All The News That Fits We Print

The Victor Press, 1959

Last week we had, what I mean, a TIGHT newspaper … 800 inches of editorial matter. Compare this with the 1,500 inches we had the week before and a comfortable (for me) average of about 1,100 and it will help explain why the roof fell in last Thursday! My dear dependable correspondents didn’t get in at all. There wasn’t a news item that wasn’t chopped off from one to three paragraphs.

Stopped in Middle

We just stopped in the middle of our report on the Apple Valley Flower Show story (con’t. this week) and we have some mighty lovely pictures mounted and standing unused! The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. C.O.B. correspondent Shirley Smith got 40 phone calls right off the bat. Oro Rigor of Adelanto who was just returning to us after a session of census taking, was besieged. And all the rest of us met with similar barrages.

Leap to Defense

I leap first to the defense of my correspondents whom, I assure you have no more control over such things than I! Please do not feel it is not worth your while giving them news just because we missed one issue. The last time this happened was way back in November. It is rare but it will happen once in awhile. The amount of editorial space is determined by the number and placement of the ads and is a purely technical affair.

Cause for Concern

I am proud to know that the absence of our correspondents and the tightness of our news was cause for concern by so many people. I don’t like it to happen but it certainly is dramatic evidence of readership! Once in awhile I have taken this space to present to you the problems of fitting in all the material in our newspaper. We get enormous quantities of Family Section News, our correspondents do an excellent job of coverage and we take lots of pictures.

Full Coverage

Add to this the job the Editor does covering our Valley plus all our regular and irregular features and it always totals more editorial matter than we have room for. That’s one reason why we cut and prune all the stories you send us, tightening them up into newspaper style which is often necessarily terse. And it is the ONLY way, under normal circumstances, we can get everything in.

In the case of our correspondents, anything not used is printed the following week if it is still current. This also holds true for news.

Decisions, Decisions!

If we have to make a decision between a story announcing an event that will take place tomorrow and another that will take place in two weeks, it is always in favor of the former. The latter can hold until it too, is urgent!

And by cutting and juggling and holding we somehow manage to get almost everything in the newspaper! I close with my personal thanks to my correspondents for their understanding of our problems. Because when the roof falls in like it did last Thursday, MOST of it falls on them!

P.S. This issue, turns out to be “tight.” If you don’t see your pictures or stories, please be patient … we’ll get ’em in as soon as possible.