February, '12] WASHBURN: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 49 



the production of the best forms of illustrations, both photos and 

 draT\angs, as well as cuts and colored plates. 



9. The Relation of the Economic Entomologist to the Public Press: 



There is no question but that we owe much to our daily and county 

 papers. I know of no better way to get widespread information to 

 the farmers of a certain district quickly, and to be sure of reaching all 

 interested individuals, than by placing such information with the 

 editors of our rural papers, and I have no doubt we all find editors 

 willing and ready to help us in this particular. Personally, however, 

 I have found, and probably my experience has been duplicated many 

 times by those present, that the average reporter loves to make a good 

 story, and he wall frequently distort what you have' to say to him 

 personally, in order to have the information make a good showing in 

 his paper. This practice prevails particularly in our city papers. 

 These erroneous statements are copied largely from our daily papers 

 by the county press, and in that way spread over the entire state, and 

 to other states as well. You have probably all experienced the embar- 

 rassment of the results of a chance remark made in the hearing of a 

 reporter. I might cite instances innumerable to illustrate this; one 

 in particular occurs to me, coming to my notice recently in my own 

 district. 



One of our field men made the remark before a local reporter in the 

 country, that a certain cricket had been observed eating the eggs of 

 grasshoppers. The reporter at once printed the statement that the 

 common black cricket was destroying grasshoppers, which statement 

 not only circulated freely among the papers in various parts of the 

 state, but I was amazed to receive from Kansas a clipping from a 

 Denver, Colorado, newspaper, saying the state entomologist of 

 Minnesota predicted that the black cricket was eating grasshoppers 

 in such numbers that the pest would soon cease to be a cause of anxiety. 



Again, too, apart from the errors of city reporters, which are num- 

 erous, and sometimes intentional, we find grotesque mistakes in our 

 country papers. The confounding in Minnesota, for instance, of 

 the Seventeen-year Locust, with true locusts or grasshoppers, has 

 been the cause of laughable items in some of the papers. In August 

 a Minnesota county paper came out in a paragraph with startling 

 headlines, with the follo^vdng declaration: "WITHIN THE PAST 

 WEEK SEVERAL FARMERS HAVE SEEN THE GENUINE 

 RED-LEGGED SEVENTEEN-YEAR OR ROCKY MOUNTAIN 

 LOCUSTS FLYING HIGH IN THE AIR." Again another 

 newspaper referred to "a visitation of the seventeen-year locust." 

 The entomologist, in a desire to straighten out the matter, sent a 



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