The daily paper
at POcatello has made brave strug-
gle, but has not built up the fortune
that it deserved for the amount in
vested and the amount of energy ex-
pended day in and day out for years. |
The same amount of capital and en-
ergy expended in some commercial |
pursuit where there was real need |
for the service and where there were |
no Implications like those of larger |
dailies rushing in ON every train |
from other cities, would probably |
have built up great mercantile in
stitution worth many times what the
newspaper is.
During all these years a number
of ventures have been made to have
a second paper at Pocatello, with the
result that they all vanished. For
number of years there has been but
one paper, and it has outgrown its
building and equipment. 1t has had
expensive machines working on I'M
suitable foundations and going to
rack more by the shaking than by
the work they were doing. Crowd
and inefficient arrangements,
high fire risk, high insurance and
high operating expense from every
angle, have combined to absorb the
earnings and prevent them from &C
cumulating big building fund as
they deserved to do. If they had
purchased ground long ago on the
installment plan, and erected large
substantial building designed for a
big newspaper, and then rented all
the space they did not need, reserv-
ing the. right to terminate the diff
ferent leases at such times as they
might wish to use the space them.
selves. An aggressive policy along
the task of paying off their building
bonds should and likely would have
resulted in greatly expanding the
business locally so they could cover
their field much more satisfactorily
and be in position to more nearly
satisfy all classes Of patrons than by
the policy and plans that were
followed.
During the past year new organ
izations have been formed and two
new dailies have been launched in
POcatellO. Each one encountered so
many obstacles that it fingered for
months after it seemed ready to be-
gin it's work. Each one met with
sources of expense and
Each one is housed
In unsuitable quarters where effici-
ancy among the working forces is
and where fire risk and
operating expenses are necessarily
high. Each one is duplicating or
the work Of others in its
service. The public are being asked
to patronize three newspapers, each
Of which contains some service or
acts on some policy which they wish
20 encourage and some that they dis
approve and wish to discourage.
they are being offered everything,
md as the offers continue to be
pressed upon them, the offers will
urn into Fostering.
Each of these newspapers is am
oitious to occupy the field at Poca-
10 and to extend its service to all
he other localities up and down the
inc for great distances, where the