Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1923-07-04
THE HOME TOWN PAPER
Managers Find 1t Best
Advertising Medium.
(From Current Affairs official jour
nal of Boston Chamber of Com
merce)


nal of Boston Chamber of Com
merce)
If you live in Boston you read
any one, or all, of the Boston dailies.
If you live in Boston, and have been
promoted from any small town, you
read the Boston papers and the
weekly that the folks bask home
send every so often. The Boston
papers you read for news, local met
ropolitan, national, and internation-
al. 1t is crowded with news. You
haven't time to read it all, SO you
scan it rapidly, assimilate a little
here and there, read the editorial.
You've read the paper.
But the home town paper you
save to read thoroughly at your
leisure. And you read little, date
line, advertisements and filters.
You are interested to know that
Hudson Appleby has been seen
around town in a new car; that
Patsy Miele can find no trace of the
criminal who embezzled $500 from
the lunch cart; and that the dump
will hereafter be closed on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. That is news of
much more Importance than Mari
lyn's marriage.
If you work in town and live in
the country, your own weekly gets
the same attention. A weekly news
paper knits any community together
1t is read by everyone in town. If
you do not subscribe for it yourself,
you borrow it from the woman next
door, who reads it, after the man up
stairs gets through with it. One
publisher within fifteen miles Of Bos-
ton found that one subscription
served eight families. Each family
read it after the other got through
with it.
AS a public institution, the sub
urban or country newspaper is
public service in the fullest meaning
of the term. The publisher serves
his readers with all of the local COS
sip and news, and he serves the ad-
vertiser in more ways than in placing
his advertisement in the paper. His
business demands that he work for
himself, for other people, and some
times for nothing.
When local organizations run a
dance, or a fit-making entertain
ment. he is expected to whoop it up
in valuable advertising space by
printing stories about it, arouse pub
lie sentiment, get the people inter-
ested. If it is a success, the publicity
committee of the club gets the
credit. If it is failure, the pub
Usher is blamed. And for all his
trouble, sometimes he gets free
ticket.
He records the history of the town
from week to week. When the Sc
lectmen were just little bit too
self important and obdurate about
putting the benches back on the pub
lie common in the springtime, so
that mothers and babies could en-
joy the air, it was the town paper
that ridiculed them into it to the
amusement and satisfaction of all
readers. Every reader knows the
publisher, either personally or "by
sight" They know the people in the
news the same way. They are more
personally interested in the news.
1t explains the difference in the at
tention given the metropolitan daily
and the country weekly.
The publisher has his troubles,
too. Publicity seekers are perhaps
the most irritable of them all. Ma
tional advertisers, particularly auto
mobile accounts, seem to labor un-
der the delusion that he does not
know what to print, and that he
would appreciate having someone
send him stories all typewriter on
one side of the paper in regulation
form. Stories that they think are of
absorbing interest to his readers,
and always, even in the very receipt
of the story, there is the insinuation
that advertising will follow. He re-
ceives reams of it every week If an
article appeals to him, or if he thinks
it will appeal to his readers, he
prints it, but most of it goes into the
waste basket. The national adj
vertiser who actually advertises with
him, gets the same fair publicity
treatment that he would get on any
paper.
Advertising managers find that it
is worth almost quadruple the price
of the daily paper space to secure the
close reader interest found only in
the weekly. The weekly lasts for al
most a week. The daily is 40 longer
read after twenty-four hours. The
circulation of the weekly is mislead
ing too, isasmuch as one paper does
for the whole family, and sometimes
for three and four families in the
hnncn