As a former country editor, may I suggest that city-slicker TIME editors remember most residents of small towns take city newspapers, listen to radio for general news, depend on their country weeklies primarily for hometown news. Country editors deliberately ignore events of great national importance, personalize reporting, concentrate on local happenings because that's what readers want.

This reminder from one of our domestic correspondents accompanied his resume of what the country weeklies in his area were saying during election week last fall. Having several former country editors in our organization, and being acutely aware that all the bright trappings of big city journalism have failed to shake the hold of the 9,000 U.S. country weeklies on the 15,000,000 loyal families who read them, TIME'S editors took their correspondent's advice in good

part and went ahead with their nationwide survey.

The result (TIME, Nov. n) was a pre-election impression of the small towns and rural areas of the U.S., as told by its country weeklies. It showed the people, going matter-of-factly about their business, not seriously disturbed by any candidate's cries, and remarked that although the rural editors had made no attempt to feel the pulse of the nation, "this week, as every week, the nation's country weeklies held a feel and flavor of U.S. life which no big city daily captured. Their editors really knew the people who were voting."

Since then, in letters to us and to their tradepaper, The American Press, the country editors have been having their say. Some protested that they had definitely done some pre-election pulse-feeling, especially Publisher J. O. Ferguson, of the Pawnee (Okla.) Chief, who claimed we overlooked a front-page story to that effect. Others minded our having the weeklies coming "smudgily from flatbed presses." Wrote Editor George Schlueter, of the Hills (Minn.) Crescent: "I am willing to grant that there are many 'lousy'looking sheets put out, but the majority of the newspapers (weeklies) are the result of much hard work and ridicule is resented."

Our chief critic, however, was Henry Beetle Hough, of the Vineyard (Mass.) Gazette, who said: "It seemed to us that the facts were twisted to suit the point of view of the TIME editor, and the whole picture one would draw of the country press was narrow and distorted."

Editor Hough's view was not shared by most of his colleagues, many of whom thought that TIME'S story was "a good picture of the small towns and rural areas as told by the country weeklies just prior to an election." Wrote William H. Hawthorne, editor of the Chenoa (Ill.) Clipper-Times: "This TIME squib about our paper brought comments to me personally as though it were something of real importance, the first to hail me on the street being the local veterinarian, who acted like a kid about it. Next, a local resident, just back

from Iowa, who greeted me regarding the story before he said he was glad to be home.

"Then a Caterpillar office man, who married a Chenoa girl and lives in Peoria, who came here to attend a funeral, told me he saw the item, as he shook hands. Then there was the principal of the high school at Bellflower; a paper salesman from Bloomington; and several relatives and friends who dropped me notes. These are but a few of the comments I heard. . . .

"More power to TIME, or, to any other publication that realizes the place of the small town and its people in the scheme of things."

To Editor Hawthorne and his colleagues, whose brand of journalism is a venerable U.S. institution and a valuable national asset, thanks for this evidence of TIME'S readership in the Chenoas (pop. 1,401) of America.

Cordially,

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