part; just like a news story, it must attract attention with its first
line. In the same way, a good beginning is something more than half
done. But here the similarity between the two ends. The news story,
after the lead is written, may slump in technique so that the end is
almost devoid of interest; the human interest story, on the other hand,
must keep up its standard of excellence to the very last sentence and
the last line must have as much snap as the first. It is never in danger
of losing its last paragraph and so it may be more rounded and complete;
it must follow a definite plan to the very end and then stop. In this it
is like the short story, although it seldom has a plot. There are no
rules to help us in writing any part of the human interest story. Each
attempt has a different purpose and must be done in a different way. Yet
the reporter must know before he begins just exactly how he is going to
work out the whole story. He must plan it as carefully as a short
story. A few minutes of careful thought before he begins to write are
better than much reworking and alteration after the thing is done. This
applies to all newspaper writing.
Much of the effectiveness of the human interest story depends upon the
reporter's style. When we try to write human interest stories we are no
longer interested in facts, as much as in words. Our readers are not
following us to be informed, but to be entertained. And we can please
them only by our style and the fineness of our perception. Although we
have been told to write news stories in the common every-day words of
conversation, we are not so limited in the human interest story. The
elegance of our style depends very largely upon the size of our
vocabulary, and elegance is not out of place in this kind of story.
Although we have been told to use dialogue sparingly in news stories,
our human interest story may be composed entirely of dialogue. In fact,
we are hampered by no restrictions except the restrictions of English
grammar and literary composition. Although we have sought simplicity of
expression before, we may now strive for subtlety and for effect; we may
write suggestively and even obscurely. We are dealing with the only part
of the newspaper that makes any effort toward literary excellence and
only our originality and cleverness can guide us.
It is hardly necessary to repeat that one cannot write human interest
stories in a cynical tone. They are a reaction against cynicism. They
require one to feel keenly, as a human being, and to write
sympathetically, as a human being. The reporter must see behind the
facts and get the personal side of the matter--and feel it. Then he must
tell the story just as he sees and feels it. Absolute truthfulness in
the telling is as necessary as keen perception in the seeing. Humor must
be sought through the simple, truthful presentation of an incongruous or
humorous idea or situation; pathos must be sought by the truthful
presentation of a pathetic picture. Just as soon as the reporter tries
to be funny or to be pathetic he fails, for the reader is not looking to
the reporter for fun or pathos--but to the story that the reporter is
telling. That is, the story must be written objectively; the writer must
forget himself in his attempt to impress the story upon his reader's
mind. If the story itself is fundamentally humorous or sad and the story
is clearly and truthfully told with all the details that make it
humorous or sad, it cannot help being effective.
The best way to learn how to write human interest stories is to study
human interest stories. Most papers print them nowadays--they can easily
be distinguished by their lack of news value, and of a lead--and the
finest example is just as likely to crop out in a little weekly as in a
metropolitan daily.
=4. The Animal Story.=--The examples printed earlier in this chapter are
specimens of the truest type of human interest story because they deal
with human beings. They derive their joy or sorrow from things that
happen to men and women. But all the sketches that are classed as human
interest stories are not so carefully confined to the limits of the
title. From the original human interest story the type has grown until
it includes many other things--almost any piece of copy that has no
intrinsic news value. Every possible subject that may suit itself to a
pathetic or humorous treatment and thus be interesting, although it has
no news value, is roughly classed as a human interest story.
One of these outgrowths of the true human interest sketch is the animal
story. In the large cities, the "zoo" and the parks have become a
fruitful source of "news." Anything interesting that may happen to the
monkeys, or the elephant, the sparrows or the squirrels in the parks,
horses or dogs in the street, is used as the excuse for a human interest
story. Sometimes the purpose is pathos and sometimes it is humor, but,
whatever it may be, if it is clever and interesting it gets its place in
the paper, a place entirely out of proportion to its true news value.
The results sometimes verge very close upon nature faking, but after all
they are only the result of the "up-lift" idea of looking at all life in
a more sympathetic way. Several of the beginnings quoted earlier in this
chapter belong to animal stories and the following is a complete one:
| Smithy Kain was only a mongrel, |
|horsemen will say, but in his equine |
|heart there coursed the blood of |
|thoroughbreds. |
| |
| Smithy Kain was killed yesterday |
|afternoon, shot through the head, while |
|thousands of Wisconsin fair patrons looked |
|on in shuddering sympathy. |
| |
| It was a tragedy of the track. |
| |
| Owners, trainers and drivers always are |
|quick to declare that no greater courage |
|is known than that possessed and |
|demonstrated by race horses in hard-fought |
|battles on the turf, and the truth of this |
|was never more strikingly brought home |
|than in the death of Smithy Kain |
|yesterday. |
| |
| With a left hind foot snapped at the |
|fetlock, Smithy Kain raced around the |
|track, his valiant spirit and unfaltering |
|gameness keeping him up until he had |
|completed the course in unwavering pursuit |
|of the flying horses in front. Every jump |
|meant intense agony, but he would not |
|quit. Not until near the finish did his |
|strength give out, and not until then was |
|the pitiable truth discovered. Men used to |
|exhibitions of gameness in tests that try |
|the soul looked on in mute admiration as |
|Smithy Kain shivered and stumbled from the |
|pain that rapidly sapped his life. Women |
|cried openly. |
| |
| Two shots from the pistol of a park |
|policeman ended the life and sufferings of |
|the horse that was only a mongrel, but |
|who, in his equine way, was a thoroughbred |
|of thoroughbreds. |
| |
| Smithy Kain gave to his master the best |
|that his animal mind and soul possessed. |
|No better memorial can be written even of |
|man himself. |
=5. The Special Feature Story.=--One step beyond the animal story is the
special feature story. This kind of story is classed with the human
interest story because it has no news value and because its only purpose
is to entertain or to inform in a general way; and yet it rarely
contains any human interest. There is no space in this book for a
complete discussion of the special feature story--an entire volume might
be devoted to the subject--but this form of story is often seen in the
news columns of the daily papers and deserves a mention here. Ordinarily
the special feature story is not written by reporters, although there is
no reason why reporters should not use in this way many of the facts
that come to them. The story usually comes from outside the newspaper
office, from a contributor, from a syndicate, or from some other daily,
weekly, or monthly publication; however a word or two here may suggest
to the reporter the possibility of adding to his usefulness by writing
such stories for his paper.
The special feature story may be almost anything. The name is used to
designate timely magazine articles, timely write-ups for the Sunday
edition, and timely squibs for the columns of the daily papers. The last
use is the one that interests us and it interests us because it is very
closely related to the human interest story. The editors usually call it
a feature story because it is worth printing in spite of the fact that
it has no news value. In this and in its timeliness it is like the human
interest story. But it is not written for humor or pathos; its purpose
is to entertain the reader. Its method is largely expository and its
style may be anything; it may explain or it may simply comment in a
witty way. The utilizing of otherwise useless by-products of the news is
its purpose--in this it is very much like the animal story.
Subjects for feature stories may come from anywhere and may be almost
anything. A very common kind of feature story is the weather story that
many newspapers print every day. The weather is taken as the excuse for
two or three stickfuls of print which explain and comment upon weather
conditions, past, present and future. Growing out of this, there is the
season story which deals with any subject that the season may suggest:
the closing of Coney Island, the spring styles in men's hats, the first
fur overcoat, Commencement presents, Easter eggs--anything in season.
Further removed from the human interest story is the timely write-up
which has no other purpose than to explain, in a more or less serious or
sensible way, any interesting subject that comes to hand. The story
purports not only to entertain but to inform as well. It has no news
value and yet it is usually timely. Here are a few subjects selected at
random from the daily papers: "He'll pay no tax on cake," explaining in
a humorous way the customs methods that held up the importation of an
Italian Christmas cake; "Clearing House for Brains," a description of
the new employment bureau of the Princeton Club of New York; "Ideal man
picked by the Barnard girl," a humorous resumé of some Barnard College
class statistics; "Winning a Varsity Letter," telling what a varsity
letter stands for, how it is won, and what the customs of the various
colleges in regard to letters are; "Jerry Moore raises a record corn
crop," telling how a fifteen-year-old boy won prizes with a little patch
of corn.
These are just a few suggestions to open up to the reporter the vast
field for special feature articles. To be sure, many of them are
submitted by outsiders, but there is no reason why a reporter should not
write these stories as well as human interest stories for his paper,
since he is in the best position to get the material. Whenever a special
feature story becomes too large for the daily edition there is always a
possibility of selling it to the Sunday section or to a monthly
magazine. The writing of special feature stories is directly in line
with the reporter's work, because the ordinary method of gathering facts
for a feature article and arranging them in an interesting, newsy way
follows closely the method by which a reporter covers and writes a news
story. Hence almost without exception the most successful magazine
feature writers are, or have been, newspaper reporters.
XVI
DRAMATIC REPORTING
Dramatic reporting is one of the most misused of the newspaper
reporter's activities. To many reporters, as well as to their editors,
it is just an easy way of getting free admission to the theater in
return for a half column of copy. Hence it is treated in an unjustly
trivial way; the reports of theatrical productions are printed most
often as space fillers or as a small advertisement in return for free
tickets. But after all the work is an important one and should be done
only by skillful and expert hands. Dramatic reporting is included in
this book, not because it is thought possible to give the subject an
adequate treatment, but because theatrical reporting is a branch of the
newspaper trade that may fall to the hands of the youngest reporter. In
mere justice to the stage the reporter who writes up a play should know
something about the real significance of what he is doing. It is much
easier to tell the beginner what not to do than to tell him exactly
what to do. The faults in dramatic reporting are far more evident than
the virtues; and yet there are some positive things that may be said on
the subject.
The first important question in the whole matter is "Who does dramatic
reporting?" One would like to answer, "Skilled critics of broad
knowledge and experience." But unfortunately almost anybody does it--any
one about the office who is willing to give up his evening to go to the
theater. To be sure, many metropolitan papers employ skilled critics to
write their dramatic copy and run the theatrical news over the critic's
name. Some editors of smaller papers have the decency to do the work
themselves. But in most cases the work is given to an ordinary
reporter--and not infrequently to the greenest reporter on the staff.
Worse than that, the work is seldom given to the same reporter
continuously, but is passed around among all the members of the staff.
Even a green cub may learn by experience how to report plays, but if the
work falls to him only once a month his training is very meager. It
would seem in these days of much discussion of the theater that editors
would realize the power which they have over the stage through their
favorable or unfavorable criticism. But they do not, perhaps because
they know little about the stage, and the appeal must be made to their
reporters. Every reporter, except upon the largest papers, has the
opportunity sooner or later to give his opinion on a play. In
anticipation of that opportunity these few words of advice are offered.
The first requisite in dramatic criticism is a background of knowledge
of the drama and the stage. To children, and to some grown people, too,
the stage is a little dream world of absolute realities. Their
imaginations turn the picture that is placed before them into real,
throbbing life. They do not see the unreality of the art, the suggestive
effects, the flimsy delusions; to them the play is real life, the stage
is a real drawing room or a real wood, and they cannot conceive of the
actors existing outside their parts. But the critic must look deeper; he
must understand the machinery that produces the effects and he must
weigh the success of the effects. He must get behind the play and see
the actors outside the cast and the stage without its scenery; the
dramatic art must be to him a highly technical profession. For this
reason, he must know something about dramatic technique; he must have
some background of knowledge. He must study the theater from every point
of view, from an orchestra seat, from behind the scenes, from a peekhole
in the playwright's study, and from the pages of stage history. All the
tricks and effects must be evident to him. The only thing that will
teach him this is constant, intelligent theater-going. He must be
familiar with all of the plays of the season and with all of the
prominent plays of all seasons. A child cannot criticize the first play
that he sees because he has nothing with which to compare it. In the
same way a reporter cannot justly judge any kind of play until he has
seen another of the same kind with which to compare it. Hence he must
know many plays and must know something about the history of the
theater. Dramatic criticism is relative and the critic must have a basis
for his comparison.
This background of knowledge may seem a difficult thing to acquire. It
is; and it can best be acquired by watching many plays with an eye for
the technique of the art. The critic may judge a play from its effect
upon him, but his judgment will be superficial. He must try to see what
the playwright is trying to do, how well he succeeds, what tricks he
employs. He must judge the work of the stage carpenter and of the
costumer. He must try to realize what problem the leading lady has to
face and how well she solves it. The same carefulness of judgment must
be given to each member of the cast. Only when the critic is able to see
past the footlights and to understand the technique of the art, can he
judge intelligently. And as his judgment can be at best only relative,
he must have a background of many plays and much stage knowledge upon
which to base his estimate of any one production.
The ideal criticism, based upon this background of knowledge, would be
absolutely fair and unprejudiced. But unfortunately this ideal cannot
always be followed. Much dramatic criticism is colored by the policy of
the paper that prints it. Very few critics are so fortunate as to be
able to say exactly what they think about a play; they must say what the
editor wants them to say. Some theatrical copy, especially write-ups of
vaudeville shows, is paid for and must contain nothing but praise.
Sometimes it is necessary to praise the poorest production simply
because the paper is receiving so much a column for the praise. In many
other cases, when the copy is not paid for, the editor often considers
it only fair to give the production a little puff in return for the free
press tickets. And so a large share of any reporter's dramatic criticism
is reduced to selecting things that he can praise. Yet, one cannot
praise in a way that is too evident; he cannot simply say "The play was
good; the staging was good; the acting was good; in fact, everything was
good." He must praise more cleverly and give his copy the appearance of
honest criticism. Perhaps the principle is wrong, but nevertheless it
exists and happy is the dramatic critic whose paper allows him to say
exactly what he thinks. However, whether one may say what he thinks or
must say what his editor wants him to say, he must have as his
background a thorough knowledge of the stage upon which he may base a
comparison or a contrast and with which he may make intelligent
statements. The following illustrates what may be done with a paid
report of a mediocre vaudeville show in which every act must be
praised--the report was written on Monday of a week's run and is
intended to induce people to see the show:
| This week's bill at ---- Vaudeville |
|Theatre is dashed onto the boards by a |
|very exciting act, "The Flying Martins," |
|whose thrilling tricks put the audience |
|in a proper state of mind for the |
|sparkling and laughable program that |
|follows--a state of mind that keeps its |
|high pitch without a break or let-down to |
|the very end of Dr. Herman's |
|side-splitting electrical pranks. This |
|man, who has truly "tamed electricity," |
|does many remarkable things with his big |
|coils and high voltage currents and plays |
|many extremely funny tricks upon his row |
|of "unsuspecting-handsome" young |
|volunteers. |
| |
| The musical little playlet, "The Barn |
|Dance," is very jokingly carried off by |
|its Jack-of-all-Trades, "Zeke," the |
|constable, and its pretty little ensemble |
|song, "I'll Build a Nest for You." Many a |
|young husband can get pointers on "home |
|rule" from "Baseballitis;" it is a mighty |
|good presentation of the "My Hero" theme |
|in actual life. Hilda Hawthorne gives us |
|some high-class ventriloquism with a good |
|puppet song that is truly wonderful. |
|There's a lot of good music, very good |
|music in the sketch executed by "The |
|Three Vagrants," as well as a lot of fun; |
|one can hardly realize what an amount of |
|melody an old accordion contains. Audrey |
|Pringle and George Whiting have a hit |
|that is sparkling with quick changes from |
|Irish love songs to bull frog croaking |
|with Italian variations. |
For the purpose of a more complete study of the subject, however, we
shall consider only dramatic criticism that is not restricted by
editorial dictum or by the requirements of paid-space. That is, we shall
imagine that we can praise or condemn or say anything we please
concerning the dramatic production which we are to report. When we look
at the subject in this way there are some positive things that may be
said about theatrical reporting, but there are many more negative rules,
that may be reduced to mere "Don'ts." The same principles hold good in
dramatic criticism that is hampered by policy, but to a less degree.
In the first place, the one thing that a dramatic reporter must have
when he begins to write his copy after the performance is some positive
idea about the play, some definite criticism, upon which to base his
whole report. It is impossible to write a coherent report from chance
jottings and to confine the report to saying "This was good; that was
bad, the other was mediocre." The critic must have a positive central
idea upon which to hang his criticism. This central idea plays the same
part in his report as the feature in a news story--it is the feature of
his report which he brings into the first sentence, to which he attaches
every item, and with which he ends his report. To secure this idea, the
reporter must watch the play closely with the purpose of crystallizing
his judgment in a single conception, thought, or impression. Sometimes
this impression comes as an inspiration, sometimes it is the result of
hard thought during or after the play. It may be concerned with the
theme of the play, the playwright's work, the lines, the staging, the
effects, the tricks, the acting as a whole, the acting of single
persons, the music, the dancing, the costumes--anything connected with
the production--but the idea must be big enough to carry the entire
report and to be the gist of what the critic has to say about the play.
It must be his complete, concise opinion of the performance.
When, as the critic watches the play, some idea comes to him for his
report he should jot it down. As the play progresses he should develop
this idea and watch for details that carry it out. There is no reason to
be ashamed of taking notes in the theater and the notes will prove very
useful at the office afterward. Perhaps after the play is over the
critic finds that his jottings contain another idea that is of greater
importance than the first; then he may incorporate the second into the
first or discard the first altogether. Even after one has crystallized
his judgment into a concise opinion he must elaborate and illustrate it
and the program of the play is always of value in enabling one to refer
definitely to the individual actors, characters, and other persons, by
name. But, however complete the final judgment and the notes may be, it
is always well to write the report immediately. When one leaves the
theater his mind is teeming with things to say about the play, thousands
of them, but after a night's sleep it is doubtful if a single full-grown
idea will remain and the jottings will be absolutely lifeless and
unsuggestive.
This is the positive instruction that may be given to young dramatic
critics. It is so important and is unknown to so many young theatrical
reporters, that it may be well to sum it up again. A dramatic criticism
must be coherent; it must be unified. It must be the embodiment of a
single idea about the play and every detail in the report must be
attached to that idea. It is not sufficient to state the idea in a
clever way; it must be expanded and elaborated with examples and reasons
and must show careful thought. It is well to outline the report before
it is written and to arrange a logical sequence of thought so that the
result may be well-rounded and coherent.
The following is an example of a dramatic criticism in which this course
is followed. It neither praises nor condemns but it points out gently
wherein the play is strong or weak--and every sentence is attached to
one central idea:
| A POLITE LITTLE PLAY. |
| |
| Never raise your voice, my dear Gerald. |
|That is the only thing left to |
|distinguish us from the lower classes. |
|_Lord Wynlea in "The Best People"._ |