BRITISH COLUMBIA ——

Criticism, ideas in survey replies

This issue of the paper is the last in our 50th anniversary year. Throughout the year, we have celebrated those 50 years of the working class press in B.C. with two special issues, our unprecedented $100,000 financial drive which — thanks to you — met with resounding success, and publica- tion of Fighting Heritage, a book featuring four significant labor struggles in the 30’s, and the early history of our paper.

_ But for the staff at the Tribune, the most important event of the year was receiving your replies to the questionnaire that we ran in our pages five times starting in October.

Many of you took the time to answer the 14 questions, and one-third of you who sent in the questionnaire also took the time to Write one or two page letters setting out clearly your opinions on the paper and sug- gesting how we might improve the quality of the paper.

It took some time to sort through the Tesponses, but here are the results of our Survey: what we learned about you from your answers to questions 1 through 5; and what you told us about the Tribune in the Test of the questionnaire.

Of those who sent in replies, 61 per cent were less than 64 years of age, the majority, 36 per cent, being in the 29-40 age group; and 39 per cent were 65 and over. Two- thirds of the replies were from men, one third from women.

As to your occupational status — 30 per cent were employed full-time, six per cent employed part-time, 21 per cent were unemployed, six per cent students, and 39 per cent were retired.

On the question on the length of time as a subscriber to the paper, the majority, 54 per cent, had been subscribers for less than five

- years, 45 per cent for more than five years. We

received two replies from non-subscribers. Most of you spend between half an hour and two hours reading the paper, 23 per

- cent spend less than 30 minutes and nine per

cent more than two hours.

Question 6, which asked you to list which pages of the paper you read first, second, third or fourth, revealed that the most of you read page one, and then page two which is our civic coverage. However, divid- ing the responses into those over and under 65 years of age, the picture changes. For our readers under 65, there was an even split between those who read page one and then page two and those who turn directly from page one to our labor coverage on page 12.

The next question asked you to rate some of our regular features. As we anticipated, Harry Rankin’s column was a clear favor- ite, followed by People and Issues. Each of the features received a full range of responses with the number of “excellent” ratings always higher than “adequate” or “poor”. Our editorials were the only feature which received more adequate and poor ratings than excellent.

Responses to Question 8, where we asked for ratings of our coverage of various areas, revealed the greatest praise and the sharpest criticism of the paper. Our coverage of the peace movement received the highest acco- lades, with not one poor response, and the number of excellent ratings far outweigh- ing those who felt the coverage was ade-

quate. Our coverage of civic politics and trade union affairs was also rated highly. But our coverage of the women’s move- ment was strongly criticized with 35 per cent rating our coverage as poor, and 40 per cent as adequate. Cultural reviews were also crit- ized, but quite a few of you took the time to write in “not enough coverage” together with your adequate or poor response.

Responses to the next five questions were most gratifying for us. Some 85 per cent of you believe that the paper has improved over the last two years, find the layout attractive with enough photos, the stories readable and a good balance between news and commentary. Over 90 per cent consider the paper essential reading for active people, but only 65 per cent feel that the Tribune has broad appeal.

And it seems that most individual copies of the paper get read by more than one person; 67 per cent of you said that you pass copies of the paper on to friends or co- workers.

Only a few of you failed to give us any comment under Question 14, and most of the comments we received were favorable. A representative. sample of some of those comments include: “Keep up the good word”; “a bright light in a dark world of news reporting;” “appreciate the paper very much” and “a newspaper to be proud of.”

We must note here that it was our readers over 65 who gave us the most laurels. Those of you under 65 who sent in comments were somewhat more guarded in your praise, with responses such as:

“The paper, generally, does an excellent job but the editorials and some of the inter- national news analysis contain too much dogma.”

“The direction in the last couple of years is good but has not yet been completed.”

Generally, after boiling down all your comments and suggestions for improve- ment of the paper, there are a few areas that received the most comment.

First, as previously mentioned, your crit- icism of our inadequate coverage of women’s issues and the women’s move- ment. We have to agree with you here. We will take up your suggestions and attempt to improve this area of the paper over the next year.

Second, you requested more book and movie reviews, including increased cover- age of local cultural events. '

And third, the on-going problem of late delivery by the post office. We have tried to remedy this problem from our office but have had little success. We can only suggest that you contact your local post office and register your complaints with them.

All of the questionnaires made interest- ingTeading and we would like to thank you for taking the time to send them in to us.

Throughout our 50 years of publication it has been the support and dedication of our readers that has kept the paper coming out week after week. Your comments and suggestions will be invaluable to us over the next few years as we try to improve the quality of the Tribune and maintain the proud tradition of 50 years of working class journalism.

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