The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1888. A GROWL ON OUR OWN ACCOUNT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2024, 29 December 1888, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1888. A GROWL ON OUR OWN ACCOUNT.

We have so often complained m the proper quarter without result, that we take the opportunity of putting our grievance m print m tbo hope that those of our contemporaries, who are sufferers with ourselves, will take up tho parable and that a general outcry may bring about a remedy. The trouble is tho often illegibility of the copy supplied to us from tho Telegraph Office. The writing is constantly bo exceedingly faint that it requires spectacles of microscopic magnifying power to enable it to be deciphered, and even if we possessed such nitls to vision we don't believe that we should be Mn all cases successful. Tho result is that we often have to make a shot at the meaning with more or less success, and still oftenor have to transcribe the whole message which it would otherwise bo quite impossiblo for the most intelligent of compositors to set up. r Jhiß involves a demand upon tho editor's or sub-editor's j time which is most annoying, for there is no time to spare m the afternoon hurry of gettirjg out an evening paper. We have enquired why we are thus treated, and are satisfied that the fault does not lie with the local telegraphists, who "generally ovinco a disposition to do their best for us, but m tho materials supplied to them to work with. The prepared papers supplied to them for making copies of tho messages appear to be 1 so wretchedly inferior that little or no color comes off under the pressure cf the pencil — hence tho illegibility. Either the Department m the purchase of its stationery has gone in — under the pressure of a mistnken economy — for the cheap and nasty, or it has been victimised by being supplied with an inf rior article while paying the price of a good one. Anyhow, the matter is one which needs looking into and remedying forthwith, for it is one which concerns not merely tho newspapers but tho newspaper readers — and that means everybody — also. No doubt the grierance of which wo complain ob tains elsewhere than m Ashburton, and »ye hope- that our growl on our own account will elicit a growl all round, and one sufficiently loud to be heard and taken notice of, The newspapers are good enough customers to tbe Department to deserve that their convenience should be consulted, so far at any rate that the messages they pay for should be handed to them m legible form.