Newspaper Success

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 87, 2 January 1886, Page 3

Newspaper Success

London Tit-bits consists of sixteen pages of odds and ends, anecdotes, short tales, cuttings from other papers, &c, served up for one penuy. Each week a guinea prize is offered for the best ' bit' scut in, the right to publish any or nil boing reserved. By this means, Mr Newness, the proprietor and editor, gets all his ' copy' very cheaply, and at the same time interests a large chieutele in his paper. An average of about three thousands ' bits,' more or less original, pour in every week ; one of these ' bits' costs a guinea, the remainder costs nothing. Mr Newness and his office-boy cut and paste up the paper, and Mr Newness pockets three hundred pounds per week net profit from the little venture. Occasionally a bigger prize is given. Six months ago the proprietor offered a house as a prize for the best tale, original or selected. A soldier at Canterbury came across sometiling interesting in a book he was reading, copied it out, and sent it out to Mr Newness. It happened to please that gentleman's critical literary taste, and the son of Mars became the proud possessor of a seven-roomed house, upon the sole condition that ho called it ■ " Tit-bits Villa." No less than thirty-four thousand persons competed for tho prize. The paper is only a year or two old, and has a circulation of over siz hundred thousand copies.