The Army Hometown News Center (AHTNC) was established in 1951. It is a centralized processing point for news items about an individual from the unit/post to the news media servicing that individual's home area. The mission of the AHTNC is to improve, supervise and control the flow of informational material to hometown news media. It is designed to receive, evaluate, and edit all hometown news and feature stories in order to obtain the maximum hometown interest and to insure that each release is appropriate as to style and content. It receives hometown news from all Army units worldwide and handles the time-consuming details required for each hometown news story, e.g., writing, duplication, media selection, addressing and mailing. The work of the AHTNC is based on the assumptions that hometown news material fills a real need to inform the people back home of the accomplishments of a local soldier, and that timely, newsworthy, well written releases will be printed by the hometown newspapers. This study was designed to: (1) Determine if the number of news and photo stories used by civilian newspapers is an acceptable level of return in relation to the cost of releasing the material; (2) Evaluate, by means of a telephone survey, readership reaction to hometown news releases; and (3) Provide recommendations of the most cost effective means of providing the service after exploring and comparing alternative methods with those used by the AHTNC.