politan paper can never expect to have.”
Following this line of development gave the Bee-Nugget precedence in its field, made many friends for the paper and widened its influence. It helped lift it onto a plane where it is respected, where it is classed the same as any other business enterprise. In other words, it it gave the paper distinctive standing. This policy also increased the use of the classified advertising columns, in which Ellington is a firm believer for the country weekly. He says classified ads. pay more, considering the space used and the time required to set them, if properly handled, than any other department, and a paper with a good classified ad. patronage always has standing and influence. He tries to induce farmers especially to make use of classified, and in turn tells his merchants about them.
Ellington makes it a point to display farm news just the same as any other kind, showing no preference, and if he has a good opportunity, through timeliness or importance, he gives one or more large heads on the front page to it. However, he never sacrifices real news for any particular interest. He feels that the front page belongs alike to all readers, and news display there must take precedence according to its general importance. He does not hesitate to make news displays and special articles of happenings and developments in the county seat, but he feels that he should give out-of-town interests within his field the same consideration, while at the same time cultivating the interest of these rural dwellers in the news of their trade center, which is the place of publication of their paper. The circulation list of the average country weekly, and for that matter of the average small daily, is estimated at around 40 per cent of rural dwellers. The editor, therefore, owes that percentage of the list the news in which it is particularly interested. During the past year Ellington has devoted 15 to 30 per cent of his space to agricultural interests in and around Chehalis, under the policy and with the results outlined above. In his opinion the greatest success to be obtained from this work is in the use of live, local stuff, not of the “canned” variety. If John Smith builds a barn, or adds more chickens, or discards his grades and buys purebreds, those things mark real progress among his readers, are of interest to all farmers in his territory, furnish them an example to follow, and concern his merchant-advertisers. The latter do not always see it at first, he says, but they will in time, and a year after the adoption of this policy he wrote me as follows:
“I find the weekly drive on farm transfers, dairy news, chicken and poultry matters, berry possibilities, etc., has enabled me to hold all of my farmer subscribers and gradually to increase the number of them, without special solicitation. Nearly every week some farmer or dairyman of the district speaks of his interest in the Bee-Nugget because it gives so much space to live matters that concern him, and there is another side to it. I repeatedly emphasize to my merchant advertisers how we are handling this department, and urge them to watch it. Gradually they get the point that it is interesting hundreds of readers who live in the surrounding country and who make Chehalis their trade center.”
There you have the case of the Bee-Nugget, which because of the location of Chehalis, about midway between the two largest cities of the northwest, and with transportation facilities between them unexcelled, is particularly harassed by the big dailies. It is somewhat difficult of comparison with Oregon papers which come to my desk, because of difference in size of the respective towns where they are published, but I have in mind several Oregon weeklies, at least some of which have parishes comparable to that of the Bee-Nugget, all of which it seems to me could be improved by giving them more of an agricultural flavor. And is it not patent that if I, one interested in farm ing merely in the abstract, week after
