They’re Not Weak lies Any More
The North C arolina non-daily press is now
a thriving* and stabilized business, far re¬
moved from I lie*
Наум
when it si rug” led
throng'll a liand-to-inonth existence.
ABOUT the oldest and corniest
joke attached to the news-
'paper business was to speak
of a non-daily paper as a weakly —
spelled with an ‘a— got it? Haw,
Haw!**
Well, anyone who haw-haws at
the non-daily newspaper business
in North Carolina now just hasn't
been very observant in the last 10
or 15 years. Gone are the days
(and forever, we hope), when the
typical "weakly," almost invaria¬
bly a rural paper, existed precari¬
ously from one issue to the next,
getting its paper each week on a
consignment basis, swapping sub¬
scriptions for eggs and advertise¬
ments for merchandise.
Gone, too -or fast going — is the
country editor with a great deal
of flavor, misinformation, and
prejudice. His shirt-tail of type
and wheezing old press are being
replaced by modern equipment,
and anyone who steps into the
office of the Waynesville Moun¬
taineer, or Smithfield Herald, or
other modern non-daily plants will
find nothing to haw-haw about.
The prosperity which hit the
non-dailies in the past 10 or 15
years has tended to take them out
of the also-ran class, and lift them
from the teetering edge of eco¬
nomic make or break. The oper¬
ation of a non-daily not only is a
serious and dignified business, it
has become a stabilized one, and
in many instances quite profitable.
One Hundred Sixty Non-Dailies
North Carolina has 160 non¬
dailies. 131 of them weeklies. 28
semi-weeklies and one tri-weekly.
Some of them compare favorably
with the dailies, even in the dailies'
own field, when typography, edit¬
ing. production and management
are considered. Not to mention the
matters of financial position and
circulation.
Plenty of tidy little dailies would
like to have the
ЛВС
circulation of
Roy Cox’s Asheboro Courier-Trib¬
une—
а
neat 7.386, in the 1949
report. The Smithfield Herald
boats 6.095, The Stanley News &
Press 6.921. and The Sanford
Kv im.isii \m*r.
Herald 4.484. These are all semi-
weeklies.
Perhaps the largest circulation
of a strictly weekly paper is the
3.963 of the Durham News-Journal
or the 3.850 of the Sampson Inde¬
pendent at Clinton. The Elkin
Tribune's 3.096 circulation is
ЛВС
certified.
Only two or three non-dailies
now operate without a linotype
machine, one of them, the St. Paul's
Review, owned by the McNeill sis¬
ters. In recent years, a number of
weeklies have installed modern
presses and other equipment, and
a few- of them today have their
own engraving plants. It has been
only 15 or 20 years ago that an
engraving plant was an unheard of
luxury even for the largest dailies
in this state.
Out of the many claims to dis¬
tinction, the Warren Record has
one of interest to non-dailies. It
distributes 500 of its 2,100 circu¬
lation through street sales, a per¬
centage it thinks is unique. The
Carteret County News-Times with
1,685 circulation sells an average
of 333 copies each issue through
news-stands. Combining news¬
stands and street sales, this More-
head City paper probably has a
larger proportion of direct t non¬
subscription) sales than any other
paper in North Carolina.
Female journalism students dis¬
couraged by lack of opportunities
on dailies might consider the fact
that at least 26 non-dailies arc
edited by women, and a number
of them are both editor and owner
— like Addio Mae Cook of the
Cherokee Seoul, Mrs.
С.
K. Ham¬
rick. of the Yancey Record at
Burnsville, Beatrice Cobb of the
prosperous Morganton Times-
Herald, and Katherine Boyd of the
Southern Pines Pilot.
Л11
are rated
at the top as publishers and busi¬
ness executives.
It is apparently a congenial field
for husband-wife teams, too. Wit¬
ness the Andersons of the western
chain. The Meekins of the Coast-
land Times. The Harlows of the
Pine Hurst Outlook. We can count
three successful mother-son part¬
nerships— the Lassiters at Smith-
field. the Davises of Zebulon and
the McCullochs of Elizabethtown.
And there's a brothcr-and-sister
team — the Wrights— at Canton.
Altogether, North Carolina is
well-supplied with newspapers.
Counting the 45 dailies, it has 205.
and this means one paper for
every 17.000 Tar Heels. Nine of
the dailies are published in the
morning field, and 14 of them have
Sunday editions.
The First Newspaper
This is a far cry from the days
of James Davis, "the father of
journalism in North Carolina."
Davis gets credit for having set up
the first printing press in this
state. This important event took
place in 1749. and initial printing
was confined to law books. But
Davis decided that the time was
ripe for starting a newspaper in
North Carolina, so in 1751 he
launched the.1 North ('arolina Ga¬
zette. a weekly publication. It
wasn't long after this before Wil¬
mington. Fayetteville and some of
the other towns in the coastal
plain area began similar projects.
Despite the fact that these places
had comparatively small popula¬
tion. they weren't satisfied with
just one newspaper; they had to
have two. and in most instances
this was due to political influence
and pressure. Changes in owner¬
ship were frequent.
Despite the present coverage.
North Carolina still has five coun¬
ties without any sort of local
newspaper Camden. Clay. Cur¬
rituck. Jones and Tyrrell. With
the exception of Clay, these are
all in the extreme eastern part of
the state. Papers in neighboring
counties, however, devote a page or
two in each issue to covering the
news events in these non-paper
counties, so after all. they are not
completely neglected from a
journalistic point of view.
5
THE STATE. June 24. 1950
