The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1917 NEWSPAPER TROUBLES.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 15 March 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1917 NEWSPAPER TROUBLES.

(With which is incorporated The Tai hape Post and Waimarino News).

Hard times, brought about by the war, are causing quite a flutter of excitement and fear, in the New Zealand paper dovecote. Particularly in Christchurch, where newspaper pressure on the people is immensely greater to the square inch than it is anywhere else. There is no doubt whatever that if the City of the Plains publications can agree to amalgamate the whole eight or nine of them and issue as one or perhaps two, the owners will be fortunate, and it will be a positive relief to the poor “rag-ridden” business people. We only wish we had someone to amalgamate with,; another publication that would be willing to share our losses, for, of course, neither Christchurch nor Taihape papers would talk about amalgamation to share their profits. Auckland and Dunedin papers are not squealing so much, for they can still go on dividing up their tens of thousands of profits. Nevertheless, the increased cost of paper has to be seriously grappled with, as it is cutting very deeply into their yearly nest-eggs. In Wellington one paper could be dispensed with; there never was any reason for a third, except a political reason, It is beyond question that newspapers are hit worse by war rises in cost af production than any other business. Editors have fought the battles of other industries, written scathing articles about those who are robbing the masses, encouraged fair trade for business men, but in the interests of their newspapers they have not written a word. They, like dumb dogs, accepted a big increase from the Press Association at the beginning of the year, and now, with only two months gone, a further fifteen per cent, has been added without any beg pardons cr v. word of notice. The cost of Paper has gone up two hundred per cent., the Government put one hundred per cent, on press telegrams, hundred per cent, on receipts and cheques, and fifty per cent, on postages. The latter is a very heavy burden, when it is considered that an ordinary country paper ma.y have a thousand or two thousand accounts

monthly for just a quarter’s subscription. The labour difficulty can be understood When it is mentioned that this office has sent sixteen of its employees to the front, and the disorganisation caused and the cost involved in suitably replacing- them. Then newspapers have to bear the increased cost of everything else just like any other business, and they haven’t had the pluck to tell the people they could not go on selling for a penny that which costs them threepence, until things have got so bad that they are faced with amalgamation or liquidation.