Fewer than half of the weekly newspapers reporting in a national survey give on-the-spot coverage to three key units of local government. Competition appears to be a significant factor in determining diligence. The author is an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Oregon.

In Love's Knowledge and Poetic Justice, Martha Nussbaum makes a compelling case for the value of reading fiction as a means to cultivate “judicious spectatorship”—Adam Smith's term for the ethical stance of a morally competent human being and responsible citizen. However, notwithstanding the power of her argument, it is essentially an argument from authority and hence, would be would be even stronger if supported by empirical data. Although not well-known within the humanities domain, such data does indeed exist, in the form of convergent lines of recent research into the neurobiological and psychological aspects of reading fiction. Supported by the fruits of this research—the accumulating evidence that reading fiction enhances social intelligence and cognitive empathy at a fundamental level—Nussbaum's confidence in the value of fiction as a “school for the moral sentiments” would appear to be supremely well-justified, and any programmatic decisions to marginalize the study of literature within the curricular spectrum supremely ill-informed.

In his presidential address to the 1961 convention of the Association for Education in Journalism, the dean of the University of Oregon School of Journalism advanced seven basic propositions which describe the current state of affairs in journalism education and its relations with the media.

Assistod by Dean C. Baker, Michigan (6enoral Magazines); Donald E. Brown, Illinois Radio and Tolovision) ; Charles T. Duncan, Orogon I Community Nowspapen); Armirtead S. Pride, Lincoln (Negro Journalism) Denouement in two longstanding communication controversies took place during the last three months of I955 with the return of several Argentine newspapers, including La Prensa of Buenos Aires and El Intransigente of Salta, to their owners and the settlement of the Lamb case in favor of the licensee. Relations between the government and the press were active on a number of fronts. Investigation of newspapermen with alleged Communist backgrounds on the sta8 of the N.Y. Times by a Senate sub-committee drew criticism from that newspaper as an attempt at intimidation of the newspaper for past editorial stands. The Moss committee in Washington continued to examine news release procedures of a number of executive departments and agencies. An oficial, specially prominent in restricting news in the Commerce and Defense departments, left the federal service in what some sources claimed was an example of newspaper pressure.

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