The War Comes to "The Listener"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 135, 23 January 1942, Page 4

The War Comes to "The Listener"

have been compelled to ask them to share with ourselves one of the minor sacrifices of war. Instead of returning to forty-eight or fifty-six pages now that the holidays are. over we are forced to stay at forty, since there is no longer any guarantee of a regular supply of newsprint. We are in fact taking risks-as every journal in New Zealand now is-by continuing to print as many pages as readers are still getting; but to print all that we could comfortably fill would be unpardonable recklessness. be will have noticed that we The war has of course reached our office in other ways as well. It has taken away man-power: out of a total male strength of ten we have six in uniform. It has coloured our pages: although we are a broadcasting journal, concerned primarily with problems of education and entertainment, every broadcasting station to-day is a war station, and every broadcasting journal, willy nilly, a war magazine to a considerable extent. And what it has done to our staff and to our tables of contents the war has done in other ways to our costs and our distribution problems. Everything that we do, whether it is done well or done badly, is done with greater difficulty than in times of peace. We are as definitely the victims of violence and aggression as the ship which has to sail a thousand miles instead of three hundred to make the next port, or the statesman who has to cross the ocean in a submarine instead of in a comfortable liner. Nor do we mention such things to advertise ourselves or bring ourselves into the light that shines on soldiers, sailors, airmen, and nurses. We do it to show our readers why they can’t get quite as much for their money as we would like to give them. We can’t put as much into forty pages as we could into forty-eight, but a careful examination of this number will show that we have contrived somehow to retain all our essential features-the programmes of all stations for a week in advance, nearly all our reading pages, and almost the same volume of advertising. We are a more crowded magazine _ than we like to be-far too crowded to look well-but we know that our readers will accept that disadvantage as cheerfully as they accept the petrol restrictions and stocking shortages by which they are helping to win the war,