Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 137, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1919 — SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING.

“If a man goes into a clothing stoi e tp, get a hat or a suit of clothes that he expects to wear himself, and Which will be of use or benefit to no other person, he pays for it as a matter of course. For he knows that the clothing men are not giving clothing away; that they can’t afford to; that they make their living by adding a profit to what they sell,'else they couldn’t stay in business. Strange that some people expect the publisher of a newspaper to print for them free of charge everything they want printed. What they submit for publication may not be of interest to another single reader of the paper; it may be of a purely personal nature, and may have concealed about it a camouflaged advertisement. The person who submits it may expect to reap some financial benefit from it. And yet almost daily people go to the newspaper office and request the publication of just such items. Evidently such persons do not stop to think, as in the case of a visit to a store,, that the newspaper publisher has an inyestment the same as a merchant; that he 'has an overhead expense that must bd’met, and that if ,he ’did everything for nothing he would land in the poor house in a very short time. His columns are his stock in trade, the same as a shelf filled with hardware or a table covered with clothing. It is his business to print the news of general interest, but it is not his business and he should not be expected to print items that are not of general interest and which should properly be paid for as coming the head of personal publicity. . Value for value is the rule of business, and publishing a newspaper is a business and a very legitimate one at that. No one Should expect the publisher of a newspaper to J<xept for free publication items that nave no general news value and which are of interest only to the person submitting them. The P erß °. n ing such a request must realize that the publication of the item will have a value of a very personal nature, else what would be the object m having it printed and circulated? If it fam a value to the person submitting 'the item it should be paid for as a matter of business right. If persons thus disposed to ask for gratuitous publication of matters ~ of personal imfport tor knew that he would have to take Vnonev out of the earnings of his business and lavish it on a dead in the form of remuneration to the machine man who puts the matter into type lines, the makeup man who nuts it into the forms for printing, the pressman who prints the paper and the clerk who mails it out, Probably such requests would be / ewer - Everything that enters into the printing of a newspaper costs the publisher money. Nobody is giving him any free material, white pajer, ink or other ing • plant. Why should he be ex nested to gratuitously put his plant and his salaried force at the dlß P°® al Jf those who would ride his generosity to the' extent that they wouM take something of value from him and rive nothing of value m return. While a newspaper as in a sense a seiS-public institution, it is somewhat different * rom * h ® Tt is a hard matter to drink tne weu dry by fqequent manipulations °tthe pump handle, but busmess of B newspaper office wodld soon reach the bankrupt stage if €V ? ryd ® dy it as freely as they do the town pump. The Editor welcomes itemt that have a general news value. , Monticello Journal