page Z- June 15, 1977 '- North Shore News

a ZZ CoO AKT NON

I'd like to talk about one of my favourite
subjects. You are reading it now—the North Shore
News. We operate one of the fastest growing
community newspapers in North America, right
here in your own back yard, and the News is

- creating shock waves.

throughout the

community, now.

These are travelling
Inevitably

something that grows as fast as the News and
makes as many changes to the newspaper
business and to the community it serves also

creates confusion, and the purpose of my column
today is to try to set things straight,

I get asked the same
questions time after time. I
guess that they must occur to
more people than the ones
who have spoken to me, and
I'll try to repeat them here,
with the answers, for those
readers who are interested.

The first rumor is that we
have been bought out or sold
out to Some type of news-
paper ‘‘chain’’ that is mus-
cling into the North Shore
community. That is not true.
We are 100% locally owned
and operated. I own the
majority of shares in the
companies involved in the
production and distribution
of the North Shore News.
The other shareholders are
some of the employees of the

News. We operate a profit |

-sharing. plan for all employ:
ees.

The second is the peren-

nial rumor that we are in

debt to our printer (currently
Horizon Publications) and
they are going to take us
over. That is also not true.

We have a normal healthy.

business relationship — with
Horizon, who own and print
one of our competitors, The
Citizen. We don’t own our
own presses—it is uneco-
nomic for us to do so—and

we print at one of several
large job-printing plants in,

the Vancouver area. Horizon
Publications is the printer we
are currently contracted to.

LONG-TIME EMPLOYEES
We operate every other

aspect of a newspaper except

the printing presses. Printed

by the cold type system, we
set our own type, produce

_ our own pages and generally

handle the paper right down

‘to the acutal press level. This

gives us control over the final
product that we might not be
able to achieve with a
different system.

We employ approximately
fifty people in our offices and
distribution system. Most
have been with us for a long
time. One or two go back to
ine days in 1969 when I used
to publish from a spare room
in my home. We have over
500 carriers and a smooth
and reliable distribution -sys-
tem. We treat the circulation
system as if each and every
reader paid for the North
Shore News. In other words,
you don’t get any
‘newspaper’ because your

carrier doesn’t collect every .

month.

it’s our contention that
news is public property. You
don’t have to pay for it on the
radio or on television, so why
should you have to pay for it
on your doorstep? We are
one of the pioneers in the
free-circulation newspaper
field; which, when taken with
the fact that the majority of
newspapers in B.C. are now
free, may give you some idea
of the changes that have
taken place in the newspaper
industry over the last few
years. -

We want to give you a
good newspaper. Our natural
desire to print a better and
better paper got us into hot

"VERIFIED CIRCULATION 46,000
1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4

OFFICE/NEWS: (604) 980-0511
CLASSIFIED: 980-3464 CIRCULATION: 986-1337

’

Publisher Peter Speck

Associate Publisher Bob Graham. Editor-in-Chief |
Noel Wright/News Guillermo Lam/Photos Ells-
worth Dickson/Production Marna Leiren/Advertis-
ing Kristi Vidler/Classified Berni Hilliard/Circula-
tion Yvonne Chapman/Administration Barbara
Haywood/Accounts Sylvia Sorensen.

North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an

independent

community
qualified under Schedule

newspaper
WW,

and
Part 111,

Paragraph 111 of the Excise Tax Act, is
published each Wednesday by the North
Shore Free Press Ltd. and distributed to every
door on the North Shore.

Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885,

ENTIRE CONTENTS COPYRIGHT © 1977 NORTH
SHORE FREE PRESS LTD. All rights reserved.

’ past.

less.

‘Vancouver.

water more than once in the
I am_ speaking of
financial hot water, if I can
confuse: my metaphors a
little. We have, in days gone
by, spent too much money on
the news content of the paper
and not taken in enough
advertising revenue—a sit-
uation that leads to disen-
chanted bankers and bounc-
ing cheques. God willing,
those days are over and we

now have a comptroller who >

says to us “‘Hey, you can’t
print any more than so many-
pages unless you sell more
advertising.’’ This type of
control, while it occasionally
restricts the amount of
editorial material we carry,
also makes us operate in the
black...a necessity. in the
world today.

It’s fine for us to have a
news vehicle to serve our
‘community and our adver-
tisers, but if it doesn’t make
money the inevitable result is
misery. And as the. old
saying goes, I tried that and
didn’ t like it.

ACCESSIBLE...LOCAL

We are accessible. Our
phone lines go right into our
offices. You can talk to the
editor, or the publisher, or
the circulation manager, or a
reporter, or whomever you
choose.

We are local.
here almost all my life. Our
Editor-In-Chief lives in West
Most of our
staffers are North Shore
residents. This is our com-
munity too, and we are

“keenly aware of that. Our

kids go to the same schools
yours go to.

We run a_e6 “straight-up
operation. Our newspaper is
built on honesty with our
advertisers and our readers,
and I hope this coiumn has
answered any questions you
may have in your mind about
the North Shore News. We

welcome letters and sugges-

tions. You might be advised
that the volume of telephone
calls that we receive is out of
sight and we feel much
warmer about letters that can
be dealt with in a more
organized fashion, but that’s
the only advice I have to give

you. We are your newspaper. |

Use us.

‘

Studies done by the

Department of National
Health and Welfare indicate
that the abuse of alcohol is
costing - Canadians more
than $1,100 million a.year.
This breaks down to an esti-
mated $500 million for al-
cohol-related motor acci-
dents; $250 million for time
lost at work and $350 mil-
lion in hospital care. Life-
style is a matter of choice -
make yours a wise one!

sii deme eRRAN NE

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I’ve lived

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