Patent-insides Or Cooperative Newspapers

( Originally Published 1913 )

COMPARATIVELY few newspapers published weekly in the country towns are wholly home-set or home-printed. Probably seventy-five per cent of them use what are called "patent insides," and are known in the trade as cooperative newspapers.

The term " patent insides " is a misnomer, because half of the papers have " patent outsides," and a patent was never granted to the scheme.

The cooperative, or so-called " patent insides," newspaper is one which is only partially printed at the office of publication. The outside pages, or the inside pages, are set and printed by the cooperative newspaper publisher, and the matter on the blank pages is set and printed by the individual publisher.

The cooperative pages contain one or more stories or articles, miscellany, home hints and cooking recipes, humorous stories, and sometimes general news of the state or nation. Occasion-ally noncompromising and unpolitical editorials appear.

This cooperative matter is intended to be about what the local publisher would use if his paper were wholly homeset and printed.

The cooperative newspaper publisher obtains his profit usually from the general advertising, which appears on the pages he handles, because the price charged the local publisher is not more than sufficient to cover the cost of the paper, the composition, and the presswork.

By this scheme, the newspaper publisher is able to present his readers with an acceptable paper, and at a very much less expense than would be possible if the whole of it was home-set and -printed and thousands of local papers could not be published if it was not for this cooperative feature.

The public demands quantity as well as quality, and a paper to be profitable must be of fair size.

The average country newspaper does not receive sufficient support to allow it to incur the expense of entire home production.

The cooperative newspaper publisher does not always furnish high-grade matter : first, be-cause the average reader does not require it ; and, secondly, because the expense would be prohibitory.

The cooperative newspaper publishing concern has offices in several cities, from which editions appropriate to their territories are published. It maintains a small editorial staff, but does not employ reporters. These editors, who receive salaries which are about the same as those of editors in papers located in cities of from fifty to a hundred thousand population, devote most of their time to clipping and compiling, for the cooperative pages contain comparatively little original matter beyond the running of a syndicate story. These editors have served apprentice-ship on daily newspapers.

As the matter they produce has a very general circulation, none of it must be political or antagonistic to the average reader. It must be uncompromising to the extreme. The editorials are thoroughly general and adapted to every class of reader, that they may not compromise the newspapers carrying them.

The cooperative newspaper publisher employs several advertising men or solicitors, who receive salaries equal to those paid by the daily news-papers.