A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE interesting account in Tuesday's Times of the results of an enquiry into the position of the small local paper in America naturally provokes comparisons with the fate of the local papers in this country. In one respect the problem is fundamentally different, for in the United States there are no national dailies to drive what we should call the provincial dailies out of business ; the country is far too large for that. What is happening there apparently is that the rising costs of labour and material, particularly newsprint, are such that in many towns where the volume of advertising available was sufficient to support two local papers it is now only sufficient to support one ; that factor has undoubtedly operated to reduce the number of provincial daily papers here. In America, moreover, commercial radio has to be taken into account. Firms customarily set apart a fixed amount of money for advertising, and if much of it goes to the radio there is correspondingly less available for newspaper advertising ; that is worth keeping in mind if commercial radio is ever seriously considered here. The Senate Committee which has reported on this matter lays just stress on the value of the part the local paper has played both in fostering local interest and public spirit and in furnishing through its advertisement columns a stimulus to local business, while often (as, for example, in the case of the Springfield Republican) providing literary and. political articles of a high standard. All this is equally true of Great Britain, but there is no hope of the tendency of the independent provincial paper to disappear being reversed, and not very much of its being arrested.
It is a serious loss, but one that we shall have to accept.
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