The Cordova daily times., 1921-12-20

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 20.-"The country weekly newspaper is on the way to extinction" declared Carl c. Taylor North Carolina State College, in his talh before the American Coun- try Life Conference here, as a mem- Der Of the committee on inyestiga- tion.
 The chief cause of death among country newspapers is the advent of the city daily. The country paper can't compete with these powerful competitors as dispensers of world news. in editorial erudition or as agencies for circulating national ad- vertisemcuts. They must get out of the field of competition with the daily papers or perish from the face of the earth within the next genera tion of these small papers to relay the worlds news from the great dail-
  tan sources into the country. To- day country people take the dailies themselves. If, therefore, the weekly is only to reflect the news and ideas presented in the greater papers it will not be read. Country people, like all the rest Of us today. want the news while it is hot. The R. F. D. and city daily hand it to them right off the griddle."
 Some startling suggestions were made by Professor Taylor among his recommendations for the weekly's sal vation. He said it must cease to be political. cease to be national, cease to be dominated with local town ma terials only and make good it's sur focal community institution with mission. He visualiZed a future country newspaper that is ''predom- inantly rural in its organization and viewpoint. q combination between newspaper and agricultural journal" |"
 Several hondred papers in Missouri, North Carolina and elsewhere were examined in his study of the weekly paper from many angles Complete reports from 243 papers showed T5 per cent Of the total space was of strictly local interest. the remaining spare being composed of national. fiction and clipped material Of the local material 73 per cent was given to town interests, leaving 27 per cent for strictly rural interests. As the size of the towns in which the papers are published increased the space devoted to local material decreased. with a corresponding de- crease in the percentage of strictly rural material These papers aver aged less than per cent editorial matter. the amount of editorial space increasing as the size of the town in creased. Local editorials comprised 69 per cent of the total editorial space. this percentage decreasing as the size of the town increased. Local editorials have no less than a2 per cent devoted to town interests. thus less than & per cent was given to rural interests. As the towns get larger they usurp more and more of the newspapers space.
 The news space takes up 3S per cent of all the newspaper space. and $S per cent of this space is devoted to local news. the remaining 62 per mt being national, syndicate, clipped, patent inside and boiler-plate material. The towns get the lions share of this focal matter S2 per cent being town and only IS per cent rural news. While the papers in the largest towns had the smallest per c"ntage-34-of news. local news made up more of this copy, since patent inside. boiler plate, etc, are seldom used there. As the towns in which the papers were published in creased in size the local news space devoted to rural interests diminished until less than 13 per cent was de- voted to this cause in towns of 1000 population or over.
 The advertisements took up 61 per cent of the space In these papers, 7T pr cent of this apace being local advertising. Of this local advertis- ing. "country advertising" by which is meant advertisements of goods to