The globe-independent. (Hagerstown, Md.) 1943-19??, 1949-06-02
News About The
WJEJ Programs

Editors Note. The following
guest column by Bill Henry, MBS
Newscaster who is heard every
night at 1856 (MOnday thru Friday
over WEI and WJEJ-FM, was
written especially for the Globe
Independent.
All my life-and it has all been
spent in the news business, as far
back as can remember people
have been telling me that some new
tangled method was going TO put
the existing form of communication
out of business.
Right now, it's television.
Well, as AL Smith used to say,
cooking his brown derby forward
in an attitude of thought, let's look
at the record.
| got started in the news business
when l was in school The movies
were just getting under way. Some
body bobbed up with the idea of the
newsreel. AT first glimpse some
nitwit with a foghofn VOICE and a
featherweight brain rushed to the
newspaper offices and began kissing
his friends goodbye.
The newsreels, he said, had DOOM
ed the newspaper business.
All | know is that at that time the
paper | worked for had a circulation
of less than 100000 daily and about
the same on Sunday. Now il has
close to half a million daily and
something like 100000 Sunday
If that's doom-give us more of
i'll
Then in the early 20's came the
radio. Those who had crystal sets
and weren't much farther away from
the source than you could toss your
mother-in-law, heard alabama
casts so-many votes for Underwood"
or they heard the excitable account
OF Jack Dempsey's artistic demoli-
ton of Gorgeous George Carpenter,
the Fair Flower of France, over in
Boyle's Thirty Acres.
That was the end of newspapers,
they said.
The viewers-with- alarmers went
into their act again. Nobody would
buy newspaper, they said, when
they could get the news quicker on
the radio.
The newsweekly magazines were
going to do the same thing. So were
the slick-paper picture magazines.
But the newspapers have survived,
and the newsreels have survived,
and the news-magazines are still
alive and, for my money, the radio
is going to survive.
The thing to remember is that the
world is full of nervous nellies and
fraidy cats who would rather peer
into the uncertain future and scare
themselves than take a look at his
tory, past and present, and see what
really has been happening.
The world, it seems, thrives on new
challenges.
If you look at the record you see
very quickly that the development
of each new means of communication
has simply served as an inspiration
to the existing vehicles to brace up
and meet the competition.
Radio and the newsreels and the
newsweeklies certainly perked up
the newspapers and there is no rea-
son to believe that history won't as
usual, repeat itself.
The case of television and radio
isn't exactly the same, for the good
reason that they are not truly COM
petitive-the same people own them
both. If it weren't for the money
that has been made, and is still be-
ing made, by radio, there wouldn't
be much television. 1t is as reason
able to believe that when, in due
time, television can stand on its own
financial feet, radio may suffer and,
for all l know, go out of existence.
But don't hold, your breath till
then.
Each of the varying means of
transmitting news from the source to
the ultimate consumer has developed
its own specialized technique.