Newspaper Aid in Tent Work by Wm. W. Rice.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 10, 1916

Newspaper Aid in Tent Work

By Wm. W. Rice.

DURING the past two years it has been my privilege to see the power of newspaper publicity demonstrated to the extent of attracting an intelligent class of listeners to a series of meetings, and also arousing enough interest among many who did not attend to look for the reports the first thing after receiving their daily papers.

In these two years, efforts have been held in two of the cities of Massachusetts, the papers in each place giving us a very liberal amount of space for the presentation of outlines of our different doctrines. In one of the cities our efforts were centered on giving daily reports to the leading newspaper, and not only did it reach a large portion of the population in the immediate town, but also circulated quite extensively throughout the county.

When in the series of meetings the subject of the change of the Sabbath was presented, the report of this sermon was not published. I asked some of those who had been attending the meetings to call the editor by telephone and inquire as to his reasons for withholding the report. Afterward the editor told me of the interest manifested by his readers, and we had no difficulty in securing the publication of future reports. This method surely could be adopted with good effect by others who might find difficulty in getting reports of their sermons published after they have reached the testing truths in their meetings.

We found, much to our encouragement, that not only did strangers read the articles, but many of them clipped the reports from the papers and saved them for future reference. We also patronized the pay advertisement columns of the papers, and soon realized that by giving a little money back to the papers in the form of advertisements, which, by the way, were also read, the editors showed more willingness to publish our news articles. Newspaper publicity not only reaches the masses, but it is not expensive, and it certainly is effective, even though but little money is involved to secure it.

Wm. W. Rice.