there was the appropriation of $36,000 set aside by the city of Los Angeles; second, there was the revenue derived from advertising, for which the rates were one dollar an inch for one insertion. In addition to the municipal news, there was a page intended primarily to interest pupils attending city schools. The weekly expenses for publishing The News amounted to a little over a thousand dollars a week. The remarkable fact about The Municipal News was that in spite of the fact that it went into the home with its free distribution, it carried no department store advertising, except for four weeks when one proprietor, against the wish of his advertising manager, announced the special bargains offered at his store. A referendum vote, a vote by which the paper was established, later ordered the discontinuance of the sheet, chiefly on account of the financial cost.
The Municipal News did not compete with the daily papers of Los Angeles, California, because it printed no telegraphic intelligence. It was restricted by the ordinance which created the paper from printing any editorial opinion or argument about a religious question or any political question which pertained to National or State politics. A political party polling three per cent of the vote of Los Angeles had the right without charge to one column each issue in which it might set forth its views on public questions. The local committee of each party selected its own editor to edit its own column, which was free from censorship by the editor of the paper on the condition that matter submitted must be lawful for publication. The mayor or any member of the city council could have half a column in any issue of the paper.
In discussing the possibilities of a daily newspaper publicly owned, George H. Dunlop, manager of The Municipal News, once expressed his views as follows:—
The publicly owned daily newspaper, covering the entire field of journalism, must be a very high grade paper if it is to be of value. Its news must be accurate, its arguments fair, and its style interesting. It must not present the weaknesses of mankind as worthy, nor the vices of mankind as amusing, nor the virtues of mankind as stupid. It must not rely on scandal and vice, the improprieties of the stage and pictures of perfect women, as the means for interesting its readers. It will not
