Transcriber’s Note
In the following transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_
while bold text is denoted by =equal signs=. Small capitals in the
original text have been transcribed as ALL CAPITALS.
See the end of this document for details of corrections and other changes.
————————————— Start of Book —————————————
NEWSPAPER WRITING
AND EDITING
BY
WILLARD GROSVENOR BLEYER, PH.D.
CHAIRMAN OF THE COURSE IN JOURNALISM, AND
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
[Illustration]
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY WILLARD GROSVENOR BLEYER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
TO
A. H. B.
PREFACE
Seven years’ experience in trying to train college students in methods
of newspaper writing and editing has convinced the author of the need
of text-books in journalism. Newspapers themselves supply the student
with so miscellaneous a collection of good, bad, and mediocre work
that, with an uncritical taste, he does not always discriminate in
the character of the models which he selects to imitate. Lectures by
experienced editors and writers, although fruitful of much inspiration
and general information, seldom give the student sufficiently specific
and detailed directions to guide him in his daily work. What he needs
is a handbook containing typical examples of all of the kinds of
newspaper work that he is likely to be called upon to do during the
first years of his newspaper experience. These examples should be
carefully selected from well-edited newspapers and should be analyzed
to show the fundamental principles that underlie their construction.
With such a book illustrative of current practices in newspaper
making, he can study more intelligently the newspapers themselves and
can assimilate more completely the advice and information given by
newspaper men in active service. Furthermore, such a book, by giving
specific suggestions with examples of their application, serves as a
guide to aid the student in overcoming his difficulties as he does his
work from day to day. It is to furnish a handbook and guide of this
kind that the present text-book has been prepared.
This book is adapted both for use in college classes in journalism and
for study by persons interested in journalism who are not attending
college. The needs of these two groups are not essentially different.
Both desire to know the basic principles of newspaper writing and
editing and to get the necessary training in the application of these
fundamental principles to their own work. In each chapter, accordingly,
explanation and exemplification are supplemented by material for
practice work.
To formulate a large number of rules for the writing of news stories,
the editing of copy, the writing of headlines, and other kinds of
newspaper work, is plainly impossible, even if it were desirable.
Methods of newspaper making during the last fifty years have undergone
so constant and rapid a readjustment to new conditions in the
transmission of news, in mechanical production, and in the sources
of income, that only a few traditions have remained unchanged. The
tireless effort to secure novelty and variety in present-day journalism
prevents the news story or the headline from becoming absolutely fixed
in form or style. Instead of attempting to formulate dogmatic rules
and directions, the author has undertaken to analyze current methods
of newspaper work with the purpose of showing the reasons for them
and the causes which have produced them. The examples selected to
illustrate these methods have been taken from newspapers in all parts
of the country and are intended to represent the general practices now
prevailing. For obvious reasons names and addresses in most of these
stories have been changed. To retain the newspaper form as far as
possible, the examples have been printed between rules in column width.
Inasmuch as this book is intended to prepare the student for the
kind of work which he is likely to do during the first years of
his newspaper experience, it does not consider editorial writing,
book-reviewing, or musical and dramatic criticism. To discuss these
subjects adequately would require more space than a handbook on
reporting and editing permits.
It is assumed throughout this book that the student of journalism is
familiar with the elementary principles of grammar and rhetoric, and
has had sufficient training in composition to be able to express ideas
in simple, correct English. Faults in such rudimentary matters as
grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are not considered
at all. No attention is given to diction or questions of good usage.
All these matters are fully treated in numerous books on English
composition.
In the discussion of the news story, an emphasis has been given to
the “lead” that may seem disproportionate. This has been done in
the belief that the rapidity with which newspapers are generally
read makes the beginning the most important part of the story. The
average reader gleans the significant facts of each piece of news
from the headlines and the first paragraphs. He expects in the “lead”
the “feature” as well as the gist of the news. To the student this
problem of massing skillfully, in a compact and interesting form, the
substance of his material, is a new one, and he must be shown all
the varied possibilities of this treatment. The author has not been
unmindful of the fact that efforts are being made to break away from
the “gist-of-the-news” beginning, and has given examples of other
forms. For stories in which entertainment rather than information is
the purpose, beginnings that do not summarize may undoubtedly be used
to advantage. In such stories the student must be shown how to arouse
the reader’s interest and curiosity in the first sentences so that he
will read further.
The function of the newspaper has been discussed at some length
in order to call the student’s attention to the importance of the
newspaper as an influence in a democratic government and to point out
the significance of his own work in relation to society. An effort has
been made to analyze the problems of newspaper making in order to show
the fundamental issues involved. The purpose has been, not to settle
these questions dogmatically, but to stimulate the student to think for
himself.
“Newspaper English” has so long been regarded by many teachers of
English as a term of reproach, and instruction in journalistic writing
has been so recently introduced into the college curriculum, that some
English instructors still question the value of systematic training
of students in newspaper writing as a part of the teaching of English
composition. Nevertheless, every teacher of English in the secondary
schools and colleges recognizes the fact that one of the most serious
weaknesses of present-day training in composition is the lack of a
definite aim for the student in his writing, and a corresponding lack
of interest on his part in doing work that has no real purpose. To
report actual events for publication, either in a local newspaper or
in a school paper, gives the student both material and purpose, and to
that extent increases his interest and his desire to write well. If
the application of the principles of English composition to newspaper
writing and editing can be demonstrated to the student, as the author
has attempted to do in this book, the student can undoubtedly be given
valuable practice in these principles through systematic training in
newspaper work.
“Every professor of journalism must write a textbook on journalism in
order to justify his claim to his title,” was the facetious remark made
at the first Conference of Teachers of Journalism. Until journalism
has been taught in colleges and universities long enough to have
developed generally accepted methods of instruction, the text-book
produced by every teacher of the subject must be regarded, not as a
demonstration of his claims to the title, but as a contribution to the
development of methods of teaching based on his own experience. If this
book is of assistance to those who aspire to become newspaper workers
or to those who are undertaking to train students of journalism, it
will have accomplished its purpose.
The author is indebted to the publishers of _Collier’s Weekly_, of the
_American Magazine_, and of the _Independent_ for permission to reprint
material from these magazines. Acknowledgment is also due to the many
newspapers throughout the country from which examples have been taken
and to which due credit has been given whenever the “stories” thus
reproduced have been important or distinctive in character.
The facsimile newspaper headings reproduced in this book represent
styles of type used in newspaper offices throughout the country. These
specimens are included by courtesy of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company
of New York.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN,
MADISON, March 3, 1913.
CONTENTS
I. HOW A NEWSPAPER IS MADE 1
II. NEWS AND NEWS VALUES 17
III. GETTING THE NEWS 29
IV. STRUCTURE AND STYLE IN NEWS STORIES 60
V. NEWS STORIES OF UNEXPECTED OCCURRENCES 101
VI. SPEECHES, INTERVIEWS, AND TRIALS 126
VII. SPECIAL KINDS OF NEWS 161
VIII. FOLLOW UP AND REWRITE STORIES 194
IX. FEATURE STORIES 211
X. EDITING COPY 255
XI. THE WRITING OF HEADLINES 271
XII. PROOF-READING 315
XIII. MAKING UP THE PAPER 322
XIV. THE FUNCTION OF THE NEWSPAPER 331
INDEX 361
NEWSPAPER WRITING
AND EDITING
CHAPTER I
HOW A NEWSPAPER IS MADE
=Newspaper Production.= To furnish for a cent or two a fairly complete
record of important events that take place in any corner of the
world, editorial comment, market quotations, reviews of new books,
critiques of plays and concerts, fashion hints, cooking recipes,
cartoons, and illustrations, as well as advertisements of all kinds,
would seem a stupendous, not to say impossible, task if it were not
an everyday phenomenon. A single copy of a daily newspaper in a large
city contains, exclusive of advertising, from 60,000 to 80,000 words,
or as many as does the average novel. These metropolitan papers print
from 100,000 to 900,000 copies each day, numbers far in excess of
the editions of most successful novels. While it takes the novelist
months to produce his work, and his publishers months to print it,
the newspaper is made and printed in from one to ten editions within
twenty-four hours.
The successful achievement of such an undertaking, day by day, requires
extensive equipment and effective organization. The rapid production of
a large edition demands many expensive machines to transform written
matter quickly into type, and huge presses to print the papers at the
highest speed. Furthermore, it makes necessary a large staff to gather
and prepare news and other reading matter, a large force to put this
material into type, to print it, and to distribute the papers, besides
managers and clerks to carry on the many business transactions involved
in so big an enterprise.
=Newspaper Organization.= Although in its main divisions the
organization of newspaper publishing is essentially the same, the
size of a paper determines to a considerable extent the number of
employees and the degree of division of labor among them, as well as
the character and the extent of the equipment. On large papers where
many men are employed and many editions are printed daily, there needs
must be considerable specialization in editing and reporting; while on
small papers the size of the staff requires that each man perform a
variety of tasks. Sometimes conditions of ownership or control, and on
older papers office traditions, modify the usual duties and authority
of different members of the staff.
No one form of organization that can be described in detail, therefore,
will apply to all newspaper offices even when they are of the same
relative size, but a composite type of organization for large
newspapers may be explained to show the division of work.
Newspaper publishing consists of three distinct parts with three
entirely different classes of workers: (1) the business management, (2)
the mechanical force, (3) the editorial staff.
=The Business Management.= The business organization, as its name
implies, has charge of the commercial side of newspaper publishing.
From the financial point of view the purpose of the newspaper is to
make enough money to maintain the paper and to pay dividends to the
stockholders. The object of the business department is to sell as much
advertising space and as many copies of each issue as it possibly
can; and, on the other hand, to pay out for wages and expenses only
so much as is necessary to keep the paper up to a standard that will
insure a good circulation and enough advertising. In short, a newspaper
company, regarded purely in the light of a business enterprise, is not
essentially different from any manufacturing company that produces and
sells a commodity.
The business department is organized with a business manager at its
head, who has complete control of the finances of the paper, subject,
of course, to the owner or board of directors of the company. Under
him are: (1) the circulation manager, (2) the advertising manager, (3)
the cashier. The circulation manager directs the work of subscription
canvassers, the drivers and the assistants on the paper’s distributing
wagons, the mailing clerks and helpers, and a force of office clerks
and bookkeepers. In the advertising department are the advertising
solicitors and the office clerks and bookkeepers. The cashier has
assistants and a bookkeeper to aid him. The business office of the
newspaper is frequently referred to as the “counting room.”
=The Mechanical Force.= The mechanical side of newspaper making is
divided into three relatively distinct departments: (1) the composing
room, where, under the direction of a foreman and a copy-cutter, the
type is set up by compositors or is cast in linotype or monotype
machines by operators, and where the type is arranged by make-up men
in pages as it is to appear in print; (2) the stereotyping room, where
these pages of type are used to make molds into which lead plates are
cast by stereotypers under the direction of the foreman of the room;
(3) the press-room, where the papers are printed, in charge of a
superintendent with pressmen and machinists as his assistants. Attached
to the composing room is the proof-reading department with a head
proof-reader, several assistant readers, and as many copy-holders who
read aloud the copy for the proof which is to be corrected.
=The Editorial Staff.= The writing and editing of a newspaper, with
which this book is particularly concerned, is divided into two distinct
parts: (1) the gathering, the writing, and the editing of the news;
and (2) the interpreting of the news. The two branches are different
in the kind of work involved, and are relatively independent in the
organization of the office. To present clear, concise, accurate,
timely, and interesting reports, or “stories” as they are called, of
everything that is going on in the world of sufficient importance to
be of interest to any considerable number of readers, is the aim of
the news department. The more quickly, the more attractively, the more
completely the news can be presented, the greater is considered the
success of the newspaper from the point of view of the news staff.
The editorials of a newspaper attempt to interpret and to explain the
news, or to make the news the basis of argument upon issues growing
out of questions of the day. The attitude taken by a newspaper on the
questions at issue is determined by what is known as its “editorial
policy.”
The editor-in-chief, under whom are one or more editorial writers, has
charge of the editorial columns and determines the editorial policy,
subject to whatever control of this policy the owner or directors
desire to exercise. The editorial writers and the editor-in-chief
confer daily to consider the attitude that the paper shall take in
its editorials and to divide the work of writing them. Some of the
editorials are written by men in other professions who are not on the
regular staff, and often by such members of the news staff as the
financial editor or the dramatic critic. Most of the editorials,
however, are the work of the editorial writers.
The news staff is in charge of the managing editor, who is usually
responsible directly to the owner or the directors. As aids the
managing editor has the assistant managing editor, and the news editor,
or the night editor, to take charge of “making up” the newspaper The
gathering and writing of local news is in charge of the city editor
and the night city editor, with an assistant city editor. The news of
the state, the nation, and the world, as it comes by mail, telegraph,
and telephone, is under the control of the telegraph editor. The city
editor directs the reporters; the telegraph editor the correspondents.
Particular kinds of news are collected and edited by persons in
especially designated positions, such as the sporting editor, the
society editor, the financial and market editor, the dramatic and
musical editor, the real estate editor, the railroad editor, the marine
editor, the labor editor, all of whom usually work under the direction
of the managing editor. The special magazine sections of the Saturday
or the Sunday issues are in charge of the magazine, or Sunday, editor.
An exchange editor goes over all the newspapers received in exchange
to clip and edit material worth reprinting. Cartoonists, artists, and
photographers supply the materials for newspaper illustrations, or
“cuts,” as they are called. A librarian has charge of the reference
books and newspaper files, as well as of the collection of biographical
sketches and portraits of prominent people known as the “morgue.”
All of the manuscript, or “copy,” is edited and is supplied with
headlines at the copy desk in charge of a head copy-reader with a
number of copy-readers as assistants. “Rewrite men” are often employed
to take the facts of a story from another newspaper and rewrite
them, or to receive material over the telephone from reporters and
correspondents and write it up for publication. Unsatisfactory work of
a reporter may be turned over to a rewrite man to be put in the desired
form, for rewrite men must be able to take the raw material of the news
furnished by others and turn it into a well-written news story.
=Getting News into Print.= The relation of all these departments to
one another is best shown by following through the process by which
a piece of news gets into print. The telegraph editor on a newspaper
in the capital city of the state, for example, gets from an office
telegraph operator, a typewritten dispatch signed by the paper’s
correspondent in a city of a neighboring state to the effect that
the attorney-general has dropped dead in the lobby of a hotel. The
telegraph editor at once notifies the city editor so that he may assign
reporters to get the local phases of the piece of news, or “to cover
the local end of the story,” as the newspaper workers say. One reporter
is sent to interview the members of the late attorney-general’s family;
another is dispatched to the governor’s office for an interview with
the governor on the deceased official; a third is asked to look up the
statute concerning such an unexpected vacancy in the office; a fourth
is assigned to find out the probable successor to the position.
After informing the city editor and the managing editor, the telegraph
editor at once turns over the dispatch to the head copy-reader to have
it edited and to have a headline written. Meanwhile one of the rewrite
men is delegated to get a biographical sketch of the attorney-general
from the office “morgue” and to write an obituary. The artist looks
up the half-tone engraving, or “cut,” of the official in the “morgue”
and selects an appropriate border or “frame” in which to put it. The
editor-in-chief is informed of the attorney-general’s death so that he
may make appropriate editorial comment. Meanwhile the telegraph editor
has sent a telegram to the correspondent who furnished the first news
of the event instructing him to “wire” five hundred words more giving
all the particulars.
When the dispatch has been edited and a headline written by one of
the copy-readers, the latter returns it to the head copy-reader, who
glances over it and sends it in a pneumatic tube to the composing room.
The tube delivers it at the copy-cutter’s desk. The copy-cutter glances
at the sheet with the headline for the story, and then at the two pages
of copy. The headline he sends by the copy distributor to the headline
machine to be set up. The two pages of copy he cuts into three pieces
or “takes” so that the story may be set up on three different linotype
machines. If the copy of the whole story were given to one machine
operator, it would take three times as long to get it into type.
Meanwhile some of the reporters have returned from their assignments.
Each one reports what he has found to the city editor, and is told how
long a story to write, and possibly what to emphasize in the beginning,
or “lead.” As each story is finished it is turned over to the city
editor, who glances over it and passes it on to the head copy-reader.
Thence it goes through the same course as the first dispatch.
After the copy of the dispatch has been set up in type, it is taken to
a small hand press, and several impressions called “galley proofs,” or
“proofs,” are printed, or “pulled,” from the type. One of the proofs,
with the original copy, goes to the proof-room to be compared with the
copy and carefully corrected by the proof-readers. Another proof-sheet
is sent to the managing editor, who is responsible for everything
that goes into the paper; a third proof is delivered to the news
editor who arranges, or “makes up,” the news stories on each page of
the paper before it is printed. After the proof-readers have corrected
the proof, and the editors have made any necessary changes in it, the
proof-sheets are returned to the operators so that they may make the
necessary alterations by resetting whatever is changed. From the type
thus corrected a second set of proofs, called the “revise,” is printed
and these are distributed to the editors as the first were. The type is
then ready to be used in the process of printing the paper.
Half an hour or more before an edition is to be printed, the news
editor gathers the proofs of the news stories that are to be put into
that edition, and goes to the composing room to arrange this news on
the several pages. The importance of the news of the attorney-general’s
death would warrant its being given a prominent place on the first
page. The most prominent position is the right-hand outside column.
If there is no news of greater importance, the news editor directs
the “make-up” men in the composing room to put the type of this story
in the outside column of the first page “form.” The “form” consists
of a “chase,” or steel frame, somewhat larger in inside dimensions
than the page as it appears when printed. Into this “chase,” which
rests upon a smooth iron-top table, the type is arranged between the
brass or lead column rules which make the lines between the columns of
type. The advertisements are placed in the forms under the direction
of the advertising department just as the news matter is put in under
the direction of the news editor, the page and position on the page
usually having been stipulated by the advertiser in making a contract
for a certain “position” for his “ad.” When each page is filled with
type, the whole page is “locked” in the “form” by a series of screws
or wedges (called “quoins”), so that the form may be handled without
letting the type drop out. If the type falls out and gets mixed up, it
is said to be “pied,” and the mixture is called “pi.”
The forms, after being locked, are taken to the stereotyping room where
a paper mold, or matrix, commonly called a “mat,” is made of each page.
These matrices, bent in semicircular form, are placed in a casting box
into which molten lead is poured to make the semicircular lead plates
to be used in printing. In large offices the casting of these plates
is done by placing the matrix in an automatic stereotyping machine,
known as the autoplate, which turns out completed plates in less than
a minute. After the plates have been trimmed and planed on the back to
make them exactly the right thickness, they are ready to be put on the
press.
These semicircular lead plates, which are thus cast in exact
reproduction of the page forms of type, are fastened on the cylinders
of the press. As the cylinders revolve, ink rollers touch the surface
of the plates and ink the projecting letters. The paper from a large
roll, as it passes between the cylinders and the blanket rolls which
press the paper against the inked plates on the cylinders, takes up
the ink and thus has printed on it the impression of the page of type.
Besides printing the pages, the press cuts, folds, and counts the
papers so that the complete newspaper comes from the press ready for
sale or delivery.
As soon as the newspapers are printed, they are turned over to the
circulation department for distribution. Some copies go to the mailing
room to be labeled with little orange-colored address slips and to be
put into the mail sacks, in which they are taken to the post office
or mail trains. Other copies are sold to waiting newsboys, and still
others are taken in the company’s wagon to news stands and carriers all
over the city.
Despite the number and variety of these details in the process of
newspaper making, the news of the death of the attorney-general would
reach the readers in a comparatively short time after the event
occurred. In half an hour from the time the last piece of copy is
written, a complete newspaper containing it is printed and ready for
distribution.
=Speed of Production.= The invention and the perfection of various
mechanical devices used in newspaper making have made possible this
great speed. In the front rank of ingenious pieces of machinery that
have added greatly to rapidity in newspaper publishing stands the
linotype. This machine, which casts solid lines of type, or “slugs”
as they are called, has increased four-fold the speed of production
and has made possible much larger editions. The monotype, which casts
each type separately, has also proved a valuable addition to the means
of turning “copy” into type quickly. For the casting of semicircular
stereotype plates the autoplate machine is an important time-saving
device. The time required for “running off” an edition is now reduced
from two- to five-fold by making duplicate sets of these stereotype
plates and by putting them on from two to five large presses so that
these presses print the same edition simultaneously.
Improvements in newspaper-printing machinery have resulted in huge
presses that take paper from large rolls and turn out completed
newspapers printed in one or two colors, cut, folded, and counted,
ready for distribution. They can be adjusted to print papers from four
to forty-eight pages in size, and can produce twelve-page papers at
the rate of 144,000 copies an hour. Magazine sections and “comics” are
printed in four colors, usually yellow, red, blue, and black, on large
presses under conditions practically the same as those just described.
In order to insert the latest news without taking the time necessary
to make up new forms, prepare new matrices, and cast new stereotype
plates, a device called the “fudge” is employed. After the first page
form of a late edition has been used to make a matrix, about six inches
of type is taken out from two columns in the lower left hand corner
or the upper right hand corner of the page, and a new matrix and a
stereotype plate are made in which this corner is a blank. This new
plate with the blank space is then put on the press in place of the
regular first page plate. As fast as late news is received, it is set
up on linotype lines, or “slugs,” and these lines are clamped on a
small cylinder in the press. When the paper runs through the press,
these linotype lines on the cylinder are printed, often in red ink, in
the space on the front page left unprinted by the blank in the plate.
To save more time with this device, a telegraph wire is run to the
press room and a linotype machine is installed beside it, so that the
latest news can be cast on linotype “slugs” and put on the “fudge”
cylinder as fast as the reports are received by telegraph. Results of
baseball games, races, and other sporting events can be printed to
advantage by means of the “fudge.”
Recently a mailing machine has been introduced that folds, wraps, and
addresses each copy separately as fast as papers are fed into it.
In no other process of manufacture that is as complicated as newspaper
making, it is safe to say, has equal speed of production been attained.
=Handling a Big Story.= The scene in a metropolitan newspaper office
following the receipt of the first news of the “Titanic” disaster,
as graphically portrayed by an editor of a New York morning paper,
illustrates the conditions under which important news, received late,
is hurried into print.[1] The account in part is as follows:
At 1:20 a.m. Monday, April 15, [1912], the cable editor opened
an envelope of the Associated Press that had stamped on its face
“Bulletin.” This is what he read:
Cape Race, N. F., Sunday night, April 14.—At 10:25 o’clock
tonight the White Star Line steamship “Titanic” called “C. Q.
D.” to the Marconi station here, and reported having struck
an iceberg. The steamer said that immediate assistance was
required.
The cable editor looked at his watch. It was 1:20 and lacked just
five minutes of the hour when the mail edition goes to press.
“Boy!” he called sharply.
An office boy was at his side in a moment.
“Send this upstairs; tell them the head is to come; double column,
and tell the night editor to rip open two columns on the first page
for a one-stick dispatch of the ‘Titanic’ striking an iceberg and
sinking.”
Every one in the office was astir in a moment and came over to see
the cable editor write on a sheet of copy paper the following head
[which he indicated was to be set up in this form]:
TITANIC SINKING
IN MID-OCEAN; HIT
GREAT ICEBERG
“Boy!” he called again; but it was not necessary—a boy in a newspaper
office knows news the first time he sees it.
“Tell them that’s the head for the ‘Titanic.’”
Then he wrote briefly this telegraphic dispatch, and as he did so he
said to another office boy at his side: “Tell the operator to shut
off that story he is taking and get me a clear wire to Montreal.”
This is what he wrote to the Montreal correspondent, probably at work
at his desk in a Montreal newspaper office at that hour:
Cape Race says White Star Liner “Titanic” struck iceberg, is
sinking and wants immediate assistance. Rush every line you can
get. We will hold open for you until 3:30.
“Give that to the operator and find out if we caught the mail on that
‘Titanic’ dispatch,” he said quickly to the boy.
In a moment the boy returned.
“O.K. on both,” he said.
The city editor, who had just put on his coat previous to going away
for the night, took it off. The night city editor, at the head of the
copy-desk, where all the local copy (as a reporter’s story is called)
is read, and the telegraph editor stood together, joined later by
the night editor, for the mail edition had left the composing room
for the stereotypers and then to the pressroom and from thence to be
scattered wherever on the globe newspapers find readers.
The “Titanic” staff was immediately organized, for at that hour most
of the staff were still at work. The city editor took the helm.
“Get the papers for April 11—all of them,” he said to the head office
boy, “and then send word to the art department to quit everything to
make three cuts, which I shall send right down.”
Then to the night city editor: “Get up a story of the vessel itself;
some of the stuff they sent us the other day that we did not use,
and I ordered it put in the envelope. Play up the mishap at the
start. Get up a passenger list story and an obituary of Smith, her
commander.”
There was no mention of Smith in the dispatch, but city editors
retain such things in their heads for immediate use, and this
probably explains in a measure why they hold down their job; also
having, it might be added, executive judgment, which is sometimes
right.
“Assign somebody to the White Star Line and see what they’ve got.”
The night city editor went back to the circular table where the seven
or eight men who read reporters’ copy were gathered.
“Get up as much as you can of the passenger list of the ‘Titanic.’
She is sinking off Newfoundland,” he said briefly to one.
And to another: “Write me a story of the ‘Titanic,’ the new White
Star liner, on her maiden trip, telling of her mishap with the ‘New
York’ at the start.”
And to another: “Write me a story of Captain E. J. Smith.”
Then to a reporter sitting idly about: “Get your hat and coat quick;
go down to the White Star Line office and telephone all you can about
the ‘Titanic’ sinking off Newfoundland.”
Then to another reporter: “Get the White Star Line on the phone and
find out what they’ve got of the sinking of the ‘Titanic.’ Find out
who is the executive head in New York; his address and telephone
number.”
And in another part of the room the city editor was saying to the
office boy: “Get me all the ‘Titanic’ pictures you have and a photo
or cut of Captain E. J. Smith.”
Two boys instantly went to work, for the photos of men are kept
separate from the photographs of inanimate things. The city editor
selected three:
“Tell the art department to make a three-column cut of the ‘Titanic,’
a two-column of the interior, and a two-column of Smith.”
In the mean time the Associated Press bulletins came in briefly.
Paragraph by paragraph the cable editor was sending the story to the
composing room. What was going on upstairs every one knew. They were
sidetracking everything else, and the copy-cutter in the composing
room was sending out the story in “takes,” as they are called, of
a single paragraph to each compositor. His blue pencil marked each
individual piece of copy with a letter and number, so that when the
dozen or so men setting up the story had their work finished, the
story might be put together consecutively.
“Tell the operator,” said the cable editor again to the office boy,
“to duplicate that dispatch I gave him to our Halifax man. Get his
name out of the correspondents’ book.”
“Who wrote that story of the ‘“Carmania” in the Icefield’?” said the
night city editor to the copy-reader who “handled” the homecoming of
the “Carmania,” which arrived Sunday night and the story of which was
already in the mail edition of the paper before him. The copy-reader
told him. He called the reporter to his desk.
“Take that story,” said the night city editor, “and give us a column
on it. Don’t rewrite the story; add paragraphs here and there to
show the vast extent of the icefield. Make it straight copy, so that
nothing in that story will have to be reset. You have just thirty
minutes to catch the edition. Write it in twenty.”
“Get the passenger lists of the ‘Olympic’ and the ‘Baltic,’” was the
assignment given to another reporter, all alert waiting for their
names to be called, every man awake at the switch.
In the mean time, the story from the Montreal man was being ticked
off; on another wire Halifax was coming to life.
“Men,” said the city editor, “we have just five minutes left to make
the city [edition]. Jam it down tight.”
Already the three cuts had been made, the telegraph editor was
handling the Montreal story, his assistant the Halifax end, and the
cable editor was still editing the Associated Press bulletins and
writing a new head to tell the rest of the story that the additional
details brought. The White Star Line man had a list of names of
passengers of the “Titanic” and found that they numbered 1300, and
that she carried a crew of 860.
In the mean time proofs of all the “Titanic” matter that had been
set were coming to the desk of the managing editor, in charge over
all, but giving special attention to the editorial matter. All his
suggestions went through the city editor, and on down the line, but
he himself went from desk to desk overlooking the work.
“Time’s up,” said the city editor; but before he finished, the cable
editor cried to the boy: “Let the two-column head stand and tell them
to add this head:”
At 12:27 this Morning Blurred Signals by Wireless Told of Women
Being Put off in Lifeboats—Three Lines Rushing to Aid of 1300
Imperiled Passengers and Crew of 860 Men.
“Did we catch it?” asked the cable editor of the boy standing at the
composing-room tube.
“We did,” he said triumphantly.
“One big pull for the last [edition], men,” said the city editor. “We
are going in at 3:20. Let’s beat the town with a complete paper.”
The enthusiasm was catching fire. Throughout the office it was a
bedlam of noise—clicking typewriters, clicking telegraph instruments,
and telephone bells ringing added to the whistle of the tubes that
lead from the city room to the composing room, the pressroom, the
stereotype room and the business office, the latter, happily, not in
use, but throughout the office men worked; nobody shouted, no one
lost his head; men were flushed, but the cool, calm, deliberate way
in which the managing editor smoked his cigar helped much to relieve
the tension.
“Three-fifteen, men,” said the city editor, admonishingly; “every
line must be up by 3:20. Five minutes more.”
The city editor walked rapidly from desk to desk.
“All up,” said the night city editor, “and three minutes to the good.”
At the big table stood the city editor, cable editor, night city
editor, and managing editor. They were looking over the completed
headline that should tell the story to the world.
“That will hold ’em, I guess,” said the city editor, and the head
went upstairs.
The men waited about and talked and smoked. Bulletins came in, but
with no important details. Going to press at 3:20 meant a wide
circulation. At 4:30 the Associated Press sent “Good-night,” but at
that hour the presses had been running uninterruptedly for almost an
hour.
SUGGESTIONS
1. Find out all that you can about the organization of the paper on
which you are employed.
2. Know the names, at least, of the heads of all the departments.
3. Learn as much as possible about advertising and subscription rates
and methods.
4. Familiarize yourself with the details of all the mechanical
processes connected with newspaper making.
5. Interest yourself in the welfare of the paper as if it were your own
property.