Small-Town News

"Greeley, Bennett and Pulitzer never did this,'' chuckled the Mexico, Mo. Intelligencer last fortnight as it slapped a boldface banner headline across the top of its front page:

NO NEWS TODAY

Other Intelligencer headlines completed the editor's trick by continuing:

"Of Amelia, Sought by Air and by Sea." "Of Rain, Though Corn Begins to Need It."

"Of Hospital or Armory Heard at Civic Club."

Had the Intelligencer waited a week longer it would have been a dunce to declare no news. Last week was one of the newsiest weeks for small-town editors since Halley's Comet.

For one thing, it was the week of their annual blowout, the convention of the National Editorial Association, held this year in Detroit, where editors could see for themselves some of the scenes and characters of the year's biggest story, Insurgent Labor. Four hundred of N. E. A.'s 3,000 members arrived for a busy week of speechmaking and fun. Will Loomis of the La Grange 111. Citizen helped start things with the topic. "Where do we go from here?'" Then the editors were shown a cooking school film entitled The Bride Wakes Up and heard from the folksy syndicate poet. Edgar A. Guest. Ford Motor Co. scheduled a lunch at Dearborn Inn, a trip through Greenfield Village and a speech by its official spokesman, William J. Cameron. General Motors Corp. offered a tour of its Pontiac plant and a free Pontiac to the editor who would write and publish the best story about Michigan.

Reporter. Awaiting each editor on arrival in his Detroit hotel room was the announcement of another prize and its winner. This was Country Home magazine's award for the best country newspaper correspondent of the year. The winner, who gets $200 and a trip to New York and Washington, was Finlay ("Fin") Petrie, 53, reporter for the Kemmerer, Wyo. Gazette in the woolgathering town of Opal (pop. 50). The envy of his profession, Petrie never got through grammar school. He came to the U. S. from Scotland as an itinerant house painter, turned up in Opal where the general store gave him the job of clerk. It seemed natural that Fin should tell people what was going on around him, now that he was settled down for the first time in his life. He put it in writing and sent it to the weekly Gazette in nearby Kemmerer. That was 27 years ago, and last week found Fin still clerking and still reporting Opal. Samples:

"Born on the Vego Miller ranch, twin-colts to a mare named Twogo. All three doing well. Seldom are twins born in this animal kingdom and Miller states it is as rare as a Republican president."

"Under the supervision of Oscar Roberson and Olaf Poison, the castrating of their large herd of bulls was accomplished Sunday."

"Judge Roy Mason and wife were visitors. There are plenty of judges in his township, but a deplorable absence of customers."

"Rain and wind the only things of interest during Decoration holidays--dust and bills, the only things settled."

"The new housing bill doesn't bother anyone here. We still saucer our coffee, dunk our toast, hang the bathtub on a nail, take a shower in the rain, all against the bill for taxing the useful catalog, but there is no one on the dole, and the health of the inhabitants is 100 per cent."

"There is no truth to the statement that swimming became a popular pastime in Scotland, as soon as toll bridges were built. Believe it if you want to, skip it if you don't."

Fin Petrie is glad he won the $200. He has a boy going to college this year.

Murder, Winners of no prizes last week and attending no conventions were the newspaper editors of Alturas, Calif, (pop. 2,338). One editor, Claude L. McCracken, was in his grave, sent there last March by five bullets pumped into him by Harry French, son of a rival newspaper family. A jury found French guilty of first-degree murder and last week the same jury, under California law, was called upon to pass on his sanity. Costly alienists from the big cities spoke their pieces on the stand. But what his friends & neighbors wanted to hear was young Harry himself. Finally he took the stand, told how McCracken's editorial jibes about his family and particularly his mother had gone to his head: "It made me vicious. . . . It made me mad. I wanted to go with a club to settle this McCracken, but mother always caught ahold of my coattails and stopped me."

The jury was not impressed, pronounced young Harry as sane as they were. Unless he wins an appeal, he will be one of the last to die on California's robin's-egg-blue gallows. A law substituting a lethal gas chamber takes effect Aug. 27 for crimes committed after that date.

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