How to sell more newspapers

     I got on a West Warwick bound bus yesterday morning with three

    newspapers - Providence Journal, Boston Globe, Boston Herald. A

    young white man sitting next to me with a ragged middle aged male

    for a companion was impressed with my appetite for newspapers.

    Reading, said the author of " The Summing Up " , was at least a

    harmless addiction. I offered the kid the Boston Herald but then-

    what a shock ! - he said with a hint of shame that he just could

    not read very well, that reading BOOKS was impossible. I encouraged

    him to open up on this serious illiteracy problem which I said-

    with some compassion - could make him a " joke " when he applied

    for a job. He said that the ragged guy next to him - who suddenly

    began to whine like a baby - was his job. He was his " caretaker ".

    The kid dropped out of high school, he said, where he was daily

    humiliated as a retard. He said that if he could just get a GED,

    he would like to be as drug counselor. He did have a gentle, caring

    manner which to some " macho " guy might be perceived as effeminate.

             Just then the bus was passing Dorcas Place on Elmwood Ave.

    I pointed it out to him, saying he could get help there with his

    reading problem. In fact the kid was 24 years old but looked even

    younger. I wrote on a piece of newspaper : " Dorcas Place - Elmwood

    Ave. ".

              Actor Robert DiNero played an illiterate rescued by

    Jane Fonda in  a Hollywood movie. This kid also needs to be rescued.

    What can be worse than the pathetic helplessness of illiteracy ?

               Don't newspapers like the Providence Journal, the Boston

    Globe, the Boston Herald have a vested interest in common literacy ?

             How do so many hardly stupid kids fall through the cracks ?

         A long time ago I read the famous classic " Why Johnny Can't

    Read "  . Is it true that the alphabet is an esoteric secret for

    modern reading teaching ?

                Expose the scandal -and double your newspaper sales !