Lou and Sue Jauch, age 9, of San Francisco, California, for their question:

Which is America's oldest newspaper?

Sensible people are curious about what goes on in the world. They are interested in news about their hometown community and also in news from faraway foreign lands. TV newscasts flash to us quickie reports of the news, but thinking people need more details to satisfy and fill their minds. So they read newspapers. Some people say you can judge a thinking person by the newspaper reading ht does. Some say you can figure the number of thinking people in a town by the number of daily newspapers it prints. Our early American ancestors were deep thinkers and they began printing news¬papers way back in colonial days. When the War of Independence began, young America had 35 different newspapers in which to report the news.

The oldest American newspaper must be the one that had appeared daily for the longest time. This durable old timer is the Alexandria Gazette, published in Alex¬andria, Virginia. Its first edition appeared in 1797. The Alexandria Gazette has reported the daily news to its faithful readers through 171 years.