PUT IT ON THE FRONT PAGE, PLEASE!

A free lance writer and his wife, both woefully inexperienced in the newspaper field, decide, over a game of bridge, to put out a small weekly newspaper. Duxbury, Massachusetts, a hamlet whose natives have hitherto been content to read papers from large cities, does not prove the most fallow ground for their experiment. Problems of cash, type, and format are heroically surmounted, but the most vexing problem of all--news--continually baffles the novices. A pastoral community with a clean police blotter, Duxbury's peaceful atmosphere is shattered only when a deer accidentally strays into a tea party or birds fly out from under a carhood and frighten a local citizen. Much to the editors' relief, this brand of local catastrophe, supplemented by notices of meetings and bridge games, is precisely the variety of news Duxburians crave. A book not seriously intended as an aid to anyone interested in entering a publishing career, Put It On The Front Page, Please, makes innocuous, but pleasantly homey reading.