CARRYING ON
Advertisers may come and advertisers may go but
the local paper must go on forever. That's the calmly ac
cepted theory of every complacent citizen who cocks
his feet on the well-known andiron after the evening
meal and proceeds to peruse the newspaper for the
latest village scandal or to cuss the newest editorial.
He will berate the sheet and call it wishy washy or
one-sided and biased and slam it on the floor but se
cretly he is proud of the fact that his town has a live
daily that comes off the old press every day, rain or
shine. He gloats over it, in his secret soul and some
times privately wonders what it would be like up here
if the right to take a peek at the world’s doings every
day were suddenly denied him.
He is proud of the fact that the paper is always
boosting those things he is clamoring for. He reads a
good boost of some local enterprise and allows as how*
maybe we will get somewhere after all.
But when business slacks off and he begins to re
trench, the first move is to cut down his newspaper ad
vertising. The very thing that helps to bring him busi
ness is the first thing he cuts off at the pockets. He
doesn’t stop to reflect that the newspaper may be hav
ing a hard time weathering the storm, and that if the
newspaper should stop it would be a serious reflection
on the whole community. He forgets that in time of
stress we should all pull together, and that hard times
can’t last forever.
While the home town paper seldom carries an ad
vertisement of every business house in its city, owing
to personal reasons more than any other one thing, it
should, for the greater the revenue of the home-town
paper, the better paper will be published. And so it fol
lows, that the better the newspaper, the more prosper
ous is the community reflected for the home-town pa
per is the SHOW WINDOW “for all the world to see
and for to admire.”
• • • * • to
In every town there are many who never subscribe
to the home-town paper, being satisfied to read it at
the corner store, the restaurant, cigar store or hotel.
They are content to keep up with the times through
the expense of some one else; or perhaps, have just
been thoughtless about the matter. While little, if any
profit is made from country paper circulation, never
theless each additional one helps to the extent that
it aids in securing new advertisers, and especially, the
so-called foreign advertising; advertisments from out
of town.
The Gateway is intensely proud of the fact though
it is published in one of the smaller towns of Alaska,
yet its combined circulation—Daily and Weekly—is
said to be the largest in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th divisions.
If you who read this are a citizen of Seward and
do not subscribe to The Gateway, do so now: start the
New Year right. We are doing our very best to make
Our Town a better place for us all and you can help us
in this way; a small way, to be sure, but appreciated.