The Bourbon news. [volume] (Paris, Ky.) 1895-19??, 1922-03-07
IMPORTANCE OF
AIDING PRESS
Editor Community News Service
Tells Something Regarding Pub
licity And Newspapers
"PRESS IS A LIVING THING

the newspaper, like the nre de-
partment, police department and
board of health, is accepted by the
American public as an institution
that must do it's work, serve all in
terests, ignore danger, know no
sleep, accept abuse, be always polite.
1t looked upon as an institution
that must give it's wares, i. e., it's
columns, upon the slightest pretext
to the aid of any sort of movement
having the slightest tinge of charity,
civic advancement or social welfare.
| In the same breath it is called upon
to protect and destroy, to blow hot
and cold, to uphold the courts and to
watch them, to support church and
liberalism, to befriends the helpless
and uphold property rights, to be
always right and to be superhuman
in it's swift gathering and presenta-
ton of news.
| Like the municipal departments
mentioned, it receives few thanks
for doing it's duty, but bitter attacks
for the errors that, being but of hui
man energy, are sure to arise.
No one who has not been active in
the making of a newspaper has even
a faint idea of the toll and the en-
ergy, the sacrifice and the heart in
terest, that goes into every issue of
every newspaper in every city of
America.
Few have any idea of the enor-
nous expense that must be met, of
the problems that arise from a clear
sky and must be settled without an
instant's hesitation, problems, often,
whose wrong settlement might mean
fortune if not ruin.
The newspaper is as near a living
thing, pulsing, warm, keenly alive,
as any man-made product ever can
come, as DELEGATE as a web and as
strong as steel cable.
Expecting all things of his news
paper, the business man gives, as a
rule, only what he must, and the
newspaper still is to be published
whose advertising department will
fail to hear grumble over it's rates.
The fact that there is not an i'm
mediate and tangible result from
every insertion is the base for cease
less mutterings, and even advertis-
ers of years, whose whole business
has risen to success through print
er's ink, are prone to belittle the
part played by the paper.
But should matter arise wherein
the business man feels the need of
his paper; should his lodge or his
club or his church desire to give an
entertainment, should his telephone
bill be too high his street car too
lacking in seats, his treatment by
the corner policeman unkind, his
milk too thin, his children too little
taught in school, his political party
too dOrmant-ah!
Then he runs to his paper for sup
port, for aid and comfort. Then he
demands-and receives tits most
valued asset, it's space.
''The public supports the paper,
the paper owes space to the public"
he cries. But he might not remem-
Der that it is the public that sup
ports him? He would be aghast
should the public come in and ask
for goods from his shelf without
pay, no matter how great the need
nor how fine the reason. The church
does not ask him to give pews or
carpets, the politician pays for his
banners, the lodge for it's hall, the
gas company for it's pipes.
A business depression settles down.
The first to feel it is the newspaper,
for the average business man, unless
he is skilled advertiser of long
standing, cuts first at his advertising
appropriation. In other words. he
cuts away the greatest source of sup
ply of life blood for his ailing bus
mess.
If times are hard" if money is
scarce, surely it is obvious that it
will take more coaxing to draw it
from it's hiding places. In every
other form of activity and industry,
the greater the problem the greater
the energy expended to solve it.
Why, then, then does the average
business man, in times of depression,
when his sales are his greatest prob
lem, lower the energy of attack,
withdraw his silent salesman from
the newspaper columns and it's back
grumbling at the present, sobbing
for the past and crying but a faint
optimism for the future?
A sick man takes medicine to
make him well, we'll man takes ex-