The Press: Country Slickers

Metropolitan newsmen who daydream of retiring to a country paper have long viewed weeklies more as a rural retreat than as an influential segment of the press. But with the swift growth of suburbs and small towns since World War II, weeklies have largely shed their cracker-barrel ways, developed sophistication and a new sense of mission. Today they are the fastest-growing publications in the U.S. Weekly Newspaper Representatives, Inc. reported last week that the 8,478 weeklies in the U.S. in 1956 reached a paid circulation peak of 18,529,199, up 6.5% over 1955. Estimated...

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