Weeklies & The War

More than 250 of the nation's 11,000-odd weekly newspapers had become war casualties by last week. Country weeklies carry news to some 19,000,000 Americans. Most are staffed by six to ten people, and must make ends meet by combining job printing with newspapering. Some of them are feeble sheets whose deaths might well improve the all-over quality of the breed. But all of them, good & bad, what with loss of manpower, type metal rationing, impending reduced newsprint and drastic losses in advertising revenue, have found themselves pinched tight.

To meet the pinch as best they can, as rapidly as possible they teach women the printing trade (Kansas State Teachers College, in cooperation with Kansas publishers, is organizing an eight-week course); they raid high schools and colleges. In many instances, two or more papers have consolidated their mechanical departments. More syndicated features are used.

But this week the wost was yet to come. Before the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department was a proposal to raise minimum wages from 30-c- to 40-c- an hour on newspapers with circulations greater than 3,000, and on newspapers with smaller circulations if they are in interstate commerce (which most weeklies are, for they print such things as letterheads and envelopes to be sold across state lines). The proposal is virtually certain of approval, probably before Jan. 1. If it is approved, to many a surviving war-harried U.S. weekly swift sure death will come.

Two examples of the woes of country weeklies:

Smackover,* Ark. Dark-haired, Texas-born Bea Muncy Reynolds took over the management of the Smackover Journal in 1937. Her audience was a town of about 2,500 which derived some importance from the fact that it sits smack on top of a 500-million-barrel petroleum pool. Mrs. Reynolds got along fine for awhile. The Journal earned enough to permit purchase of many a new machine for the job shop. Once it got a real news break, when a refinery exploded and caught fire, killing several Smackoverans and injuring scores on publication day. That night the Journal carried the news ahead of the dailies that go into Smackover.

But since the war, says Mrs. Reynolds, "we have difficulty keeping society reporters, having lost three in the past year. National advertising has been cut at least 50%; local linage is increasingly hard to get. . . . And we are told that the newsprint supply may be reduced another 10%. I am publishing an eight-page paper now; suppose I have to reduce to four? It would force me out of business. I now act as editor and advertising manager, write all page one stories, manage the job shop, handle circulation. I am still hanging on with some hope of outlasting the duration. But . . ."

Waupun, Wis. On the walls of Publisher George W. Greene's office at the Waupun Leader-News are 15 ribbons and plaques given him for topnotch editorial writing, newspaper promotion, civic enterprise. The people of Waupun, a center of the dairy industry (pop. 5,768, including the State prison's 1,600-odd prisoners) are proud of their newspaper, for it ranks with the best U.S. weeklies.

To George Greene, a guy of guts, the Leader-News owes all its success. He thinks nothing of calling up a state official in the middle of the night and asking him to resign. Once he spent $400 of his own money to finance an audit of Dodge County books. Result: several county officials indicted for embezzlement, $32,000 saved for the county's taxpayers.

In normal times the Leader-News had seven employes in the "back shop," five in the editorial and business office. On Jan. 1 the news editor and an ad compositor go to the Navy, an apprentice printer to the Army. The business manager and an advertising salesman are leaving for better-paying jobs. That will leave five in the back shop, including two green high-school boys, a bookkeeper and a society writer out front. Ceaseless attempts to hire new hands have produced not one nibble.

Moreover the Leader-News's advertising linage went down 100,000 lines in 1942. Said white-haired, florid George Greene: "It's getting tough to get metal and repair parts too. Brother Greene will have to buckle down and go to work."

* From Sumac-Couvert, the name given it by early French settlers because of its dense sumac thickets.

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