Reader-Reporters

In Tolar, N. Mex. one afternoon last week a derailment of a Santa Fe freight car touched off the charge in a load of 41 tons of aerial bombs, wrecking several houses. Thirteen minutes after the explosion and 90 minutes before the news was filed for the Associated Press, the Amarillo (Tex.) Globe-News, 100 miles away, had the story. The Globe-News received 24 telephone calls from readers anxious to win the $10 prize offered by Publisher Gene Howe for the week's best news tip.

Enterprising Publisher Howe (son of Kansas' late, famed Editor Ed Howe) knows that local items are the lifeblood of a small-town paper, counts that day lost when the Globe-News does not carry at least 100. He began his tip contest four years ago, when the draft began to take his experienced reporters.

Tip contests, originated more than 20 years ago, have brought city papers many a sensational beat. Gene Howe's has brought the Globe-News an average of 50 stories a week: news of murders, wrecks, births in cabs, isolated hail storms, family fights, flights of geese. So enthusiastically do Globe-News reader-reporters respond that one, a woman involved in an auto accident, telephoned the paper before she called the police.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.