Alexandria Gazette

&c.—The card which the editors of the respective newspapers—Gratuitous Advertising,—necessary to publish, is thus noticed in the National Intelligencer.

In our last number we informed our readers that we should suspend the publication of our paper one week, in order to "try" to make collections. We did try: and after travelling sixty miles, how much, kind patrons, do you suppose we raised? Not the first cent.

The consequence is, that we are compelled to publish our paper this week on a half sheet, as we have no money to send to town for paper."

Such is the "o'er true tale" of a Western publisher apologizing to his readers for being obliged to cut down his weekly sheet to one half of its proper dimensions. The simple story of this Editor is only illustrative of the general history and state of newspaper publications all over the United States. "A large proportion of the newspapers, in fact, merely drag on from day to day a lingering, laborious, and painful existence, which most of them would long ago have resigned but for the fixed motive of pride and duty which induces them to cling to existence, not as long as it is endurable merely, but as long as it is possible."

For this sickly condition of the newspaper press the publishers of newspapers are themselves somewhat to blame. Of all the arts of life, theirs is that whose professors have perhaps less of the esprit de corps than any other. They too often suffer themselves to be imposed upon by their customers; and, in truth, the rivalry is such among themselves, that they are half afraid to insist on the same justice which every body else exacts from them, lest they should lose their patrons by enforcing their rights. True it happens, that whilst there are very few publishers of newspapers who would not feel themselves entirely at ease in body and mind, if they could realize with a fourth of the whole amount due upon their books, there are almost as few who are not, at the close of the year, (and, indeed, at the close of every week in the year,) sorely puzzled how to make both ends meet. To this observation there are of course, many exceptions, but not so many as to invalidate the general truth of it.

The only remedy for this evil that we know of, is for publishers, whilst they exert themselves more and more to make their sheets acceptable to their customers, to look more closely and warily to their own interests; to perform less gratuitous labor, and to insist upon more prompt payment of what they justly earn.