During the summer of 1958, between my senior year of high school and before entering college, I was lucky enough to be the summer replacement for one of the employees of the local newspaper in Walla Walla WA, the Walla Walla Union Bulletin. Walla Walla was a fair sized town, even back then. It was a fantastic as well as a fascinating job for a teenager. I was a general proof reader and gofer and assembled the wire material for the weekly garden page. They even let me write a couple of articles that got printed! My man job, however, was daily vitals and writing up the obituaries. Every morning on the way in I would stop at the hosptal to pick up a list of the births, and at the funeral homes for information on deaths. Marriages were the purview of the the society editor and written up in grand fashion. All this information was considered news and, to the best of my knowledge, was printed free. Revenue other than sales of the paper, came from the classified page and from local merchants who ran large advertisements in the paper. Although most large city newspapers do charge fees today, many of the small ones still regard what is happening locally as news and continue to print it free of charge. Many, especially those who cover several small towns in an area, do use local correspondents whose job it is to collect local happenings. Of course these are not always correctly reported. I remember that once when my parents and I visited my grandmother in Nebraska the local paper reported that my parents visited along with their daughters, Gloria and Nan. I am an only child and Nan is my middle name. Gloria