The Press: Publisher’s Answer

To the Burbank Daily Review, one of California’s smallest dailies (circ. 4,421), came a wire last week from the community’s biggest advertisers : Burbank’s twelve auto dealers. Complaining that the paper’s “continued headlining” of recession news “induces retrenching of possible buyers,” the telegram from Burbank’s Automobile Dealers Association announced that members were canceling their ad contracts with the paper. Said the wire: “This organization will not compete in advertising on the inside with adverse headlines on the outside.” Though the loss of business was a heavy blow, Review Publisher Hoyt Cater, whose paper appears in a town where thousands of aircraft workers are out of jobs, defiantly ran the telegram on Page One. Retorted he: “The Review is going to go right on publishing the news. When it’s good news, we’ll be very happy to print it. But when it’s bad, I’m afraid we’ll have to print that too.”