RESPONSE MADE TO ADVERTORIAL: POSITIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR COMMUNITY URGED

ADVERTORIAL

Dear JIM DRURY, EARL NORMAN, and ERNIE BEUSSINK (who pay for the above advertorial):

In reply to your suggestion and questions:

1) The Southeast Missourian will continue SPEAK OUT for many reasons previously and often discussed in Speakout and including those discussed by our Associate Publisher PETER KINDER Tuesday night on Channel 13 TV on "Behind the Headlines". A program on which your self-described "employee" DON PRITCHARD declined an invitation from Producer RON DUFF to appear (after saying he had to consult with his employers first ... and two hours later declining).

2) I expected your ADVERTORIALS to often disagree with my position, but mistatements of facts will be responded to forthrightly.

"Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts."

--Bernard Baruch

3) You might "believe" that I have planted calls in Speak Out ... but the truth is I have not and will not. Speak Out is incidentally a feature in all of the area newspapers in which I'm involved including Dexter, Kennett, Poplar Bluff ... as well as by the name "Sound Off" in Paducah and Carbondale. It is used by many newspapers nationally.

Our problem has not been too few callers, but rather too many. Early this year Speak Out was expanded to four days so the public could get the opportunity to have their views or questions expressed.

4) Most of my nerves were desensitized years ago.

5) Accountability and the News Guardian newspaper are oxymorons.

6) The financing of newspapers is required by law to be printed in a public financial disclosure annually.

My basic financing has come from hard work, profits, loans from banks in Cape Girardeau, Dexter, Sikeston and Kennett (including Boatmen's Bank).

On the purchase of all of the newspapers, the sellers have agreed to extended payment terms and are being paid back on schedule.

6) There are other owners in Dexter, Kennett, and Poplar Bluff and they manage those properties.

7) My suggestion to you is that you use your Advertorial for positive suggestions and constructive criticism for this community in which we all live.

Have A Merry Christmas.

--Gary W. Rust