The Seward gateway daily edition, and the Alaska weekly post., 1920-10-02
< < < < < ** 4 Small Towns Newspaper

Being s true story of town and a newspaper.
 Once upon time there was a town and in that town lived several hundred people. In this town there was publish ed a four page daily news paper. ms paper was printed every afternoon and circulated by carriers among the peo- ple of the town. Some of the papers thus circulated reached those who paid SO much per month or year for the pa ner. Some of them were bought by those who did not subscribe and those who thus bought paid ten cents per copy for the paper. In this pap>r were advertisements paid for by merchants who were engaged in business in the Also were advertisements paid fog by town.
 ment published by Spokane dar'es ana there were advei rislments paid tor oy merchants who did business in other towns situated many miles away from the town in which the newspaper was printed. Many of the merchants adver- tised because they felt that the poor struggling newspaper should receive some kind of donation to enable 1t to exist. They did not feel that the ad- yertisements for which they paid so much an inch were beneficial to their business. There were also many mer- chants and business houses in the town who did not advertise at all, giv- ing as their reason that they did not f;nS it necessary to advertise because thcy had no competition or that the circulatisu of the paper did not war rant their spending money for adVer- tising or that everybody who lived m the town knew where they were locat- ed ard were familiar with the goods carried or a dozen other equally ab- sured reasons. But the fact remained that the little newspaper continued to struggle along and fight for eMstance literally, living as it did so between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. The Devil taking the form of the several hundred people who lived in the town and vicinity who never subscribed for the newspaper or who never purchased a CODY, but who always succeeded ln reading it. They borrowed it or begg- ed it pr took it or perused it in the hotel lobbys, the pool rooms, the res tanrants or the private houses and r.oms of those xh, >..! srribed :'f t!.e rcwsraper. As many .s ten big s+r' Oe husky a-r would rEmnce upon anc handle q single copy of this little ncwsraper and the majority 'f them wh read it would cast U aside with a sheer of contempt or remark that It was "A hell of newspaper" And among all of those who sneered at the little uaper and cast it aside there was not a single one who ever bought a CODY. Something for Nothing" was their creed. Thus the Devil was on one side and the Deep Sea on the other and the Deep Sea was represented by those meuhants and business men who would not advertise and by those who would send out to other places for their job work and by those who subscribed and paid for the little newspaper but who never received Il because it vanished from the place where it was left by the carrier. Com >plaints were brought to the little news paper from these people every da! that their paper had not been deliver ed, and because some human leecf had taken the real subscribers rape' it was necessary to give the real sub scriber another copy. Thus was tn circulation of the little paper increas ed.mightely but the increased GIT culatisn benefited the little pape none, it simply exercised the press os