Enterprise is a restless thing. Once let it remain still and all the good work is undone. This fact is brought more closely home in the case of a newspaper, for enterprise does so much to hold a reader. One stunt is soon forgotten, and it is therefore imperative to keep the ball a-rolling.

You, as a newspaper man, know the huge following the motion picture has, and if you are a small-town member of the fourth estate I want your attention right now. Mr. Big City, your turn will come next.

Several small-town newspapers have tried out the following plan successfully. A prize, usually $25, is offered for the best one-reel scenario, comedy or dramatic, as you may choose, only it must possess a plot which can be effectively taken amid familiar local surroundings. Usually the editor, dramatic critic and the movie director act as the judges.

This is followed by a voting contest for the selection of the most beautiful young woman and handsomest young man in town to play the heroine and hero, respectively. A prize of, say, $25 each, should be offered.

Nominations are best made by coupon, accompanied by a photograph. The judges can weed out the hopeless ones and print the photographs of the good-looking ones in the newspapers, as well as having them thrown upon the screens of the local motion-picture shows. Interest may be maintained each day by announcing the standing of the candidates.

It is up to readers to vote for their favorites, who, if successful, would be trained to act in the prize-winning story.

The advantages of the indirect advertising campaign are many, and it will be found to pull more results than ordinary advertising could accomplish in a lifetime. I say this in all seriousness.

In the first place, almost everybody has a hunch to write a photoplay, but few see their efforts on the screen. In a local contest they stand more chance of making good. The winner is aware that there is more than $25 and local fame awaiting him. His success does much to remove the barriers from the doors of the regular motion-picture producers, who, knowing he is one of the “arrived,” give his future efforts special consideration.

The acting bug is strong within many, especially boys and girls in their teens. The speaking-stage used to be the attraction, but nowadays they get screen-struck instead. Can’t you imagine how proud the winners would be to act in a photoplay and be viewed by their admiring friends? It may prove a stepping-stone to an engagement with a big film company. Events have turned out this way before now.

Important links in the chain are the local motion-picture exhibitors. All are fully alive to the value of a photoplay possessing a strong local appeal. Therefore, if you agreed to announce in your newspaper where the picture was being presented, you would find all the local exhibitors clamoring to hire it. You would probably be able to charge a nominal fee to help cover the cost of production, for it is not as if the photoplay is advertising pure and simple. You get your publicity as the promoter of the production.

Apart from getting your newspaper on the lips of everybody, every candidate would enlist the aid of friends to secure votes, the additional coupons required for this purpose increasing your circulation many times over, temporarily, of course. On the other hand, you would secure new permanent readers.

You may be too far removed from such movie-producing centers as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Jacksonville. Fortunately, however, there exist private concerns throughout the country which make a specialty of local work.