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OREGON EXCHANGES}

Annual Newspaper Conference time approaches. Program-makers are all ears for suggestions. Programs must contain what the newspapermen want or what the program-makers think they want. Usually these fairly well coincide. Their agreement is made more certain when co-operation is had from the editors and publishers over the state. What are some of the things you’d like to hear discussed this time? Better still, what are some of the things you’d be willing to handle yourself, for the benefit of the other fellow, who perhaps did the heavy work last year? Dean Eric W. Allen, chairman of the program committee, can be reached at the School of Journalism. Drop him a line if and when you have an idea to suggest. The program, at least, in tentative form, will be printed in the next issue of.

Newspaper observers are almost a unit in deploring the growing tendency to ward standardization of the newspapers. Overuse of “syndicate features” and of “canned” editorial is producing a marked similarity between many newspapers which might well profit from a,display of individuality. It should be a matter of pride on the part of each editor to be the brains of his own paper and to devote his editorial energy and space toward an improvement of conditions in his own particular community.

This is not now the condition, and, unfortunately, the trend appears to be in the other direction. Does it never strike an editor that it must seem peculiar to a discerning reader that the paper’s opinions are so much more positive and informing on subjects connected with Russia, Japan, China and the Ruhr than on anything within the borders of his home state?

Let the editors ponder the efiect when the public, in due time, comes to know that the most enlightening, not to say space-filling, editorials are the product of a brain functioning across the continent and are sent by mail to a few hundred other editors. The annual Newspaper Directory will be issued by Om-zoos Excmmoss in its next number. Thirty-or-so of the state's newspapers have to date paid no atten tion to the blank sent them in quest of information. Data from these, it is hoped, will be in hand within the next week or two. If your paper is one of those which have not yet sent in its return, please consider this a reminder.

wishes its readers—and especially its correspondents—a Happy New Year. Every reader should at some time be a correspondent. Trade magazines are giving consider able attention to style sheets. Oar.-noon Excnawcas made some reference to the subject in its recent issue. Recollection goes back to the old hand comp tourist now almost as rare as the dodo, diplo doccus and some other birds. Many of the old country print shops had their own styles. The kind of style that often prevailed is best illustrated by the story of the tourist who was helping out on press day. He turned from his case to the editor to inquire: “What is the style on dates in this shop—inst. or ult.? ’’ [61