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_VOCATIONAL SERIES_
EDITED BY
E. HERSHEY SNEATH, PH.D., LL.D., YALE UNIVERSITY
THE YOUNG MAN AND JOURNALISM
_VOCATIONAL SERIES_
EDITED BY
E. HERSHEY SNEATH
PH.D., LL.D., YALE UNIVERSITY
THE YOUNG MAN AND THE LAW. SIMEON E. BALDWIN.
THE YOUNG MAN AND TEACHING. HENRY PARKS WRIGHT.
THE YOUNG MAN AND CIVIL ENGINEERING. GEORGE FILLMORE SWAIN.
THE YOUNG MAN AND JOURNALISM. CHESTER S. LORD.
THE YOUNG MAN AND JOURNALISM
BY
CHESTER S. LORD, M.A., LL.D.
For forty-one years a member of the staff of the New York _Sun_
and for thirty-three years (1880-1913) its managing editor
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and printed. Published November, 1922.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
EDITOR’S PROSPECTUS
One of the most important decisions a young man is called upon to
make relates to the determination of his life-work. It is fraught
with serious consequence for him. It involves the possibilities of
success and failure. The social order is such that he can best realize
his ends by the pursuit of a vocation. It unifies his purposes and
endeavors--making them count for most in the struggle for existence
and for material welfare. It furnishes steady employment at a definite
task as against changeable effort and an unstable task. This makes for
superior skill and greater efficiency which result in a larger gain to
himself and in a more genuine contribution to the economic world.
But a man’s vocation relates to a much wider sphere than the economic.
It is intimately associated with the totality of his interests. It is
in a very real sense the center of most of his relations in life. His
intellectual interests are seriously dependent upon his vocational
career. Not only does the attainment of skill and efficiency call for
the acquisition of knowledge and development of judgment, but the
leisure that is so essential to the pursuit of those intellectual
ends which are a necessary part of his general culture is, in turn,
dependent, to a considerable extent, upon the skill and efficiency that
he acquires in his vocation.
Nor are his social interests less dependent upon his life-work. Men
pursuing the same calling constitute in a peculiar sense a great
fraternity or brotherhood bound together by common interests and aims.
These condition much of his social development. His wider social
relationships also are dependent, in a large measure, on the success
that he attains in his chosen field of labor.
Even his moral and spiritual interests are vitally centered in his
vocation. The development of will, the steadying of purpose, the
unfolding of ideals, the cultivation of vocational virtues, such
as industry, fidelity, order, honesty, prudence, thrift, patience,
persistence, courage, self-reliance, etc.--all of this makes
tremendously for his moral and spiritual development. The vocationless
man, no matter to what class he belongs, suffers a great moral and
spiritual disadvantage. His life lacks idealization and is therefore
wanting in unity and high moralization. His changeable task, with its
changeable efforts, does not afford so good an opportunity for the
development of the economic and social virtues as that afforded the man
who pursues a definite life-work. It lacks also that discipline--not
only mental, but moral--which the attainment of vocational skill and
efficiency involves.
But notwithstanding the important issues involved in a man’s vocational
career, little has been done in a practical or systematic way to
help our college young men to a wise decision in the determination
of their life-work. Commendable efforts are being put forth in our
public schools in this direction, but very little, indeed, has been
done in this respect in the sphere of higher education. To any one
familiar with the struggles of the average college student in his
efforts to settle this weighty question for himself, the perplexities,
embarrassment, and apparent helplessness are pathetic. This is due
largely to his ignorance of the nature of the professions and other
vocations which appeal most strongly to the college man. Consequently,
he does not know how to estimate his fitness for them. He cannot advise
to any extent with his father, because he represents only one vocation.
Neither can he advise advantageously with his instructor for he, too,
is familiar with the nature of only one profession.
For this reason, a series of books, dealing with the leading vocations,
and prepared by men of large ability and experience, capable of giving
wise counsel, is a _desideratum_. Such men are competent to explain the
nature and divisions of the particular vocations which they represent,
the personal and educational qualifications necessary for a successful
pursuit of the same, the advantages and disadvantages, the difficulties
and temptations, the opportunities and ideals; thus, in an adequate
way, enabling the student to estimate his own fitness for them. They
are also able to make valuable suggestions relating to the man’s work
after he enters upon his vocation.
Fortunately, in the present Series, the Editor has been able to secure
the services of some of the most eminent experts in the country to
prepare the respective volumes--men of large knowledge and experience,
who have attained wide recognition and genuine success in their
“callings.” It is a pleasure to be able to place at the command of the
many thousands of students in our American colleges the wise counsel of
such experienced and distinguished men.
* * * * *
The “Vocational Series” will consist of twelve books written by
representatives of different vocations, as follow:
1. The Young Man and the Law
Hon. Simeon E. Baldwin, LL.D., Professor of Law, Emeritus,
Yale University, ex-Governor and ex-Chief Justice of
Connecticut
2. The Young Man and the Ministry
Rev. Charles R. Brown, D.D., LL.D., Dean of the Divinity
School, Yale University
3. The Young Man and Teaching
Professor Henry Parks Wright, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor
Emeritus and formerly Dean of Yale College
4. The Young Man and Medicine
Lewellys F. Barker, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Medicine and
Chief Physician, Johns Hopkins University
5. The Young Man and Journalism
Chester Sanders Lord, M.A., LL.D., formerly Managing Editor,
New York _Sun_
6. The Young Man and Banking
Hon. Frank A. Vanderlip, M.A., LL.D., formerly President
of the City National Bank, New York
7. The Young Man and Business
8. The Young Man and Mechanical Engineering
Lester P. Breckenridge, M.A., Eng.D., Professor of Mechanical
Engineering, Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University
9. The Young Man and Electrical Engineering
Charles F. Scott, Sc.D., Eng.D., Professor of Electrical
Engineering, Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University
10. The Young Man and Civil Engineering
George F. Swain, LL.D., Professor of Civil Engineering,
Harvard University
11. The Young Man and Farming
L. H. Bailey, M.S., LL.D., formerly Director of College of
Agriculture, Cornell University, and Editor of Cyclopedia of
American Horticulture, Rural Science Series, Garden Craft
Series, Rural Text-Book Series, Cyclopedia of Agriculture,
etc.
12. The Young Man and Government Service
Hon. William Howard Taft, D.C.L., LL.D., ex-President of the
United States, and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme
Court
E. HERSHEY SNEATH.
BY WAY OF EXPLANATION
The sole object of the following chapters is to tell a young man what
is likely to happen to him if he goes into the newspaper business.
Many young men think of entering journalism, but journalism is to them
a maze of mystery. What does it offer as a profession or a vocation?
they ask. What is the nature of the business? What are its rewards?
Naturally enough they continue to wonder what kind of preparatory study
is desirable. How does a young man make a beginning and how does the
beginner make progress? What are the recognized standards of newspaper
success? How is news collected and prepared for the public? How is
a newspaper conducted? What are the duties of each member of a big
newspaper staff? What goes on in a newspaper office, anyway?
The book was begun with the intention of answering some of these
queries, but it gradually drifted into talk about various phases and
features of the business. The original intention has not been lost
sight of, however. The purpose is to indicate what journalism offers to
a young man as a means of livelihood. It seeks neither to glorify nor
to disparage the newspaper.
The book is elementary: not intended or expected to interest or inform
newspaper editors of experience.
C. S. L.
Brooklyn, New York,
Nineteen hundred and twenty two.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BEGINNING IN NEWSPAPER WORK--THE REPORTER’S FIRST
EXPERIENCES--HIS PROGRESS--UNPLEASANT TASKS 1
II. THE COLLECTION OF NEWS AND ITS PREPARATION FOR PRINT 29
III. NEWSPAPER COMPOSITION--THE ART OF WRITING IN SIMPLE YET
ENTERTAINING FASHION 51
IV. THE FASCINATION OF WRITING FOR THE EDITORIAL PAGE 74
V. WHAT TO PRINT--THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO INTEREST AND
INFORM THE READER 87
VI. THE PLEASING EXPERIENCES OF THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT 106
VII. THE TECHNICAL PRESS 115
VIII. THE VILLAGE NEWSPAPER’S IMPORTANT PLACE IN AMERICAN
JOURNALISM 125
IX. THE DAILY NEWSPAPER IN THE SMALL CITY 138
X. THE REWARDS OF JOURNALISM--THEY ARE FOUND CHIEFLY IN
CONGENIAL EMPLOYMENT 144
XI. NEWSPAPER INFLUENCE--WAYS OF PERSUADING THE
PUBLIC--COMMUNITY SERVICE AND SERVICE TO
THE GOVERNMENT 159
XII. THE STUDY OF A SPECIALTY--GREAT ADVANTAGE FOLLOWS THE
MASTERY OF TWO OR THREE SUBJECTS 179
XIII. THE ACTIVITIES AND PATRIOTIC SERVICE OF NEWSPAPERS IN
TIMES OF WAR 185
XIV. NEWSPAPER HISTORY--THE MODERN NEWSPAPER 197
THE YOUNG MAN AND JOURNALISM
CHAPTER I
BEGINNING IN NEWSPAPER WORK--THE REPORTER’S FIRST
EXPERIENCES--UNPLEASANT TASKS
The beginner in newspaper work usually starts as a reporter of the
simplest and most unimportant kind of routine news. The city editor
tells him what to do and how to do it. The start is made easy for him.
The prevailing supposition that reporters go out into the streets and
hunt for news is far from fact. They do so in the small cities but not
for big newspapers.
Newsgathering has become vastly systematized. Nineteen twentieths of
the news comes through established channels of information and this
explains why nearly all newspapers have the same facts. The sources of
information are known in all newspaper offices. If a man falls dead in
the street, or a fire starts in an important building, or an automobile
crushes a child, or anything unusual happens in any street, it is known
to every city editor within a few minutes; for a policeman reports it
to police headquarters immediately, and reporters grab it. Similarly,
shipping news is sent to the ship-news office; cases of sudden or
unexplained death must be made public by official physicians; public
parades and demonstrations are anticipated through the permit bureau,
and so on. All day and all night this kind of news pours in to the city
editor. With almost instant judgment he decides on its news value,
discards it or hustles a reporter for the details. The new man gets the
least important of this kind of work.
The city editor keeps a future book--like milady’s engagement
calendar--in which under proper date he records the events to be of
that day: business meetings, conventions, adjourned cases, public
dinners, everything and anything requiring the presence of a reporter.
It is one of the important factors of the newsgetting system. Its
proper keeping involves constant drudgery and painstaking care in
the reading of newspapers for announcements or for clews to anything
that is to happen. He reads, for instance, that an important business
meeting has appointed a special committee to report at the next
meeting; but no date of the next meeting is given. So he asks the new
reporter, maybe, to ascertain and record it in the future book. The new
man does many such errands, verifies many statements of fact, chases
down many rumors.
In the great blizzard of March, 1888, when all transportation lines
in New York City were abandoned came the story that several funeral
processions were snowed under in Greenwood cemetery. A new reporter was
sent. He toiled through storm and snow waist deep to the burial place
and back, a task requiring something like six hours to accomplish,
and ended the day’s experience by thawing out his frozen feet in a
bucket of water. And what he wrote was: “The rumor that three funeral
processions were snowed under in Greenwood cemetery was found on
investigation to be untrue.”
The city editor has many sources of information similar to those just
mentioned. In the big cities he is responsible for getting the news
of the urban district, a task that involves almost every kind of
newsgetting. This is especially true of New York City, for taken all in
all nearly everything happens in New York that can happen anywhere. It
is of metropolitan reporting that we are speaking just now.
The new reporter is asked to make news reports of the simplest of
happenings. The narration of ordinary events is the easiest of all
newspaper writing. Any intelligent high school boy can catch the knack
of it and many a bright newspaper office boy has gone on to better
things by absorbing that knack. It is easy to acquire because it may be
largely imitative--that is, almost all routine news reports are written
in the same groove of construction and in very much the same language,
year in and year out, for news topics constantly repeat themselves.
By routine reports are meant accounts of public meetings, conventions,
legislative proceedings, trials in the courts, market reports,
accidents, fires, suicides and petty crimes. These things are of the
utmost importance to the newspapers. They constitute a large proportion
of the news of the day. They are the very life of the news columns
as presenting a record of the day’s events. They are easy to write
because they are written in the same manner day after day for they are
constantly recurring. The puzzled young writer cannot go far astray if
he turns back in the newspaper files to a similar meeting or accident
or event and imitates that report. But let him be warned that if he
continues to work in that way he becomes a routine writer, a hack
reporter, and his advancement ceases.
It is in this deadly dull routine writing of routine news that we have
our poorest and most slovenly newspaper results. The indifferent work
done in this direction is more conspicuous in the London newspapers
than in our own for there news reports have been reduced almost to
formula.
We have said that the dates of fixed events to come are accumulated
in the future book--meetings of all sorts, lectures, balls, sporting
contests, celebrations, ceremonials, excursions and the like, of which
the number and the variety are innumerable. To each of these a reporter
is sent. Usually he is told before he starts about how long an article
is expected of him. But he is charged to note especially anything
unusual, odd, strange, or queer that may happen or be said. And always
he must report to the desk, before he begins to write, for instructions
as to the exact length of his article. Often two or three reporters are
sent to a big meeting, one to write the introduction, another the first
half of the speaking and a third the remaining part of the proceedings.
This is to save time; and often the first half has been written and is
in type before the last man has quit the meeting. Likewise in cases of
big disasters, big celebrations, big sporting events, six or eight men
are sent, each with a definite part to cover. Each writes his part and
the copy reader dovetails them together into one continuous article.
Team work of this sort is common enough in big offices.
The new reporter gets his fling at all of this kind of work. If he has
the genuine newspaper spirit he is fascinated by his every experience.
He searches the paper eagerly for the bit he has contributed. With a
glow of satisfaction he contemplates his little record of a news event
standing out in clear type, and he reads it again with those shivery
gusts of emotion sometimes called “the thrill of authorship.”
After a time, from the writing of petty paragraphs, he finds himself
contributing articles a third or a half a column in length. The
older men begin to notice his work, speak to him in praise of a
well-constructed sentence or a nicety of verbal expression, ask him to
come along with them to the beanery for a taste of coffee and cakes
before going home for the night. He begins to participate in that
most helpful and stimulating thing--the comradeship of the office. He
comes daily in contact with forty or fifty men--garrulous veterans,
and middle-aged marvels, and youthful geniuses who are doing all kinds
of newspaper stunts from constructing ponderous editorial articles and
criticisms to exploiting The Stiletto in Stanton Street or The Bludgeon
on the Battery. These men are good-natured critics of each other’s work
and not less ready to praise than to condemn or question. They take
interest in a new man of promise and help him. They read the newspapers
and the periodicals, and the new books--for an intimate knowledge of
contemporaneous events is essential to their progress. There are few
dullards among them, few without positive opinions and a vocabulary to
express them. Our young man greatly enjoys their explosive comments and
their ferocious conclusions. They are so alert, so alive to everything
that is going on. Their conversation is so interesting to him. The
atmosphere is surcharged with good fellowship. Nobody is taking himself
very seriously yet everybody is doing something in a businesslike way.
Somehow things are different in the newspaper office from what he had
expected.
The business of reporting becomes more fascinating as the reporter,
gaining in skill and in ability, achieves to higher grade work. To
write of big and important events becomes his ambition. It gives him
prestige among his fellows, for it is the management’s testimonial
of confidence in him. Not until after careful consideration does the
managing editor name the men who are to report a national political
convention, or the inauguration of a president of the United States,
or a great celebration. The very best members of the staff are summoned
to write of such events and the assignment comes to be considered as an
office reward of merit.
To do the big thing of the day is one of the prizes of the reportorial
business. Indeed, it may be said of the newspaper man, that from his
earliest beginnings always there is something higher to be attained
until he becomes the editor in chief.
In the newspaper offices of cities of the larger size, reporters
develop into desk editors, city editors, managing editors, music or
dramatic or book critics, or editorial writers. Many prefer to do
outside work rather than become editors or critics--prefer to write for
the news columns, to mingle with the outside world and take part in its
stirring events rather than face the routine and the monotony of desk
work.
They are especially interested in taking an out of town commission
for the investigation of a subject of wide importance--a rebellion
in Mexico, an uprising against the government in Cuba, a crisis in
Canadian politics, a conflict between labor and capital in Colorado, a
socialistic struggle in Schenectady.
Such assignments call for thorough investigation at first hand on the
spot, call for an acquaintance with the leaders of the movement that
frequently becomes familiar and lasting, call for practical intimate
study of the convulsion itself. Information thus gained may, after its
publication in the newspaper, be used again in magazines, in books of
record or in fiction. The special writer, for instance, who spends a
month with the striking miners in the Michigan copper district comes to
know much about life and labor there, about the copper industry, mining
methods, the relation of the price of copper to miners’ wages, the
smelting of ore, the transportation of the raw and the finished product
and a thousand other details of the business.
The newspapers do a vast amount of this kind of work. Its proper
exploitation necessitates intelligent treatment by the writer. His
information forms the basis for editorial comment, not only by the
editors of his own newspaper but by those of other sheets, the
periodical press, magazines and reviews; and also frequently it leads
to government investigation or interference or regulation. Two or three
years of this kind of work give a large fund of information to the
writer. It is of immeasurable service to him as long as he lives.
Likewise the man who writes for the news columns on national politics
finds himself most agreeably employed. In reality he is a specialist.
All of his time is required to keep apace with the kaleidoscopic
changes of American political life. He must be familiar with the
important politics of every state and every big city, for they have
immediate relation to the politics of the nation. To that end he makes
many journeys. His most valuable asset is personal acquaintance with
public men--the men who make politics and political history--and the
more intimate the acquaintance the more interest and confidence he may
be able to inspire. The political writer seeks to meet public men on
every possible occasion, seeks to keep in touch with them and with the
politics they represent.
If a conspicuous political leader in a Western state goes East it will
be a part of his routine to see the political writers. With them he
goes over the political situation of his region, tells them just what
is going on and what is contemplated. Some of the talk is confidential,
and the writer keeps the confidence. In turn the writers interest him
in what they know of the politics of the East and of other states.
In this way--so briefly indicated--the political writer comes to
comprehend the politics of the nation. He must read all obtainable
political literature and must absorb political information from any
source at hand.
As said elsewhere in this book, you cannot learn politics from a
textbook; you must absorb the politics of the day by a study of the
events of the day, and great mental ability is required to keep apace
with them. Political conclusions made to-day are upset by the events
of to-morrow. The issues of one election are forgotten in the burning
questions of the next. The newspapers and the periodical press are
great sources of information, but greater than these is association by
the newspaper writer with the men who are making politics.
The writer of national politics makes frequent trips to Washington. He
goes to the national political conventions and to many of the state
conventions. He is called on to write sketches of important candidates
and obituary notices of statesmen. His opinions and his information are
sought by editorial writers and by public men themselves. The magazines
ask him for special articles. The political managers pay him for
campaign literature. The greater his experience the more his services
are in demand. Not infrequently he is called into party councils or
is entrusted with delicate political missions. Candidates and leaders
seek his advice and his influence. Presidents, cabinet officers,
senators, governors and mayors tempt him to quit newspaper writing to
become their secretaries--and these places are usually stepping stones
to higher public life. Several presidents of the United States have
chosen newspaper writers to be their private secretaries, half of the
governors of New York State, in the last thirty years, and nearly every
mayor of New York City have drawn their secretaries from the ranks of
newspaper writers.
Moreover writers on national politics frequently are called to the
post of Washington correspondent, and here too, in yet greater degree,
are these same requirements essential to success. Washington is the
headquarters of national politics. Nearly every congressman is a
political leader in his home district as well as in his state, and his
activities and ambitions are quickened in the national capital. It is
the place of all places to study political movement. The correspondent
enjoys the personal acquaintance of presidents, cabinet officers,
foreign diplomats, the makers of party policies, the framers of
administrative measures, and from them he comes to know what they are
doing. Many state secrets are told to him in confidence; to betray
that confidence is to make him _persona non grata_ and to destroy the
possibility of getting additional information. The supposition that the
newspaper writer prints everything he hears is silly. Indeed, public
men have come to know that a safe way to keep a political secret is to
tell it to the newspaper correspondents with the injunction that it is
not to be printed.
In addition to the gathering of political information the Washington
correspondent writes of the doings of Congress. This of course involves
study of public questions, the burning questions of the day. It
furnishes a volume of information to the young man who is to continue
his career as a journalist or who may turn to public or professional
life, involving, as it does, study of engineering triumphs like the
Panama canal, public improvements like the development of Western
irrigation, tariff changes, taxation, national banking systems, the
problems of domestic shipping and foreign commerce. The correspondent
comes to know about diplomacy, the making of treaties, the relation
of labor to capital, railway management, government regulation of
traffic--and so on almost without limit.
The correspondent must know about these things if he is to write
intelligently about them. He must be familiar with the business of the
departments, must understand the army and the navy, should know the
whereabouts of every regiment and every ship of importance. He should
know the name and the politics and the post of every American diplomat,
should know government finances--indeed, should know everything the
government does. These things constantly are recurring in new and
unexpected ways and they must be treated as important news of the day.
Not less fascinating to the young reporter is his daily contact with
men of affairs whom he meets in the course of his news collecting;
not less interesting his intimacy with the events of the day that
pulsate and inspire. His work becomes so varied. It all is so new. His
experiences are so interesting; and they become the more so as he gains
in experience and is asked to do higher grade work. In his book on
_Newspaper Reporting_ Mr. John Pendleton of London says:
The reporter is the collector of news for the circulation of
which the paper really exists. On his report of the Premier’s
speech the editor bases his leading article. He records
the splendor of the Queen’s drawing room, and the want and
wretchedness of the poor. No festival is complete without him;
and he turns up at every calamity. He chronicles the deeds of the
hero and the crimes of the miscreant. He tells how the pulse of
commerce beats in every market of the world. Science and art are
beholden to his pen; and even religion itself has to thank him
for some of its spread. He has become a necessity to newspaper
production and no inconsiderable figure in national life.
The reporter is not sent out haphazard; he is out for a purpose and
that purpose is the collection at first hand of facts and information
that are supposed to interest a multitude of readers. If they are
interesting to those who read them, how much the more so to the young
man who, after investigation and verification to his own satisfaction,
puts his conclusions on paper!
And note, if you will, how important is the work. Since the first use
of printers’ type the great events of the world, the events that have
moved and influenced mankind, that have made the history of the world,
have been announced first of all in the newspapers. They have been
proclaimed to the world not by clergymen from the pulpit, or lecturers
from the platform, or orators in legislative halls, not through the
medium of books or magazines or pamphlets, or by the writers of
editorial articles, or by critics--but in burning type by reporters.
It seems but yesterday, that midnight hour, when a reporter burst into
the working room of a morning newspaper with the exclamation: “He’s
got it--we are going to have the electric light in every part of every
house and over every desk in this room.” He had hurried from Edison’s
first big test of the division of the electric current: had seen a
hundred electric bulbs glowing in all their fascinating brightness by
electricity transmitted over wires. And the people marveled at what he
wrote about it.
Within the span of my own newspaper experience, reporters have given
first information to the world of the discovery and development of
electric lighting, heating, cooking and propulsion; of Roentgen rays;
of the telephone; of the phonograph; of the automobile; the player
piano; of the typesetting machine and the multiple page printing
press; the shoe-making machine; of breech-loading guns, machine-made
cartridges and diabolical explosives; of the airplane and the zeppelin;
of wireless telegraphy; of steel construction in big buildings; of the
marvels of construction in gigantic locomotives and steamships, in
subways, and elevated railroads, bridges, and aqueducts; of bacillus
treatment in medicine and the wonders of abdominal surgery; and
hundreds of other developments of science. We have seen the declaration
of a dozen wars and the signing of a dozen peace treaties; the
announcement of the death of monarchs and the birth of princes, the
assassination of rulers and the inauguration of their successors.
Some reporter has announced the discovery or the fact of every one
of these things. He has been compelled to study the subject enough
to write about it understandingly, and that study has brought him in
contact with the men who have caused or invented it.
The reporter mingles constantly with the men who control the affairs
of the world. This not only is fascinating, but it gives him
confidence in himself, gives him personal address, ease of manner
and of conversation, manliness of presence. It sharpens his wits. It
takes away that paralyzing emotion so often felt by youth when in the
presence of greatness. Nothing can be more stimulating to the intellect
than association with intellectual men.
The reporter who writes of an important event usually is asked to
continue on the case as long as it is of public interest. The man
who wrote the narrative of the murder of White by Harry Thaw wrote
of Thaw’s publicities for a long time afterward. The man who reports
a big labor strike is called on to report the next strike. He gets
interested in the subject, makes it a study, and becomes authority on
the relations between labor and capital. In this way as time goes on
the reporter comes to be a sort of specialist in several topics and
the knowledge thus acquired is of great value to him when he comes to
editorial writing, or magazine work, or authorship of any kind, or if
he goes into the law or into the public service or any other business.
There is not any other employment probably in which a young man may
gather so extensive a general contemporaneous knowledge as in newspaper
reporting in a big city.
The speakers at a public banquet may drone on for an hour or so without
saying anything or giving utterance to a sentence worth reporting and
then something of supreme importance may be said. The good reporter
recognizes its worth instantly; the poor one does not.
Colonel William Rockhill Nelson, who won fame as editor of the Kansas
City _Star_, had this to say in an address to the students of a School
of Journalism:
There is just one point I wish to emphasize to the young men who
are expecting to engage in newspaper work. That is, that the
reporter is the essential man on the newspaper. He is the big
toad in the puddle.
Young fellows looking forward to a newspaper career often have in
mind an editorship of some sort. They want to guide and instruct
public opinion. The trouble is that the public doesn’t yearn to
have its opinion guided and instructed. It wants to get the news
and be entertained.
Consider who are making the real newspapers and magazines to-day.
Not the grave and learned publicist who is giving advice on the
state of the Nation from the seclusion of some hole in the wall;
not the recluse with a bunch of academic theories.
It is the reporter with the nose for news. He is the only fellow
who has any business around newspapers or magazines. In general
his job is not to produce literature, but to do reporting.
Often a good pair of legs makes a good reporter. The newspaper
man must always be on the job, always hustling, always ready to
go to any inconvenience or suffer any fatigue to get the news.
And above all, so far as routine reporting goes, he must be
honest and accurate.
Charles Dickens, who was a reporter before he became a writer of
novels, says of some of his experiences:
I have often transcribed for the printer, from shorthand notes,
important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was
required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man
severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the
light of a dark lantern in a post chaise and four, galloping
through a wild country and through the dead of the night, at the
then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour.
The very last time I was at Exeter, I strolled into the castle
yard there to identify, for the amusement of a friend, the spot
on which we “took” as we used to call it, an election speech
of Lord John Russell at the Devon contest, in the midst of a
lively fight maintained by all the vagabonds in that division
of the country and under such a pelting rain that I remember two
good-natured colleagues, who chanced to be at leisure, held a
pocket handkerchief over my notebook after the fashion of a State
canopy in an ecclesiastical procession.
I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of
the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to
write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we
used to be huddled together like so many sheep--kept in waiting,
say, until the Woolsack might want restuffing.
Returning home from political meetings in the country to the
waiting press in London, I do believe I have been upset in almost
every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been
in my time belated in miry by-roads, toward the small hours,
forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheel-less carriage, with
exhausted horses and drunken post boys, and have got back in time
for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments
by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest Scotch from the
broadest of hearts I ever knew.
Of the reporter’s familiarity with limitless phases of life it has been
said:
The reporter of to-day has to be courageous, sharp as a hawk,
mentally untiring, physically enduring. He comes in contact with
everybody from monarchs to beggars, from noblemen to nobodies. He
sees the tragedy and the comedy of human life, its cynicism and
toadyism, its patient struggling and feverish ambition, its sham
and subterfuge, its lavish wealth and deepest poverty, its good
deeds and most hideous crime.
Mr. H. G. Wells says of writers that “they meet philosophers,
scientific men, soldiers, artists, professional men, politicians of
all sorts, the rich, and the great.”
As illustrating the high place a man may make for himself while writing
for the news department of a newspaper, let us quote from an editorial
article in the Brooklyn _Daily Eagle_:
Of Saxon stock though of Irish birth, a Royal scholarship
graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, William Crooke, for forty
years of the New York _Sun’s_ staff as a news writer and nearly
all that period in charge of the Sun’s Brooklyn news, came to
be known to every police and fire department official, to most
of the clergymen and all the big politicians of either party in
old Brooklyn as “Billy Crooke”; always respectfully and often
affectionately regarded, trusted by every one because he never
betrayed a confidence and never misrepresented any communication
or interview.
Mr. Crooke, qualified by high education for the writing that
analyzes and illuminates the world’s happenings, and a keen
incisive stylist in his reporting work, was satisfied to be a
reporter. He felt to the full the dignity of what he was doing;
he realized that it is news that makes a newspaper, not features
and not comment. He was a newspaper-maker in the best sense.
Kindliness, dry humor, accurate observation, integrity, and
dignity made “Billy” what he was.
In most of the college publications one may find under the heading of
Alumni Notes, an item such as this:
“’18, John F. Jenkins has accepted a position on the editorial
staff of the New York _Star_.”
This means that Jenkins has got a job as a reporter. But Jenkins did
not have the easy time getting it that the paragraph in the college
paper would lead one to suppose. Nor did he “accept” the post: the
_Star_ accepted him. Before Jenkins landed on the _Star_ he visited
five newspaper offices, reached the assistant city editor of two, the
city editor of one. He did not get beyond the office boy guarding the
portals of the others.
Jenkins left four of the offices with a definite feeling that New
York was none too cordial to a budding newspaper man. But he failed
to consider, because he did not know, that two or three young men
visit the city room of a metropolitan newspaper every day on an errand
similar to his. And he failed to realize, because he did not know, that
in normal times a conservative newspaper hires about one new reporter a
month.
The city editor of the _Star_ happened to need a man when Jenkins
called. Jenkins was a college man; that was in his favor. His manner
of approach was pleasing to the man who was thinking of hiring him. If
the impression was good to the city editor it would also be good to
the men to whom Jenkins might be sent as a reporter. His conversation
was direct and to the point. He didn’t make extravagant talk about his
ability; he was frank in saying that he didn’t know anything about the
newspaper business, but wanted to learn and was willing to work hard to
make good. He would be glad to take twenty dollars a week at the start
and asked only for a trial.
“All right, report to-morrow at one o’clock,” said the city editor and
Jenkins left the office in a daze with a job. He had been trying for
three days to get one and the interview that landed it had consumed not
more than three minutes.
Jenkins got the job because he was clean, intelligent and looked like
good material. He had not made the mistake of thinking that impertinent
aggressiveness would impress the man who was to hire him. He had not
made the mistake of failing to remove his hat when he sat down beside
the city desk to make his appeal. Several men had made that mistake
with the city editor of the _Star_. A man who did not know enough
to remove his hat even in an office, did not have manners enough to
approach many of the men to whom the _Star_ would send him. Jenkins did
not waste the time of the city editor on nonessentials, and it was to
be presumed that he would be as businesslike with those with whom he
came in contact later as a reporter. Jenkins also had personality. He
acted as though he meant business and realized that newspaper work was
pleasant but not play. He had no letters of recommendation and the city
editor didn’t ask for any. Letters are easy to get and as a rule do not
count for much. Personality, such as Jenkins’s, counts a lot.
The reporter must be prepared to meet the active men of the world:
the men who are doing the constructive work of the world. He must
have presence and address to attract their attention. Usually he is a
stranger to them. His presence is unwelcome to them. Experience has
attested that the college boy is better fitted for this task than
any other kind of beginner. He is familiar with the ways of society
and has some notion of the public questions of the day and the vital
problems of life. The green young man of uncouth appearance, of clumsy
presence, of faltering, stammering speech makes a mighty poor reporter.
Many newspaper office boys become good reporters. In constant contact
with the editorial force they absorb knowledge of the business.
Noneducated or partly educated youths may and do become excellent
reporters of routine news, but they rarely get beyond the imitative
stage. In the race for higher journalistic honors the college boys
easily outstrip them.
A welcome addition to the staff is the man who comes from a country
newspaper. Many of the ablest of American journalists began their
careers in rural offices. The country boy usually knows something of
the technical side of the business. Likely enough he has learned to set
type or run a typesetting machine, has lent a hand in the mailing room
or the delivery department, has mastered many details that, though not
essential, have given a comprehensive notion of how newspapers are made.
Nor should the young man from the country, ambitious for city
experience, stay away from the city through fear of competition or
through timidity. Do not be afraid. The newspaper men of the city are
not smarter than those in the country. I recall the youngster from a
small up-state daily who with fear and trembling accepted a chance to
work a few days on trial, in a big city office, as reporter. He went
smashing around town for routine news and found the work not difficult.
In a week confidence had conquered timidity. He observed the other
reporters and workers and said to himself, “I can compete with these
men”--and he did compete with them to his gratifying success.
Fascinating as the reporter’s life may be, it nevertheless has its
unpleasant moments, its many hardships. The hours of work are irregular
and unlimited. Men on the big metropolitan morning newspapers report
for duty at noon, one or two o’clock; those of the evening staffs at
seven or eight, A.M.; and all are supposed to work as long
as their services are required--not infrequently for fifteen hours.
Newspaper-making is a continuous performance, especially for reporters.
Frequently those employed in it suffer great discomforts through
physical fatigue, lack of food and sleep, and exposure to weather
conditions.
One of the court reporters of a morning newspaper in New York was
finishing his work in the late evening. He had been on duty some ten
hours and his work had been hard. Suddenly came the big explosion of
the great munitions plant at Morgan, New Jersey, and the weary young
writer was told to hustle out there. At Perth Amboy he encountered the
military guard thrown out to prevent approach to the burning buildings.
In his attempts to get along he was arrested six times and detained. He
phoned his facts to the office and was told to stay on. He could find
no place to sleep--couldn’t have slept if he had--could hardly find a
place to sit down even, could get nothing to eat or drink. Explosion
after explosion followed hour after hour. And when at length he reached
the office he was too exhausted to write a word. So they sent him to
bed for six hours and then he wrote his report.
Very many other men had a similar experience that day and night. They
were in constant danger of their lives, badly fed and without rest.
They were driven from place to place by the military guard, and most of
them were arrested over and over again. It was one of the most trying
disasters to report of which we have record.
Several reporters nearly lost their lives while crossing Great South
Bay in a tempest to the scene of a shipwreck on the beach. They
capsized in a sail boat and the life-saving guard barely gave rescue.
Men sent to the Johnstown flood found the town wrecked, scantily
provisioned, and with no sleeping accommodations. They were compelled
to stay there a week under most distressing conditions while the search
for the dead continued.
The reporting of the great national political conventions requires
unceasing effort for a week or more, the utmost vigil through night
and day. Important committees are reaching decisions, new pacts and
combinations are being formed, and the entire situation may be changing
from hour to hour. There is no sleep for the unfortunate correspondent;
he must be awake to the instant. The reporting of what is done in the
public sessions of the convention is the least of his labors.
When a man of importance falls mortally ill a reporter is detailed to
watch him--to obtain the earliest announcement of his death. The vigil
is constant. In scores of instances reporters have sat on the man’s
doorstep waiting for him to die. This sort of work involves all the
monotony of sentry duty. It is disagreeable in the extreme.
The newspaper boys are asked to do many unpleasant things. They are
compelled to invade private homes and to ask agonized parents why a
son or a daughter has committed suicide or has done a disgraceful
act; to ask a husband whether it is true that his wife has run away
with a neighbor, or ask a wife whether her husband is a fugitive from
justice. The assignments that take a writer into a family that has been
disgraced by one of its members are the most unpleasant, probably, of
any that fall to him.
Indeed there is little of joyousness in any search for information that
some one wishes to conceal. Yet every editor knows that in very many
important cases to be chronicled some one is interested in concealing
the real facts. The people who want their affairs screened from public
gaze constitute a multitude. Diplomats are reticent. Government
officers are evasive. Political plans are kept in the shadow, for
publicity has ruined many a political plot. Bank officials seek to
conceal defalcations. Insurance companies try to hush great losses.
Society leaders wish to minimize society scandals. Usually in these
cases the inquirer is lied to deliberately and calmly, or the door is
slammed in his face, or the person sought refuses to be seen, or the
reporter is sent on a fool’s errand elsewhere--anything to be rid of
him. Some one has said that the newspaper man is asked to lie about
people almost as often as he is asked to tell the truth.
To obtain exact truth always has been surrounded by difficulties.
Almost every historian complains of the task of establishing the
truth of history. He finds the literature of the time at variance
with the facts; public documents and records absolutely contradicting
one another; while the recollections and reminiscences of the oldest
inhabitants are fanciful dreams. It was Talleyrand who said of a treaty
that if it contained no ambiguities some should be inserted.
The young newspaper writer finds his task of telling the truth quite
as difficult, not only because so many persons seek to conceal the
truth but also from the well-known fact--recognized and constantly
commented on in our courts of law--that two persons rarely see or hear
or comprehend alike. Honest witnesses give different versions.
But the newspaper manager expects the reporter to get the exact facts,
and frequently the unfortunate writer finds himself compelled to
resort to trickery and all kinds of subterfuge to do so. If he fails
to get the facts his advancement in the office is checked. Inquiry is
made into the cause of his failure and if good reason for it appears
it may be forgotten. If it is through carelessness or indolence he
is discharged, and the reason for dropping him is known within
twenty-four hours in every other newspaper office in the city. It is
all very unpleasant.
If the new reporter be so unfortunate as to begin his career on
a dishonest or an extremely sensational sheet he may suffer an
experience yet more disagreeable, for he may be asked to distort
the truth deliberately. Fortunately this is not a frequent request:
Very few newspapers seek to print falsehoods or ask their men to pen
untruths. Much less of that sort of thing prevails than disgraced
the press of twenty-five years ago; yet a few editors remain who
seem to think that exaggeration and falsification attract more
readers than does the truth, and they demand that all news reports be
colored with spectacular embellishment. This is unpleasant as well as
unprofessional. It is demoralizing to a young writer. It is disastrous
to his reputation for serious, trustworthy work. Yet more serious
as well as more repulsive is the necessity occasionally imposed by
dishonest editors on the reporter of blackening a man’s reputation or
exalting the deeds of a scoundrel. But this does not happen often.
The confusion and noise of the office often annoy the young writer and
lessen his ability to do himself justice. The news is usually written
and handled in one large room. Twenty or thirty reporters, subeditors
and office boys are doing rush work. A noisy reporter blows in, as
though carried on a whirlwind, talks all the time, shouts for an office
boy, calls for reference books and newspaper files and drinking water
all in one breath, and keeps it going. Hurry-up telephone bells are
jingling and men are bawling through the transmitters. Typewriters
resound their staccato clicking. Call bells are striking and reporters
are tapping their desk tops for office boys, and the boys are tumbling
over one another in response, and are darting from desk to desk with
copy. Persons are coming and going all the time, talking and laughing
and shuffling. The old hands are used to it; but the young man
accustomed to the silence of the study room sometimes develops symptoms
of insanity.
Of serious consideration, also, is the fact that morning newspaper
work sadly interferes with social and home life and with a host of
amusements and entertainments and pleasures enjoyed by day workers. In
the big cities members of news staffs seldom dine at home. The news
writers go on duty early in the afternoon if not before; the news
editorial staff at six o’clock or thereabouts, all to remain until well
after midnight. Dinner parties, theater parties, dancing parties--all
evening social life may be enjoyed on the one day only of the seven,
known as the day off. The newspaper man toils while others play--and
his night’s work ends somewhat dismally by his dragging home at two
o’clock in the morning, maybe through storm or sleet or tempest, to a
cold, cheerless, silent, dark home--a home unattractive under these
conditions despite every effort to make it otherwise.
To the hard-working man of ordinary occupation there comes a certain
sense of enjoyment in the relaxation following business effort.
He does not want to go immediately and stealthily to bed. The
morning-newspaper man is compelled to do so. The day worker enjoys his
homecoming, his leisurely evening repast, the diversions of the few
hours preceding sleep. It is the bright spot in the day. The newspaper
man rolls off the editorial bench into bed.
This demoralization of home and social life constitutes a very great
objection to entering the newspaper business. It affects nine-tenths
of the morning-newspaper staff. If the young journalist chances to
marry it imposes hardships on the young wife. Usually she begins her
married life by loyally and cheerfully trying to sit up until long
after midnight to greet him on his return--but not for long. The coming
of children and the establishing of a home compel normal rest and
other attentions, and she reluctantly ceases her long waiting vigil.
Instead of greeting him with a daintily prepared bit of warm food she
now puts out a plate of cold stuff left over from the day before, which
he mechanically masticates or not as his mood suggests; and a little
later on it is decided that he might stop at a night restaurant for a
bite, if he is hungry. As she cannot go out in the evening with him she
misses many of the social pleasures to which presumedly she had been
accustomed and which she had expected in her new life. But most of all
she misses his presence and his attentions.