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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 2
[trade dispatches]
To find the proverbial needle in the haystack is easier than to discover any special item in a serial publication; and yet for a trade paper to publish an index is the exception rather than the rule. Our own practice is to keep a rough general index of items which we are likely to require for future reference, and when occasion arises, we have only to turn up our files. With the present issue, we present our suscribers with a classified and analytical index to our first volume. If an item is worth noting, it is worth registering, and those who possess a file of Typo for 1887 can now at once turn up any item to which they wish to refer.
We have received a copy of Stubbs's Poverty Bay and Wairoa Almanac for the current year. The book, which contains 164 pages demy 8vo, is well printed, on good paper. The reference matter, with the exception of the parts specially referring to the East Coast, is the same as in Brett's Auckland Almanac. A good deal of trouble appears to have been taken to bring the Poverty Bay information down to date; but the somewhat rose-colored account of the oil industry would bear a little toning down. Advertisements and reading-matter are a good deal mixed—a questionable advantage to advertisers, and a great defect in a book of reference.
We have not hitherto quoted any of the numerous references to our journal which have appeared in the colonial papers—they are doubtless of more interest to ourselves than to our readers. In a late number of the Lake County Press, however, we find a long notice, which shows at all events a full appreciation of the objects we have kept in view. « Upon matters relating to trade, » says the Press, « Typo adopts principles and eschews detail. One good aim—the first, perhaps—of the editor, is to make Typo of practical value to printers. There is no doubt that they may improve their workmanship to a very considerable extent by studying Typo's pages. It would in these days, when we hear so much about technical education, be a great advantage to other trades if they had a journal which could give such explicit instructions to tradesmen, young and old. Readers are kept abreast of the times, for Typo notices every improvement or new invention of importance in connexion with printing. To newspaper apprentices especially do we recommend Typo. When there is in the colony such a creditable production those interested should mark their sense of its worth by giving the necessary support. » Testimonies like these are the more valuable because unsought; and they confirm us in the idea that our paper fills a useful place in the journalism of Australasia.
In a certain colonial town some months ago, two gentlemen with « a little list » went from house to house with a painful story of a literary man of commanding genius and noble aspirations, whose periodical was on the point of collapse. A little timely assistance, it was hinted, would avert the threatened financial disaster, and enable him to start it on a fresh basis, and make it a grand success. Those who were wise hardened their hearts and buttoned their pockets— others, more sympathetic, contributed their shillings and half-crowns, and attached their names to the paper without reading it. They had a nice little surprise some weeks afterwards, in the shape of a document from an officer of the Supreme Court, headed « In the bankrupt estate of the C— D— newspaper » —in which they were notified that a claim would shortly be made upon them for their share of the liabilities; but as a preliminary, the sum of £— (about three times the amount of their contribution) was demanded in liquidation of the affairs of the A— B— newspaper! The good-natured subscribers found themselves involved in the past and prospective liabilities of two rotten concerns—one in actual process of liquidation, and the other insolvent. And—unkindest cut of all—the contributors, who, however injudicious, are respectable citizens, have the mortification of finding themselves registered as part-proprietors of two periodicals which, having once seen, they would not care to touch, even with a pair of tongs!—Need we enforce the moral of this little story?