Launch of the Overseas Weekly Pacific Edition

From page 4 of the Overseas Weekly Pacific Edition, October 23, 1966

Here to Serve You

The Editor's Notebook

Battle Rages But We're Starting,

WITH this issue The Overseas Weekly launches regular publication of its Pacific edition.

The Weekly began serving American servicemen in Europe in 1950 and has been regularly distributed ever since through facilities of the military newsstand system there.

Over the past year and a half, as military friends moved from Europe to the Pacific to bolster American strength, OW received an increasing number of requests to set up local coverage.

We never dreamed the U.S. Government could make such an effort so difficult. By stalling, evasion, misrepresentation and even lying, petty bureaucrats left no doubt in anybody's mind that they found the idea of a genuine GI newspaper in the Pacific too tought to take.

The battle rages-and will continue as long as Constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press exist in America-and as long as readers desire to read an independent, uncensored newspaper such as The Overseas Weekly.

We've been asked why some people in the Government are opposed to OW. It certainly isn't for the reason given - "there's no space on the newsstands." (Have you looked at your newsstand lately?)

It is because OW prints hard facts, and not even our worst enemy has questioned the paper's accuracy. It steps on toes. It never has been and never will be bought by pressure groups. It fights. It backs the little guy against the impersonal machine.

A newspaper is a living entity with responsibilities and rights. The only people who should judge it are the readers - not timid officials. How can one defend fighting for democratic ideals as we are the world over while denying them to our own citizens?

Let us speak plainly. The exclusion of a publication which for 16 years has been the largest selling weekly for American servicement in Europe; which has never been charged with any act harmful to the U.S.; which has never even lost a libel suit; which can prove demand among its readers...this IS censorship.

We ask no favors. We ask only the same right given every other American publisher- to be sold side by side with other publications and let the reader decide.

We'll keep fighting. In the meantime, we're going to do our best to get our newspaper to you through whatever means we can find. But if you have trouble finding us in the beginning, it ain't because we're not trying!

Let us know what you honestly think of us. We appreciate suggestions and benefit from criticism.

We're here to serve you.

About the Overseas Weekly at WHMC-Columbia