Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence
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Title: Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence
Author: Grant Milnor Hyde
Release date: July 4, 2008 [eBook #25968]
Language: English
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NEWSPAPER REPORTING
AND CORRESPONDENCE
A MANUAL FOR REPORTERS,
CORRESPONDENTS, AND STUDENTS
OF NEWSPAPER WRITING
BY
GRANT MILNOR HYDE, M.A.
INSTRUCTOR IN JOURNALISM IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
TO
MY MOTHER
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this book is to instruct the prospective newspaper
reporter in the way to write those stories which his future paper will
call upon him to write, and to help the young cub reporter and the
struggling correspondent past the perils of the copyreader's pencil by
telling them how to write clean copy that requires a minimum of editing.
It is not concerned with the _why_ of the newspaper business--the editor
may attend to that--but with the _how_ of the reporter's work. And an
ability to write is believed to be the reporter's chief asset. There is
no space in this book to dilate upon newspaper organization, the work of
the business office, the writing of advertisements, the principles of
editorial writing, or the how and why of newspaper policy and practice,
as it is. These things do not concern the reporter during the first few
months of his work, and he will learn them from experience when he needs
them. Until then, his usefulness depends solely upon his ability to get
news and to write it.
There are two phases of the work which every reporter must learn: how to
get the news and how to write it. The first he can pick up easily by
actual newspaper experience--if nature has endowed him with "a nose for
news." The writing of the news he can learn only by hard practice--a
year's hard practice on some papers--and it is generally conceded that
practice in writing news stories can be secured at home or in the
classroom as effectively as practice in writing short stories, plays,
business letters, or any other special form of composition. Newspaper
experience may aid the reporter in learning how to write his stories,
but a newspaper apprenticeship is not absolutely necessary. However,
whether he is studying the trade of newspaper writing in his home, in a
classroom, or in the city room of a daily paper, he needs positive
instruction in the English composition of the newspaper office--rather
than haphazard criticism and a deluge of "don'ts." Hence this book is
concerned primarily with the writing of the news.
Successful newspaper reporting requires both an ability to write good
English and an ability to write good English in the conventional
newspaper form. And there is a conventional form for every kind of
newspaper story. Many editors of the present day are trying to break
away from the conventional form and to evolve a looser and more natural
method of writing news stories. The results are often bizarre and
sometimes very effective. Certainly originality in expression adds much
to the interest of newspaper stories, and many a good piece of news is
ruined by a bald, dry recital of facts. Just as the good reporter is
always one who can give his yarns a distinctive flavor, great newspaper
stories are seldom written under the restriction of rules. But no young
reporter can hope to attain success through originality and defiance of
rules until he has first mastered the fundamental principles of
newspaper writing. He can never expect to write "the story of the year"
until he has learned to handle everyday news without burying the gist of
his stories--any more than an artist can hope to paint a living portrait
until he has learned, with the aid of rules, to draw the face of a
plaster block-head. Hence the emphasis upon form and system in this
book. And, whatever the form may be, the embodiment must be clear,
concise, grammatical English; that is the excuse for the many axioms of
simple English grammar that are introduced side by side with the study
of the newspaper form.
The author offers this book as the result of personal newspaper
experience and of his work as instructor in classes in newspaper writing
at the University of Wisconsin. Every item that is offered is the result
of an attempt to correct the mistakes that have appeared most often in
the papers of students who are trying to do newspaper writing in the
classroom. The seemingly disproportionate emphasis upon certain branches
of the subject and the constant repetition of certain simple principles
are to be excused by the purpose of the book--to be a text-book in the
course of study worked out in this school of journalism. The use of the
fire story as typical of all newspaper stories and as a model for all
newspaper writing is characteristic of this method of instruction. Four
chapters are devoted to the explanation of a single principle which any
reader could grasp in a moment, because experience has shown that an
equivalent of four chapters of study and practice is required to teach
the student the application of this principle and to fix it in his mind
so thoroughly that he will not forget it in his later work of writing
more complicated stories. It is felt that the beginner needs and must
have the detailed explanation, the constant reiteration and some
definite rules to guide him in his practice. Hence the emphasis upon the
conventional form. Since, in the application of the newspaper principle
of beginning with the gist of the story, the structure of the lead is of
greater importance than the rest of the story, this book devotes the
greater part of its discussion to the lead.
The suggestions for practice are attached in an attempt to give the
young newspaper man some _positive_ instruction. Most reporters are
instructed by a system of "don'ts," growled out by busy editors; most
correspondents receive no instruction at all--a positive suggestion now
and then cannot but help them both. Practice is necessary in the study
of any form of writing; these suggestions for practice embody the method
of practice used in this school of journalism. The examples are taken
from representative papers of the entire country to show the student how
the stories are actually written in newspaper offices.
Madison, Wisconsin,
June 3, 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GATHERING THE NEWS 1
II. NEWS VALUES 14
III. NEWSPAPER TERMS 28
IV. THE NEWS STORY FORM 34
V. THE SIMPLE FIRE STORY 41
VI. THE FEATURE FIRE STORY 50
VII. FAULTS IN NEWS STORIES 75
VIII. OTHER NEWS STORIES 105
IX. FOLLOW-UP AND REWRITE STORIES 125
X. REPORTS OF SPEECHES 143
XI. INTERVIEWS 169
XII. COURT REPORTING 192
XIII. SOCIAL NEWS AND OBITUARIES 204
XIV. SPORTING NEWS 219
XV. HUMAN INTEREST STORIES 233
XVI. DRAMATIC REPORTING 259
XVII. STYLE BOOK 276
APPENDIX I--SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 294
APPENDIX II--NEWS STORIES TO BE CORRECTED 311
INDEX 339
NEWSPAPER REPORTING AND CORRESPONDENCE
I
GATHERING THE NEWS
Unlike almost any other profession, that of a newspaper reporter
combines two very different activities--the gathering of news and the
writing of news. Part of the work must be done in the office and part of
it outside on the street. At his desk in the office a reporter is
engaged in the literary, or pseudo-literary, occupation of writing news
stories; outside on the street he is a detective gathering news and
hunting for elusive facts to be combined later into stories. Although
the two activities are closely related, each requires a different sort
of ability and a different training. In a newspaper office the two
activities are rarely separated, but a beginner must learn each duty
independent of the other. This book will not attempt to deal with both;
it will confine itself mainly to one phase, the pseudo-literary
activity of writing news stories.
However, introductory to the discussion of the writing of newspaper
stories, we may glance at the other side of the newspaper writer's
work--the gathering of the news. Where the newspaper gets its news and
how it gets its news can be learned only by experience, for it differs
in different cities and with different papers. But an outline of the
background of news-gathering may assist us in writing the news after it
is gathered and ready for us to write.
=1. Reporter vs. Correspondent.=--There are two capacities in which one
may write news stories for a paper. He may work on the staff as a
regular reporter or he may supply news from a distance as a
correspondent. In the one case he works under the personal supervision
of a city editor and spends his entire time at the regular occupation of
gathering and writing news. As a correspondent he works in a distant
city, under the indirect supervision of the city, telegraph, or state
editor, and sends in only the occasional stories that seem to be of
interest to his paper. In either case the same rules apply to his news
gathering and to his news writing. And in either case the length of his
employment depends upon his ability to turn in clean copy in the form
in which his paper wishes to print the news. Both the reporter and the
correspondent must write their stories in the same form and must look at
news and the sources of news from almost the same point of view.
Whatever is said of the reporter applies equally to the correspondent.
=2. Expected and Unexpected News.=--The daily news may be divided into
two classes from the newspaper's point of view: expected and unexpected
news. Expected news includes all stories of which the paper has a
previous knowledge. Into this class fall all meetings, speeches,
sermons, elections, athletic contests, social events, and daily
happenings that do not come unexpectedly. They are the events that are
announced beforehand and tipped off to the paper in time for the editor
to send out a reporter to cover them personally. These events are of
course recorded in the office, and each day the editor has a certain
number of them, a certain amount of news that he is sure of. Each day he
looks over his book to note the events that are to take place during
that day and sends out his reporters to cover them.
The other class includes the stories that break unexpectedly. Accidents,
deaths, fires, storms, and other unexpected happenings come without
warning and the reporting of them cannot be arranged for in advance.
These are the stories that the paper is most anxious to get and the
things for which the whole staff always has its eyes and ears open.
Seldom are they heard of in time for the paper to have them covered
personally, and the reporting of such stories becomes a separate sort of
work--the gathering and sorting of the facts that can be obtained only
from chance witnesses.
=3. News Sources.=--There are certain sources from which the paper gets
most of its tips of expected events and its knowledge of unexpected
events. These every editor knows about. The courts, the public records,
the public offices, the churches, and the schools furnish a great many
of the tips of expected news. The police stations, the fire stations,
the hospitals, and the morgues furnish most of the tips of unexpected
news. Whenever an event is going to happen, or whenever an unexpected
occurrence does happen, a notice of it is to be found in some one of
these sources. Such a notice or a casual word from any one is called a
"tip" and indicates the possibility of securing a story. The securing of
the story is another matter. A would-be reporter may get good practice
from studying the stories in the daily papers and trying to discover or
imagine from what source the original news tip came. He will soon find
that certain classes of stories always come from certain sources and
that there is a perceptible amount of routine evident in the accounts
of the most unexpected occurrences.
=4. Runs and Assignments.=--Between the news tip and the finished copy
for the compositor there is a vast amount of news gathering, which falls
to the lot of the reporter. This is handled by a system of runs and
special assignments. A reporter usually has his own run, or beat, on
which he gathers news. His run may cover a certain number of police
stations or the city hall or any group of regular news sources. Each day
he must visit the various sources of news on his beat and gather the
tips and whatever facts about the stories behind the tips that he can.
The tips that he secures furnish him with clues to the stories, and it
is his business to get the facts behind all of the tips on his beat and
to write them up, unless a tip opens up a story that is too big for him
to handle alone without neglecting his beat.
Assignments are used to cover the stories that do not come in through
the regular sources, and to handle the big stories that are unearthed on
the regular beats. The editor turns over to the reporter the tip that he
has received and instructs him to go out and get the facts. A paper's
best reporters are used almost entirely on assignments, and when they go
out after a story they practically become detectives. They follow every
clue that the tip suggests and every clue that is opened up as they
progress; they hunt down the facts until they are reasonably sure that
they have secured the whole story. The result may not be worth writing,
or it may be worth a place on the front page, but the reporter must get
to the bottom of it. Whether on a beat or on an assignment every
reporter must have his ears open for a tip of some unexpected story and
must secure the facts or inform the editor at once. It is in this way
that a paper gets a scoop, or beat, on its rivals by printing a story
before the other papers have heard of it.
=5. Interviews for Facts.=--To cover an assignment and secure the facts
of a story is not at all easy. If the reporter could be a personal
witness of the happening which he is to report, the task would be
simpler. But, outside the case of expected events, he rarely hears of
the occurrence until after it is past and the excitement has subsided.
Then he must find the persons who witnessed the occurrence or who know
the facts, and get the story from them. Perhaps he has to see a dozen
people to get the information he wants. Getting facts from people in
this way is called interviewing--interviewing for facts, as
distinguished from formal interviewing for the purpose of securing a
statement or an opinion that is to be printed with the name of the man
who utters it. Although a dozen interviews may be necessary for a
single story, not one of them is mentioned in the story, for they are of
no importance except in the facts that they supply.
For example, suppose a reporter is sent out to get the story of a fire
that has started an hour or two before he goes on duty. All that his
editor gives him is the tip from the fire department, or from some other
source, of a fire at such-and-such an address. When he arrives at the
scene there is nothing left but smoldering ruins with perhaps an engine
throwing a stream on the smoking débris and a few by-standers still
loitering about. He can see with his own eyes what kind of building has
burned, and how completely it has been destroyed. A by-stander may be
able to tell him who occupied the building or what it was used for, but
he must hunt for some one else who can give him the exact facts that his
paper wants. Perhaps he can find the tenant and learn from him what his
loss has been. The tenant can give him the name of the owner and may be
able to tell him something about the origin of the fire. He must find
the owner to get the value of the building and the amount of insurance
carried. Perhaps he cannot find any of these people and must ask the
fire chief or some one else to give him what facts and estimates he can.
If the fire is at all serious he must find out who was killed or
injured and get their names and addresses and the nature of their injury
or the manner of their death. Perhaps he can talk to some of the people
who had narrow escapes, or interview the friends or relatives of the
dead. Everywhere he turns new clues open up, and he must follow each one
of them in turn until he is sure that he has all the facts.
=6. Point of View.=--The task would be easy if every one could tell the
reporter just the facts that his paper wants. But in the confusion every
one is excited and fairly bubbling over with rumors and guesses which
may later turn out to be false. Each person who is interested in the
incident sees and tells it only from his own point of view. Obviously
the reporter's paper does not want the facts from many different points
of view, nor even from the point of view of the fire department, of the
owner, or of the woman who was rescued from the third floor. The paper
wants the story from a single point of view--the point of view of an
uninterested spectator. Consequently the reporter must get the facts
through interviews with a dozen different people, discount possible
exaggeration and falsity due to excitement, make allowances for the
different points of view, harmonize conflicting statements, and sift
from the mass what seems to him to be the truth. Then he must write the
story from the uninterested point of view of the public, which wants to
hear the exact facts of the fire told in an unprejudiced way. Never does
the story mention any of the interviews behind it except when the
reporter is afraid of some statement and wants to put the responsibility
upon the person who gave it to him. And so the finished story that we
read in the next morning's paper is the composite story of the fire
chief, the owner, the tenant, the man who discovered the fire, the widow
who was driven from her little flat, the little girl who was carried
down a ladder through the smoke, the man who lost everything he had in
the world, and the cynic who watched the flames from behind the
fireline--all massed together and sifted and retold in an impersonal way
from the point of view of a by-stander who has been everywhere through
the flames and has kept his brain free from the terror and excitement of
it all.
The same is true of every story that is printed in a newspaper. Every
story must be secured in the same way--whether it is the account of a
business transaction, a bank robbery, a political scandal, a murder, a
reception, or a railroad wreck. Seldom is it possible to find any one
person who knows all the facts just as the newspaper wants them, and
many a story that is worth but a stickful in the first edition is the
result of two hours' running about town, half a dozen telephone calls,
and a dozen interviews. That is the way the news is gathered, and that
is the part of the reporter's work that he must learn by experience. But
after all the gathering is finished and he has the facts, the writing of
the story remains. If the reporter knows how to write the facts when he
has them, his troubles are cut in half, for nowadays a reporter who
writes well is considered a more valuable asset than one who cannot
write and simply has a nose for news.
=7. News-Gathering Agencies.=--This account of news gathering is of
course told from the point of view of the reporter. Naturally it assumes
a different aspect in the editor's eyes. Much of the day's news does not
have to be gathered at all. A steady stream of news flows in ready for
use from the great news-gathering agencies, the Associated Press, the
United Press, the City Press, etc., and from correspondents. Many
stories are merely summaries of speeches, bulletins, announcements,
pamphlets and other printed matter that comes to the editorial office,
and many stories come already written. Almost everybody is looking for
publicity in these days and the editor does not always have to hunt the
news with an army of ferrets. Coöperation in news gathering has
simplified the whole matter. But it all has to be written and edited.
That is why great reporters are no longer praised for their cleverness
in worming their way to elusive facts, but for their ability to write a
good story. That is why we no longer hear so much about beats and scoops
but more about clean copy and "literary masterpieces."
=8. How the Correspondent Works.=--The correspondent gathers news very
much as the reporter does, but he does it without the help of a city
editor. He must be his own director and keep his own book of tips, for
he has no one to make out his assignments beforehand. He has to watch
for what news he can get by himself and send it to his paper of his own
accord, except occasionally when his paper instructs him to cover a
particularly large story. But he gets his tips and runs down his facts
just as a reporter does. Just as much alertness and just as much ability
to write are required of him.
The correspondent's work is made more difficult by what is called news
values. Distance affects the importance of the facts that he secures and
the length of the stories he writes. He must weigh every event for its
interest to readers a hundred or a thousand miles away. What may be of
immense importance in his community may have no interest at all for
readers outside that community. He must see everything with the eyes of
a stranger, and this must influence his whole work of news gathering
and news writing. This matter will be taken up at greater length in the
next chapter.
=9. Correspondent's Relation to His Paper.=--The relations of a
correspondent to the paper or news association to which he is sending
news can best be learned by experience. Every paper has different rules
for its correspondents and different directions in regard to the sort of
news it wants. The rules regarding the mailing of copy and the sending
of stories or queries by telegraph are usually sent out in printed form
by each individual paper to its correspondents. But while gathering news
and writing stories for a distant paper, a correspondent must always
regard himself as a reporter and write his stories in the form in which
they are to appear in print if he wishes to remain correspondent for any
length of time. The following rules are taken from the "INSTRUCTIONS TO
CORRESPONDENTS" sent out on a printed card to the correspondents of the
St. Louis _Star_:
QUERY BY WIRE ON ALL STORIES you consider are worth
telegraphing, unless you are absolutely certain _The Star_
wants you to send the story without query, or in case of a big
story breaking suddenly near edition time. If you have not time
to query, get a reply and send such matter as might be ordered
before the next edition time; send the story in the shortest
possible number of words necessary to tell it, asking if
additional matter is desired.
Write your queries so they can be understood. Never send a
"blind" query. If John Smith, a confirmed bachelor, whose age is
80 years, elopes with and marries the daughter of the woman who
jilted him when he was a youth, say so in as few words as
possible, but be sure to convey the dramatic news worth of the
story in your query. Do not say, "Bachelor elopes with girl,
daughter of woman he knew a long time ago." In itself the story
which this query tells might be worth printing, but it would not
be half so good a story as the elopement of John Smith, 80,
bachelor, woman hater, with the daughter of his old sweetheart.
When a good story breaks close to edition time and the
circumstances justify it, use the long-distance telephone, but
first be reasonably certain _The Star_ will not get the story
from another source.
Write your stories briefly. _The Star_ desires to remunerate its
correspondents according to the worth of a story and not for so
many words. One good story of 200 words with the right "punch"
in the introduction is worth a dozen strung over as many dozen
pages of copy paper with the real story in the last paragraph of
each. Tell your story in simple, every-day conversational words:
quit when you have finished. Relegate the details. Unless it is
a case of identification in a murder mystery, or some similar
big story, no one cares about the color of the man's hair. Get
the principal facts in the first paragraph--stop soon after.
Send as much of your stuff as possible by mail, especially if
you have the story in the late afternoon and are near enough to
St. Louis to reach _The Star_ by 9 o'clock the next morning. If
necessary, send the letter special delivery.
Don't stop working on a good story when you have all the facts;
if there are photographs to be obtained, get the photographs,
especially if the principals in the story are persons of
standing, and more especially if they are women.
Correspondents will appreciably increase their worth to _The
Star_ and enhance their earning capacity by observing these
rules.
II
NEWS VALUES
Before any one can hope to write for a newspaper he must know something
about news values--something about the essence of interest that makes
one story worth a column and cuts down another, of equal importance from
other points of view, to a stickful. He must recognize the relative
value of facts so that he can distinguish the significant part of his
story and feature it accordingly. The question is a delicate one and yet
a very reasonable and logical one. The ideal of a newspaper, according
to present-day ethics, is to print news. The daily press is no longer a
golden treasury of contemporary literature, not even, perhaps, an
exponent of political principles. Its primary purpose is to report
contemporary history--to keep us informed concerning the events that are
taking place each day in the world about us.
To this idea is added another. A newspaper must be interesting. In these
days of many newspapers few readers are satisfied with merely being
informed; they want to be informed in a way that interests them. To
this demand every one connected with a newspaper office tries to cater.
It is the defense of the sensational yellow journals and it is the
reason for everything in the daily press. There is so much to read that
people will not read things that do not interest them, and the paper
that succeeds is the paper that interests the greatest number of
readers. Circulation cannot be built up by printing uninteresting stuff
that the majority of readers are not interested in, and circulation is
necessary to success.
This desire to interest readers is behind the whole question of news
values. News is primarily the account of the latest events, but, more
than that, it is the account of the latest events that interest readers
who are not connected with these events. Further than that, it is the
account of the latest events that interest the greatest number of
readers. Susie Brown may have sprained her ankle. The fact is
absorbingly interesting to Susie; it is even rather interesting to her
family and friends, even to her enemies. If she is well known in the
little town in which she lives her accident may be interesting enough to
the townspeople for the local weekly to print a complete account of it.
However, the event is interesting only to people who know Susie, and
after all they do not comprise a very large number. Hence her accident
has no news value outside the local weekly. On the other hand, had Susie
sprained her ankle in some very peculiar manner, the accident might be
of interest to people who do not know Susie. Suppose that she had
tripped on her gown as she was ascending the steps of the altar to be
married. Such an accident would be very unusual, almost unheard of.
People in general are interested in unusual things, and many, many
readers would be interested in reading about Susie's unusual accident
although they did not know Susie or even the town in which she lives.
Such a story would be the report of a late event that would interest
many people; hence it would have a certain amount of news value. Of
course, the reader loses sight of Susie in reading of her accident--it
might as well have been Mary Jones--but that is because Susie has no
news value in herself. That is another matter.
=1. Classes of Readers.=--Realizing that his story must be of interest
to the greatest number of people, the reporter must remember the sort of
people for whom he is writing. That complicates the whole matter. If he
were writing for a single class of readers he could easily give them the
news that would interest them. But he is not; he is writing for many
classes of people, for all classes of people. And he must interest them
all. He is writing for the business man in his office, for the wife in
the home, for the ignorant, for the highly educated, for the rich and
the poor, for the old and the young, for doctors, lawyers, bankers,
laborers, ministers, and women. All of them buy his paper to hear the
latest news told in a way that interests them, and he has to cater to
each and to all of them. If he were simply writing for business men he
would give them many columns of financial news, but that would not
interest tired laborers. An extended account of the doings of a
Presbyterian convention would not attract the great class of men with
sporting inclinations, and a story of a very pretty exhibition of
scientific boxing would not appeal to the wife at home. They all buy the
paper, and they all want to be interested, and the paper must,
therefore, print stories that interest at least the majority of them.
That is the question of news values. The news must be the account of the
latest events that interest the greatest number of readers of all
classes.
This search for the universally-interesting news is the reason behind
the sensational papers. Although the interests of any individual differ
in almost every aspect from the interests of his neighbor, there is one
sort of news that interests them both, that interests every human being.
That is the news that appeals to the emotions, to the heart. It is the
news that deals with human life--human nature--human interest news the
papers call it. In it every human being is interested. However trivial
may be the event, if it can be described in a way that will make the
reader feel the point of view of the human beings who suffered or
struggled or died or who were made happy in the event, every other human
being will read it with interest. Human sympathy makes one want to feel
joy and pain from the standpoint of others. Naturally that sort of news
is always read; naturally the paper that devotes itself to such news is
always read and is always successful as far as circulation and profits
go. The papers that have that ideal of news behind them and forsake
every other ideal for it are called sensational papers. Whether they are
good or not is another question.
With this idea of what news values means and the idea that news is worth
while only when it interests the largest number of people of all
classes, we may try to look for the things that make news interesting to
the greatest number of people of all classes. The reporter must know not
only what news is, but what makes it news. He must be able to see the
things in a story that will interest the greatest number of people of
all classes. These are many and intricate.
=2. Timeliness.=--In the first place, news must be new. A story must
have timeliness. Our readers want to know what happened to-day, for
yesterday and last week are past and gone. They want to be up to the
minute in their information on current events. Therefore a story that is
worth printing to-day will not be worth printing to-morrow or, at most,
on the day after to-morrow. Events must be chronicled just as soon as
they happen. Furthermore, the story itself must show that it is new. It
must tell the reader at once that the event which it is chronicling
happened to-day or last night--at least since the last edition of the
paper. That is why the reporter must never fail to put the time in the
introduction of his story. Editors grow gray-headed trying to keep up
with the swift passing of events, and they are always very careful to
tell their readers that the events which they are chronicling are the
latest events. That is the reason why every editor hates the word
"yesterday" and tries to get "to-day" or "this morning" into the lead of
every story. Hence, to the newspaper, everything that happened since
midnight last night is labeled "this morning," and everything that
happened since six o'clock yesterday afternoon is labeled "last night."
Anything before that hour must be labeled "yesterday," but it goes in as
"late yesterday afternoon," if it possibly can. Hence the first
principle of news values is timeliness--news is news only because it
just happened and can be spoken of as one of the events of "to-day" or
of "late yesterday."
=3. Distance.=--Distance is another factor in news values. In spite of
fast trains and electric telegraphs human beings are clannish and local
in their interests. They are interested mainly in things and persons
that they know, and news from outside their ken must be of unusual
significance to attract them. They like to read about things that they
have seen and persons that they know, because they are slow to exert
their imaginations enough to appreciate things that they do not know
personally. Hence every newspaper is primarily local, even though it is
a metropolitan daily, and news from a distance plays a very subordinate
part. It has been said that New York papers cannot see beyond the
Alleghanies; it is equally true that most papers cannot see more than a
hundred miles from the printing office, except in the case of national
news. Any newspaper's range of news sources goes out from the editorial
room in concentric circles. Purely personal news must come from within
the range of the paper's general circulation, because people do not care
to read purely personal news about persons whom they do not know. Other
news is limited ordinarily to the region with which the paper's readers
are personally acquainted--the state, perhaps--because subscribers
unconsciously wish to hear about places with which they are personally
acquainted. Any news that comes from outside this larger circle must be
nation-wide or very unusual in its interest. A story that may be worth a
column in El Paso, Texas, would not be worth printing in New York
because El Paso is hardly more than a name to most New York newspaper
readers. In the same way, the biggest stories in New York are not worth
anything in Texas, because Texas readers are not personally interested
in New York--they cannot say, "Yes, I know that building; I walked down
that street the other day; oh, you can't tell me anything about the
subway." News is primarily local, and the first thing a correspondent
must learn is how to distinguish the stories that are purely local in
their interest from those that would be worth printing a hundred miles
away in a paper read by people who do not know the places or persons
involved in the story. Colonel Smith may be a very big frog in the
little puddle of Smith's Corners, and his doings may be big news to the
weeklies all over his county, but he has to do something very unusual
before his name is worth a line in a paper two counties away. He is
nothing but a name to people who do not know him or know of him, and
therefore they are not interested in him. Every correspondent must watch
for the stories that have something more than a local interest, some
element of news in them that will carry them over the obstacle of
distance and make them interesting to any reader.
It would be impossible to analyze news values to the extent of telling
every conceivable element of interest that will overcome the obstacle of
distance. Yet there are certain elements that always make a newspaper
story interesting to any one.
=4. Loss of life.=--One of these is the loss of human life. For some
strange reason every human being is interested in the thought of death.
Just as soon as a story mentions death it is worth printing, and if it
has a number of deaths to tell about it is worth printing anywhere. Any
fire, any railroad wreck, or any other disaster in which a number of
persons are killed or injured makes a story that is worth sending
anywhere. There seems to be a joy for the reader in the mere number of
fatalities. A story that can begin with "Ten people were killed," or
"Seven men met their death," attracts a reader's interest at once. As a
very natural result, and justly, too, newspapers have been broadly
accused of exaggeration for the sake of a large number. But at present
many papers are inclined to underestimate rather than overestimate,
perhaps to avoid this accusation. In a number of instances in the past
year, among them the Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, the first
figures were smaller than the official count printed later. That does
not mean, however, that newspapers do not want stories involving loss of
life. Any story which involves a large number of fatalities will carry a
long distance, if for no other reason.
=5. Big Names.=--Another element of news values is the interest in
prominent people. The mere mention of a man or a woman who is known
widely attracts attention. Although Colonel Smith of Smith's Corners has
to do something very unusual to get his name in any paper outside his
county, the slightest thing that President Taft does is printed in every
paper in the country. It is simply because of our interest in the man
himself. Some names give a story news value because the names are widely
known politically or financially, some names because they are simply
notorious. But any name that is recognized at once, for any reason,
gives a story news value.
=6. Property Loss.=--Akin to man's love for any account that involves
large loss of human life, is his love of any story that tells about a
huge loss of property. The mere figures seem to have a charm; any story
that can begin with awesome figures, like "Two million dollars," "One
hundred automobiles," "Ten city blocks," has news value. Hence any story
that involves a large loss that can be expressed in figures has the
power to carry a great distance.
=7. Unusualness.=--It is safe to say that newspaper readers are
interested in anything unusual. It does not matter whether it is a
thing, a person, an action, a misfortune; so long as it is strange and
out of the range of ordinary lives, it is interesting. Many, if not
most, newspaper stories have nothing but the element of strangeness in
them to give them news value, but if they are sufficiently strange and
unusual they may be copied all over the country. An unusual origin or an
unusual rescue will give an unimportant fire great news value. And so
with every other kind of story.
=8. Human Interest.=--Along with the element of the strange and unusual,
goes the human interest element. Any story that will make us laugh or
make us cry has news value. Hundreds of magazines are issued monthly
with nothing in them but fictitious stories that are intended to arouse
our emotions, and newspapers are beginning to realize that they can
interest their readers in the same way. No life is so prosaic that it is
not full of incidents that make one laugh or cry, and when these
stories can be told in a way that will make any reader feel the same
emotions, they have news value that will carry them a long distance.
Obviously their success depends very largely upon the way they are told.
=9. Personal Appeal.=--Another element that may give a story news value
is that of personal appeal or application to the reader's own daily
life. Men are primarily egoistic and selfish and nothing interests them
more than things that affect them personally. They can read complacently
and without interest of the misfortunes and joys of others, but just as
soon as anything affects their own daily lives, even a little, they want
to hear about it. Perhaps the price of butter has gone up a few cents or
the gas company has reduced its rates from eighty cents to
seventy-seven. Every reader is interested at once, for the news affects
his own daily life. Sometimes this personal appeal is due merely to the
reader's familiarity with the persons or places mentioned in the story;
sometimes it is due to the story's application to his business life, his
social or religious activities, or to any phase of his daily existence.
That is the reason why political news interests every one, for we all
feel that the management of the government has an influence on our own
lives. The story of any political maneuver--especially if it is one
that may be looked upon as bad or good--carries farther than any other
story. Show that your story tells of something that has even the
slightest effect on the lives of a large number of people and it needs
no other element to give it news value.
=10. Local Reasons.=--These factors and many others give news stories a
news value that will carry them a long distance and make them
interesting in communities far from their source. Many local reasons may
enhance the value of a story for local papers. A paper's policy or some
campaign that it is waging may give an otherwise unimportant event a
tremendous significance. If an unimportant person is slightly injured
while leaving a trolley car the story is hardly worth a line of type.
But if such an item should come to a newspaper while it is carrying on a
campaign against the local street railway company, the story would
probably be written and printed in great detail. Any slight occurrence
that may be in line with a paper's political beliefs would receive an
amount of space far out of proportion with its ordinary news worth. News
value is a very changeable and indefinite thing, and there are countless
reasons why any given story should be of interest to a large number of
readers. And the possibility of interesting a large number of readers is
the basis of news value.
=11. The Feature.=--In connection with the study of news values the
question of feature is important. In editorial offices one is constantly
hearing the word "feature," and reporters are constantly admonished to
"play up the feature" of their stories. Feature is the word that editors
use to signify the essence of news value. Every story that is printed is
printed because of some fact in it that makes it interesting--gives it
news value. The element in the story that makes it interesting and worth
printing is the feature. The feature may be some prominent name, a large
list of fatalities, a significant amount of property destroyed, or
merely the unusualness of the incident. This feature is the element that
makes the story news; therefore it is used to attract attention to the
story. Every newspaper story displays like a placard in its headlines
the reason why it was printed--the element in it that makes it
interesting. "Playing up the feature" is simply the act of bringing this
feature to the front so that it will attract attention to the story.
Just how this is done we shall see later. But when, as a reporter, you
are looking for a feature to play up in your lead, remember that the
feature to be played up is the thing in the story that gives the story
news value. And few stories have more than one claim to news value, more
than one feature.
III
NEWSPAPER TERMS
The newspaper vernacular that is used in the editorial and press rooms
of any daily paper is a curious mixture of literary abbreviations and
technical printing terms. It is the result of the strange mingling of
the literary trade of writing with the mechanical trade of setting type.
For that reason a green reporter has difficulty in understanding the
instructions that he receives until he has been in the office long
enough to learn the office slang. It would be impossible to list all of
the expressions that might be heard in one day, but a knowledge of the
commonest words will enable a reporter to get the drift of his editor's
instructions.
When a young man secures a position as reporter for a newspaper he
begins as a _cub reporter_ and is usually said to be on the _staff_ of
his paper. His sphere of activity is confined to the _editorial_ room,
where the news is written; his relations with the _business office_,
where advertising, circulation, and other business matters are handled,
consists of the weekly duty of drawing his pay. His chief enemies are in
the _printing office_ where his literary efforts are _set up_ in type
and printed. His superiors are called _editors_ and exist in varying
numbers, depending upon the size of his paper. The man who directs the
reporters is usually called the _city editor_, or perhaps the _day_ or
_night city editor_; above him there are managing editors and other
persons in authority with whom the cub is not concerned; and the favored
mortals who enjoy a room by themselves and write nothing but editorials
are called editors or _editorial writers_. There may also be a
_telegraph_ editor, a _sporting_ editor, a _Sunday_ editor, and many
other editors; or if the paper is small and poor all of these editors
may be condensed into one very busy man. On a city daily of average size
there are _desk men_, or _copyreaders_, who work under editorial
direction but feel superior to the reporter because they correct his
literary efforts.
The reporter's work consists of gathering and writing news. In the
office this is called _covering_ and writing _stories_. He is ordinarily
put on a _beat_, or _run_; this is simply a daily route or round of news
sources which he follows as regularly as a policeman walks his beat. The
reporter's work on a special story outside his beat is called an
_assignment_. Any hint that he may receive concerning a bit of news is
called a _tip_. Any bit of news that he secures to the exclusion of his
paper's rivals is called a _beat_, or a _scoop_.
Everything that is written for the paper, whether it be a two-line
personal item or a two-column report, is called a _story_, or a _yarn_,
and from the time the story is written until it appears in the printed
paper it is called _copy_. If the story is well written and needs few
corrections it is called _clean copy_. After the story is written it is
turned over to the copyreader to be _edited_. The copyreader corrects it
and writes the headlines or _heads_; then he sends it to the composing
room to be set in type by the _compositor_. The story itself is usually
set up on a linotype machine and the heads are set up by hand. For the
sake of keeping the two parts of the copy together the reporter or the
copyreader ordinarily gives the story a name, such as "Fire No. 2"; the
bit of lead on which the name is printed is called a _slug_ and the
story is said to be _slugged_. If at any time in its journey from the
reporter's pencil to the printed page, the editor decides not to print
the story, he _kills_ it; otherwise he _runs_ it, or allows it to go
into the paper. When the story is in type, an impression, or _proof_, is
taken of it, and this proof, still called copy, comes back to the
copyreader or the proofreader for the correction of typographical
errors. The gathering together of all of the day's stories into the form
of the final printed page is called _making up_ the paper; this is
usually done by some one of the editors. In like manner, the finished
aspect of the paper is called the _make-up_.
Some stories are said to be _big stories_ because of unusual news value.
When any news comes unexpectedly it is said to _break_; and when any
story comes in beforehand and must be held over, it is said to be
_released_ on the day on which it may be printed. The first paragraph of
any story is called the _lead_ (pronounced "leed"); the word _lead_ is
also used to designate several introductory paragraphs that are tacked
on at the beginning of a long story, which may be of the nature of a
_running story_ (as the running story of a football game), or may be
made up of several parts, written by one or more reporters. In general,
that part of a story which presents the gist or summary of the entire
story at the beginning is called the _lead_. The most interesting thing
in the story, the part that gives it news value, is called the
_feature_, and _playing up the feature_ consists in telling the most
interesting thing in the first line of the lead or in the headline. An
entire story is said to be _played up_ if it is given a prominent place
in the paper. A _feature story_ is either a story that is thus played
up or a story that is written for some other reason than news value,
such as human interest. When a story is rewritten to give a new interest
to old facts it is called a _rewrite story_; when it is rewritten to
include new facts or developments, it is called a _follow-up_,
_second-day_, or _follow story_.
Because of the close relation between the editorial room and the
printing office many printing terms are commonly heard about the
editorial room. All copy is measured by the _column_ and by the
_stickful_. A column is usually a little less than 1,500 words and a
stickful is the amount of type that can be set in a compositor's
_stick_, the metal frame used in setting type by hand--about two inches
or 100 words. A bit of copy that is set up with a border or a row of
stars about it is said to be _boxed_. Whenever copy is set with extra
space between the lines it is said to be _leaded_ (pronounced
"leded")--the name is taken from the piece of lead that is placed
between the lines of type. The reporter must gradually learn the names
of the various kinds of type and the various proofreader's signs that
are used to indicate the way in which the type is to be set, for the
whole work of writing the news is governed and limited by the mechanical
possibilities of the printing office. The commonest signs used by the
proofreader or the copyreader, together with instructions for preparing
copy, are given in the Style Book at the end of this volume. (A complete
list of proofreader's signs can be found in the back of any large
dictionary.) _Style_ is a word which editors use to cover a multitude of
rules, arbitrary or otherwise, concerning capitalization, punctuation,
abbreviation, etc. A paper that uses many capital letters is said to
follow an _up_ style, and a paper that uses small letters instead of
capitals whenever there is a choice is said to follow a _down_ style.
Every newspaper has its own style and usually prints its rules in a
Style Book; the Style Book given in this volume has been compiled from
many representative newspaper style books. It sets forth an average
style and the beginner is advised to follow it closely in his practice
writing--for, as editors say, "uniformity is better than a strict
following of style."
IV
THE NEWS STORY FORM
When we come to the writing of the news we find that there are many
sorts of stories that must be written. In the newspaper office they are
called simply stories without distinction. For the purpose of study they
may be classified to some extent, but this classification must not be
taken as hard and fast. The commonest kind of story is the simple news
story. Practically all newspaper reports are news stories, but as
distinguished from other kinds of reports the simple news story is the
report of some late event or occurrence. It is usually concerned with
unexpected news, and is the commonest kind of story in any newspaper. It
is to be distinguished from reports of speeches, interview stories,
court reports, social news, dramatic news, sporting news, human-interest
stories, and all the rest. The distinction is largely one of form and
does not exist to any great extent in a newspaper office where all
stories are simply "stories."
The simple news story is probably the most variable part of a newspaper.
Given the same facts, each individual reporter will write the story in
his individual way and each editor will change it to suit his individual
taste. No two newspapers have exactly the same ideal form of news story
and no newspaper is able to live up to its individual ideal in each
story.
But there are general tendencies. Certain things are true of all news
stories; whether the story be the baldest recital of facts or the most
sensational featuring of an imaginary thrill in a commonplace happening,
certain characteristics are always present. And these characteristics
can always be traced to one cause--the effort to catch and hold the
reader's interest. When a busy American glances over his newspaper while
he sips his breakfast coffee or while he clings to a strap on the way to
his office, he reads only the stories that catch his interest--and he
reads down the column in any one story only so long as his interest is
maintained. Hence the ideal news story is one which will catch the
reader's attention by its beginning and hold his interest to the very
end. This is the principle of all newspaper writing.
The interest depends, in a large measure, on the way the facts are
presented. True, certain facts are in themselves more interesting to a
casual reader than others, but just as truly other less interesting
facts may be made as interesting through the reporter's skill. The most
interesting of stories may lose its interest if poorly presented, and
facts of the most commonplace nature may be made attractive enough to
hold the reader to the last word. The aim of every reporter and of every
editor is to make every story so attractive and interesting that the
most casual reader cannot resist reading it.
In the old days news stories were written in the logical order of events
just like any other narrative, but constant change has brought about a
new form, as different and individual as any other form of expression.
Unlike any other imaginable piece of writing, the news story discloses
its most interesting facts first. It does not lead the reader up to a
startling bit of news by a tantalizing suspense in an effort to build up
a surprise for him; it tells its most thrilling content first and trusts
to his interest to lead him on through the details that should logically
precede the real news. Therefore every editor admonishes his reporters
"to give the gist of the news first and the details later."
There are other reasons for this peculiar reversal of the logical order
of narrative. Few readers have time to read the whole of every story,
and yet they want to get the news--in the shortest possible time.
Therefore the newspaper very kindly tells the important part of each
story at the beginning. Then if the reader cares to hear the details he
can read the rest of the story; but he gets the news, anyway. Again, if
the exigencies of making up the stories into a paper of mechanically
limited space require that a story be cut down, the editor may slash off
a paragraph or two at the end without depriving the story of its
interest. Imagine the difficulty of cutting down a story that is told in
its logical order! If the real news of the story were in the last
paragraph it would go in the slashing, and what would be left? Whereas,
if the gist of the story comes first the editor may run any number of
paragraphs or even the first paragraph alone and still have a complete
story.
The arrangement of news stories in American newspapers is thus a very
natural one, resulting from the exigencies of the business. Just how to
fit every story to this arrangement is a difficult task. However, there
are certain rules that the reporter may apply to each story, and these
are very simple.
In the first place, almost every story has a feature--there is some one
thing in it that is out of the ordinary, something that gives it
interest and news value beyond the interest in the incident behind it.
No two stories have the same interesting features; if they had, only
one of them would be worth printing and that would be the first. This
extraordinary feature the reporter must see at once. If a building burns
he must see quickly what incident in the occurrence will be of interest
to readers who are reading of many fires every day. If John Smith falls
off a street car the reporter must discover some interesting fact in
connection with Mr. Smith's misfortune that will be new and attractive
to readers who do not know John and are bored with accounts of other
Smiths' accidents. The accident itself may be interesting, but the part
of the accident that is out of the ordinary--the thing that gives the
accident news value--is the feature of the story, and the reporter must
tell it first.
Thoroughly determined to tell the most interesting part, the gist, of
his story in the first paragraph, the reporter must remember that there
are certain other things about the incident that the reader wants to
know just as quickly. There are certain questions which arise in the
reader's mind when the occurrence is suggested, and these questions must
be answered as quickly as they are asked. The questions usually take the
form of _when?_ _where?_ _what?_ _who?_ _how?_ _why?_ If a man falls off
the street car we are eager to know at once who he was, although we
probably do not know him, anyway; where it happened; when it happened;
how he fell; and why he fell. If there is a fire we immediately ask what
burned; where it was; when it burned; how it burned; and what caused it
to burn. And the reporter must answer these questions with the same
breath that tells us that a man fell off the car or that there was any
fire at all.
The effort to answer these questions at once has led to the peculiar
form of introduction characteristic of every newspaper story. Newspaper
people call it the lead. It is really nothing but the statement of the
briefest possible answers to all these questions in one sentence or one
short paragraph. It tells the whole story in its baldest aspects and
aims to satisfy the reader who wants only the gist of the story and does
not care for the details. When all his questions have been answered in
one breath he is ready to read the details one at a time, but he won't
be satisfied if he must read all about how the fire was discovered
before he is told what building burned, when it burned, etc. For
example:
| Fire of unknown origin caused the |
|practical destruction of the famous old |
|"Crow's Nest," at Tenth and Cedar |
|streets, perhaps the best known and |
|oldest landmark in the Second ward, |
|yesterday afternoon.--_Milwaukee Free |
|Press._ |
This is the lead of an ordinary news story--a newspaper report of a
fire. The lead begins with "Fire" because the story has no unusual
feature--no element in it that is more interesting than the fact that
there was a fire. The reporter considers "Fire" the most important part
of his story and begins with it. As soon as we read the word "Fire" we
ask, "When?"--"Where?"--"What?"--"Why?"--"How?" The reporter answers us
in the same sentence with his announcement, "yesterday afternoon"--"at
Tenth and Cedar Streets"--"the famous old 'Crow's Nest,' perhaps the
best known and oldest landmark in the Second ward"--"unknown origin."
_How_ is not worth answering, in this case, beyond the statement that
the destruction was practically complete. Thus the reporter has told us
his bit of news and answered our most obvious questions about it at the
very beginning of his story--in one sentence. According to newspaper
rules this is a good lead. The order of the answers will be considered
later. For the present we are concerned only with the facts that the
lead must contain.
V
THE SIMPLE FIRE STORY
The simplest news story is the story which has no feature--which has no
fact in it more important than the incident which it reports--e.g., the
fire at the end of the last chapter. If we recall the various elements
of news value we note that any incident may be given greater news value
by the presence of some unusual or interesting feature--a great loss of
life, an unusual time, a strikingly large loss of property, or simply a
well-known name. Such a story is called a story with a feature, because
its interest depends not so much on the incident itself as upon the
unusual feature within the incident. On the other hand, many news
stories do not have features. Many stories are worth printing simply
because of the incident which they report, without any unusual feature
within them. For example, a building may burn with no loss of life, no
great loss of property, and no striking occurrence in connection with
the burning. Such a fire is worth reporting, but there is no fact in
the story more interesting than the fact that there was a fire; the
story has no feature.
The leads of these two kinds of stories are different. When a story has
a feature it is customary to play up that feature in the first line of
the lead. If the story has no feature, is simply the record of a
commonplace event, the lead merely announces the incident and answers
the reader's questions about it.
The commonest of featureless stories is the simple fire story in which
nothing out of the ordinary happens, no one is killed, no striking
rescues take place, and no tremendous amount of property is destroyed.
This may be taken as typical of all featureless stories. The reporter,
in writing a report of such a fire, merely answers in the lead the
questions _when_, _where_, _what_, _why_, and perhaps _how_, that the
reader asks concerning the fire. The most striking part of the story is
that there was a fire; hence the story begins with "Fire." For example:
| Fire today wrecked the top of the |
|six-story warehouse at 393 to 395 |
|Washington street, used by the United |
|States army as a medical supply |
|store-room for the Department of the |
|East. Capt. Edwin Wolf, who is in charge |
|of the warehouse, says the loss on tents, |
|blankets, cots, and other bedding stored |
|on the floors of the building was |
|large.--_New York Mail._ |
As one reads down through the rest of the story he finds nothing more
striking than the fact that there was a fire. Therefore there is no
particular feature. No one was killed; no one was injured; the loss was
not extraordinary for a New York fire--nothing in the story is of
greater interest than the mere fact that there was a fire. Hence the
story begins with the word "Fire." Notice that it does not begin "A
fire" or "The fire"--for the simple reason that the word _fire_ does not
need an article before it. The editor will also tell you that it is not
considered good to begin a story with an article, for the beginning is
the most important part of a story and it is foolish to waste that
advantageous place on unimportant words.
The first word tells the reader that there has been a fire. He
immediately asks where?--what burned?--when?--how much was lost? And the
reporter proceeds to answer his questions in their order of importance.
The reporter who wrote this story apparently thought that the time was
of greatest importance and slipped it in at once--"today." He might just
as well have left the time until the end of the sentence because it is
not of very great interest. He considers the question "_Where_" of next
importance, and answers with "the top of the six-story warehouse at 393
to 395 Washington Street." The question "what?" he answers with a
clause, "used by the United States army as a medical supply store-room
for the Department of the East." He does not try to answer the question
"_why_?" because, as the rest of the story tells us, no one knew exactly
what caused the fire. And as for the "_How_?" there is nothing
extraordinary in the way that it burned beyond the fact that it burned.
Thus, in one sentence, he has answered all four questions about the
fire, except a little query concerning the amount of the loss. That he
considers worth a separate sentence of details.
This is not a perfect lead. Many editors would consider it faulty, but
it illustrates one way of writing the lead of a featureless fire story.
Obviously there are faults; for instance, the time is given an undue
amount of emphasis and the cause is omitted.
Suppose that we construct another lead from the same story--a lead which
would be more in accordance with the logic of newspaper writing. We
shall begin with the word "fire," but after it we shall slip in a little
mention of the cause since to the reader not directly acquainted with
the property that point is always of the greatest importance. Then we
shall tell where the fire was and after that what was burned. And last
of all we shall give the time since that is of least importance to the
average reader. This would be the result:
| Fire of unknown origin wrecked the top |
|of the six-story warehouse at 393-395 |
|Washington street, used by the United |
|States army as a medical supply |
|store-room for the Department of the |
|East, destroying a large number of tents, |
|blankets, cots, and other bedding, today. |
We might as well have put the _what_ before the _where_ or altered the
lead in any other way. But we would always begin with the word "fire"
and answer all the questions that the reader might ask--in one short
simple sentence. This constitutes our lead. We have told the casual
reader what he wants to know about the fire. We give him more details
about the fire if he wants to read them, but after we have stated the
case clearly in the lead we no longer reckon his time so carefully and
allow ourselves some latitude in the telling. After the lead we begin
the story from the beginning and tell it in its logical order from start
to finish, always bearing in mind that the editor may chop off a
paragraph or two at the end.
Hence the second paragraph of the story as it appeared in _The Mail_
begins:
| John Smith, a man employed in the |
|stock-room on the sixth floor, saw smoke |
|rolling out of one corner and notified |
|other employees in the building, while |
|Patrolman Hogan turned in an alarm. |
We are back at the beginning now and telling things as they came. The
next paragraph of the story tells us how they fought the fire, and the
third tells us how they finally brought it under control. The last
paragraph of the story reads:
| There are three such warehouses in the |
|country, one at St. Louis, another at San |
|Francisco, but the one in this city is by |
|far the largest. In it are kept supplies |
|for the Departments of the East, Gulf, |
|Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. |
The editor of _The Mail_ had plenty of space that day and saw fit to run
this last paragraph, but we should not have lost much had he chopped it
off. Perhaps the reporter's copy contained still another paragraph
telling about Captain Wolf, but that did not pass the editorial pencil.
Even more of the story might have been slashed without depriving us of
much of the interesting news.
Judging from the above story a newspaper account is divided into two
separate and independent parts: the lead and the detailed account. The
lead is written for the casual reader and contains all the necessary
facts about the fire; it may stand alone and constitute a story in
itself. The detailed account is written for the reader who wants to hear
more about the incident, and is written in the logical order of
events--with an eye to the danger of the editor's pencil threatening the
last paragraphs. In other words, the reporter tells his story briefly in
one paragraph and then goes back and tells it all over again in a more
detailed way. If the story is of sufficient importance the second
telling may not be sufficient and he may go back a third time to the
beginning and tell it again with still greater detail--but that is
another matter. For the present we shall consider only the lead and the
first detailed account.
There are certain other points to be noticed in the report of a
featureless fire. Under no condition should it begin with the time. Why?
Because, unless the time is of extreme interest, no one cares
particularly when the fire occurred. And if the time is of great
interest--as, for instance, if a church should burn while the
congregation is in it--then the time becomes a feature to be played up
and the story is no longer a featureless story. We are now considering
stories in which nothing is of greater interest than the mere fact that
there was a fire.
The same is true of the location. Who cares what street the fire was on
until he knows more about the fire? If the location were of such
significant importance as to be played up, the story would no longer be
a featureless story.
The paragraphing is also important. Since the lead is in itself a
separate part of the story it should always be paragraphed separately.
Do not let the beginning of the detailed account lap over into the lead,
and do not introduce into the first paragraph any facts which are not
absolutely a part of the lead--that is, facts that are absolutely
essential to a general knowledge of the fire. When once you begin to
tell the story in detail tell it logically and paragraph it logically.
Do not tell us that John Smith discovered the fire and that the loss is
$500 in the same paragraph. Take up each point separately and treat it
fully before you leave it--then begin a new paragraph for the next item.
* * * * *
To take a hypothetical case, suppose that misfortune visits the home of
John H. Jones, who lives at 79 Liberty Street. A defective flue sets his
house on fire and it burns to the ground. By inquiry we find that the
house is worth about $4,000 and is fully insured.
There is nothing particularly striking about the story. We are sorry for
Mr. Jones, but many houses worth $4,000 are set on fire by poor
chimneys and many more houses burn down. No one was hurt, no one was
killed; the most striking part of it all is that there was a fire. We
would begin with the word "Fire." Perhaps our readers would be most
interested in the cause of the fire and we shall tell them that first.
Then we shall tell them what burned, when it burned, and where it stood.
There is nothing else that a casual reader would want to know and the
lead would read:
| Fire starting in a defective chimney |
|destroyed the residence of John H. Jones, |
|79 Liberty street, at midnight last |
|night, causing a loss of $4,000, covered |
|by insurance. |
Our casual reader is satisfied. For the reader who wishes to know more
about the fire we add a paragraph or two of detail. First, we may tell
him who discovered the fire; then how the Jones family managed to
escape; and after that how the fire was extinguished, and we might slip
in a paragraph explaining just what trouble in the chimney made a fire
possible. The editor may chop off any number of paragraphs or cut the
story down to the lead, and yet our readers will get the facts and know
just exactly what was the reason for the fire bell and the red sky at
midnight last night.
VI
THE FEATURE FIRE STORY
A fire story without a feature begins with "Fire" because there is
nothing in the story more interesting than the fact that there has been
a fire. Such was the case in the burning of John Jones's house in the
last chapter. But just as soon as any part of the story becomes more
interesting than the fact that there was a fire, the story is no longer
featureless--it is a fire story with a feature, or, for the purposes of
our study, _a feature fire story_. This feature may be related to the
story in one of two ways. In the first place, the answer to some one of
the reader's questions may be the feature--e.g., the answer to _when_,
_where_, _what_, _how_, _why_, _who_. On the other hand, the feature may
be in some unexpected attendant circumstance that the reader would not
think of; for instance, loss of life, an interesting rescue, or
something of that sort. Such a distinction is entirely arbitrary and
would not be considered in a newspaper office, but it will make the
matter simpler for the purposes of study.
A. FEATURES IN ANSWERS TO READER'S CUSTOMARY QUESTIONS
(_When_, _Where_, _What_, _How_, _Why_, _Who_).
Suppose that John Jones's house did not burn in the usual way--suppose
that there is some striking incident in the story that makes it
different from other fire stories. The story has a feature. Perhaps the
answer to some one of the reader's customary questions is more
interesting than the answers to the others--so much more interesting
that it supersedes even the fact that there was a fire. Then it would be
foolish to begin with the mere word "fire" when we have something more
interesting to tell. The fire takes a second place and we begin with the
interesting fact that supersedes it. For the present we shall consider
that this interesting fact is the answer to one of the questions that
the reader always asks; for instance, why the house burned or when it
burned.
=1. Why.=--Perhaps Mr. Jones's house was set on fire in a very unusual
way. There was a little party in session at the Jones's and some one
decided to take a flash-light picture. The flash-light set fire to a
lace curtain and before any one could stop it the house was afire. Few
fires begin in that way, and our readers would be very interested in
hearing about it. The story has a feature in the answer to the reader's
_Why?_ And so we would begin our lead in this way:
| A flashlight setting fire to a lace |
|curtain started a fire which destroyed |
|the residence of John H. Jones, 79 |
|Liberty street, at 11 o'clock last night |
|and caused a loss of $4,000. |
In this way the feature is played up at the beginning of the sentence,
and yet the rest of the reader's questions are answered in the same
sentence and he knows a great deal about the fire. Or, leaving Mr. Jones
to his fate, we may give another example of an unusual cause taken from
a newspaper. This was a big fire, and yet the unusual cause was of
greater interest than the fire itself or the amount of property
destroyed:
| A tiny "joss stick," the lighted end of|
|which was no larger than a pinhead, is |
|thought to have been responsible for a |
|fire that destroyed the White City |
|Amusement Park at Broad Ripple last |
|night. The loss to the amusement company |
|is $161,000.--_Indianapolis News._ |
=2. Where.=--To return to Mr. Jones, there may have been some other
incident in the burning of his house aside from the cause that was of
exceptional interest. Let us say that his house stood in a part of the
town where a fire was to be feared. Perhaps it stood within twenty feet
of the new First Congregational Church. The burning of Jones's house
would then be insignificant in comparison to the danger to the costly
edifice beside it, and our readers would be more interested in an item
concerning their church. The answer to _Where?_ is more interesting than
the fire itself. Hence we would bury, so to speak, Mr. Jones's
misfortune behind the greater danger, and the story would read:
| Fire endangered the new First |
|Congregational Church on Liberty street, |
|erected at a cost of $100,000, when the |
|home of J. H. Jones, in the rear of the |
|church, was destroyed at midnight last |
|night. |
Or:
| The First Congregational Church, |
|recently built at a cost of $100,000, was|
|seriously threatened by a fire which |
|destroyed the residence of John H. Jones,|
|78 Liberty street, within twenty feet of |
|the church, at midnight last night. |
Turning again to the daily papers, we can find many fire stories in
which the location of the burned structure is important enough to take
the first line of the lead. Here is one:
| The Plaza Hotel had a few uncomfortable|
|moments last night when flames from a |
|building adjoining at 22 West Fifty-ninth|
|street were shooting up as high as the |
|tenth story of the hotel and the fire |
|apparatus which responded to the delayed |
|alarm was looking for the blaze several |
|blocks away.--_New York Sun._ |
=3. When.=--Sometimes the time of the fire is very interesting. John H.
Jones's house may have caught fire from a very insignificant thing and
its location may have been unimportant, but the fire may have come at an
unusual time. Perhaps Mr. Jones's daughter was being married at a quiet
home wedding in her father's house and in the midst of the ceremony the
roof of the house burst into flames. The unusual time would be
interesting; the answer to _When?_ would be the feature. We might write
the lead thus:
| During the wedding of Miss Mary Jones |
|at the home of her father, John H. Jones,|
|78 Liberty street, last night, the house |
|suddenly burst into flames and the bridal|
|party was compelled to flee into the |
|street. |
Or:
| Fire interrupted the wedding of Miss |
|Mary Jones at her father's home, 78 |
|Liberty street, last night, when the |
|house caught fire from a defective |
|chimney during the ceremony. |
The daily papers furnish many illustrations of fires at unusual
times--here is one:
|When the snowstorm was at its height |
|early this morning, a three-story brick |
|building at Nos. 4410-18 Third Avenue, |
|Brooklyn, caught fire, and the flames |
|spread rapidly to an adjoining tenement, |
|sending a small crowd of shivering |
|tenants into the icy street.--_New York |
|Post._ |
=4. What.=--(_a_) _The Burned Building._--Many fire stories have their
feature in the answer to the reader's _What?_ Not infrequently the
building itself is of great importance. Naturally "The residence of John
H. Jones" would not make a good beginning, if John Jones is not well
known, because people would be more interested in reading about a mere
fire than in reading about the residence of John H. Jones, whom they do
not know. For it must be remembered that it is the first line that
catches the reader's eye and the interest or lack of interest in the
first line determines whether or not the story is to be read. Now,
suppose that a building that is very well known burns--the City Hall,
the Albany State House, the Herald Square Theater--the mere mention of
the building will attract the reader's attention. Therefore the reporter
begins with the answer to _What?_ the name of the building, as in the
following cases:
| GLENS FALLS, N. Y., Aug. 17.--The |
|Kaatskill House, for many years a popular|
|Lake George resort, was completely |
|destroyed by fire this forenoon.--_New |
|York Times._ |
| The First M. E. Church of Chelsea, |
|familiarly known as the Cary avenue |
|church, was damaged last night to the |
|amount of $7,000 by fire.--_Boston |
|Herald._ |
(_b_) _The Amount of Property Destroyed._--The answer to _What burned?_
is not necessarily a building, for the building itself may not be worth
featuring. The contents of the building may be more interesting,
especially if the amount of property destroyed can be put in striking
terms, such as $2,000,000 worth of property, or two thousand chickens,
or fifty-three automobiles, or 7,000 gallons of whisky. These figures
printed at the beginning of the first paragraph catch the reader's eye,
thus:
| Five automobiles, valued at $5,800, and|
|property amounting to $6,200 were |
|destroyed last evening when fire broke in|
|the repair shop of the G. W. Browne Motor|
|company, 228-232 Wisconsin street, near |
|the North-Western station.--_Milwaukee |
|Sentinel._ |
=5. How.=--Very rarely the manner in which a fire burns is quite unique
and deserves featuring. It is inconceivable that John Jones's house
could burn in any very unusual way--"with many explosions," "with a
glare of flames that aroused the whole city," "with vast clouds of oily
smoke"--but some fires do burn in some such a way and are interesting
only for the way they burned. The following story begins with the answer
to _How?_ although the manner might be described more explicitly:
| Stubborn fires have been fought in the |
|past, but one of the hardest blazes to |
|conquer that the local department ever |
|contended with gutted the plant of N. |
|Drucker & Co., manufacturers of trunks |
|and valises, at the northwest corner of |
|Ninth and Broadway, last |
|night.--_Cincinnati Commercial Tribune._ |
=6. Who.=--Just as it would be foolish to begin with "the residence of
John Jones," since the building is not well known, it would not be
advisable to begin with John Jones's name, no matter what part he
played. John Jones is not well known and so to the newspaper he is just
a man and is treated impersonally regardless of what he does or what
happens to him. Our interest in him is entirely impersonal, and all we
want to know about him is what he has done or what has happened to him.
Therefore few reporters would begin a story with John Jones's name.
However, let some man who is well known do or suffer the slightest thing
and his name immediately lends interest to the story--and therefore
commands first place in the introduction. If John D. Rockefeller should
even witness a fire, or if President Taft should be in the slightest way
connected with a fire, the mere fire story would shrink into
significance behind the name. And so, very often it is advisable to
begin a fire story with a name, if the name is of sufficient prominence.
It is not necessary that the well-known man's property be destroyed or
even endangered for his name to have the first place in the first
sentence of the lead; if the well-known man has anything whatever to do
with the fire his name should be featured because to the average reader
the interest in his name overshadows any interest in the fire. In this
example, the name overshadows a striking loss of property and the story
begins with the answer to _Who?_
| NEW YORK, Nov. 6.--While Clendenin J. |
|Ryan, son of Thomas F. Ryan, the traction|
|magnate, and a band of volunteer fire |
|fighters--many of them |
|millionaires--fought a blaze which |
|started in the garage of young Ryan's |
|country estate near Suffern, N. Y., early|
|in the morning, three valuable |
|automobiles, seven thoroughbred horses |
|and several outbuildings were totally |
|destroyed.--_Milwaukee Sentinel._ |
It will be seen that in each of the above feature fire stories some
incident in the fire, or connected with the fire, overshadows the mere
fact that there was a fire and makes it advisable to begin the story of
the fire with the fact or incident of unusual interest. Furthermore, in
each of these stories the unusual feature in the story is a direct
answer to one of the reader's questions--_when?_ _where?_ _how?_ _what?_
_why?_ _who?_ In other words, the reporter in answering these questions,
as he must in the lead of every story, finds the answer to one question
so much more interesting than the answer to any of the other questions
that he puts it first. In every fire story, however, the feature is not
so easily discovered.
B. FEATURES IN UNEXPECTED ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES
There are other things in the day's fire stories, besides the answers to
the reader's questions, that may overshadow the rest of the story and
deserve to be featured. Very often there are unexpected attendant
circumstances occurring simultaneously with the fire or resulting from
the fire to command our interest. Perhaps a number of people are killed
or injured; then we want to know about them first, and the reporter
neglects to answer our questions for the moment while he tells us the
startling attendant circumstances that we had not expected. Even so,
while giving first place to the feature, he does not forget our
questions but answers them in the same sentence. Hence the introduction
of a fire story with significant attendant circumstances begins with the
startling fact resulting from the fire and then goes on to answer the
reader's questions--in the same sentence.
This is not so difficult as it may sound. Suppose that when John Jones's
house burns there is a stiff breeze blowing and the chances are that all
the other houses in the block will go with it. All of his neighbors
become frightened and work with feverish haste to move their household
goods out into the street. In the end the fire department succeeds in
confining the fire to Mr. Jones's house and his neighbors promptly carry
their chattels back indoors thanking the god of good luck. Now the mere
fact that John Jones's house burned down is rather insignificant beside
the fact that a dozen families were driven from their homes by the fire.
Therefore the reporter would begin thus:
| Twelve families were driven from their |
|homes by a fire which destroyed the |
|residence of John H. Jones, 78 Liberty |
|street, at 11 o'clock last night. The |
|fire was at length kept from spreading |
|and the neighboring residences were |
|reoccupied. |
Or to take an incident from the daily press in which the neighbors were
not so fortunate; although they might have entirely lost their homes:
| Twenty-two families in the six-story |
|tenement at 147 Orchard street were |
|routed out of the house twice early today|
|by fires which caused a great deal of |
|smoke, but little real damage.--_New York|
|Mail._ |
=1. Death.=--(a) _Number of Dead._--The most usual attendant
circumstances that will come to our notice is death in the fire. Let us
say that Mr. Jones's three children were alone in the house and burned
to death. Their death would be of more interest to us than the burning
of their father's house--and our story would necessarily begin in this
way:
| Three children were burned to death in |
|a fire which destroyed the home of their |
|father, John H. Jones, 78 Liberty street,|
|last night. |
So common is death in connection with fire that almost every day's paper
contains one or more stories beginning "Ten persons were cremated----"
or "Four firemen were killed----" And in every case the loss of human
life is considered of greater importance than any other incident in the
story, and the number of dead always takes precedence over many another
startling feature. Here are a few examples:
| JOHNSTOWN, Pa., Jan. 18.--Seven men |
|were cremated in a fire that burned to |
|the ground three double houses near |
|Berlin, Somerset County, early this |
|morning.--_New York Sun._ |
| Three children of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard |
|Lindberg, 3328 Nineteenth avenue south, |
|were cremated in a fire which destroyed |
|their home shortly after 12 o'clock |
|yesterday. The children had been left |
|alone in the house, shut up in their |
|bedroom, etc.--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._ |
| One fireman was killed, another fireman|
|and a woman were injured and eight people|
|escaped death by a narrow margin Saturday|
|night in a fire which destroyed the, |
|etc.--_Milwaukee Sentinel._ |
| NEW YORK, March 27.--One hundred and |
|forty-one persons are dead as a result |
|of the fire which on Saturday afternoon |
|swept the three upper floors of the |
|factory loft building at the northwest |
|corner of Washington place and Greene |
|street. More than three-quarters of this |
|number are women and girls, who were |
|employed in the Triangle Shirt Waist |
|factory, where the fire |
|originated.--_Boston Transcript._ |
(b) _List of Dead._--When the number of dead or injured reaches any very
significant figure it is customary to make a table of dead and injured.
This table is usually set into the story close after the lead, but very
often the list is put in a "box" and slipped in above the story. In
writing the story, however, the reporter disregards the table and begins
his lead as if there were no table: e.g., "Twelve firemen were killed
and fourteen injured in a fire----" The list usually gives the name,
address (or some other identification), and the nature of the injury,
thus:
| =Injured Firemen:= |
| |
|Capt. Frank Makal, Engine Co. No. 4, |
|cut by glass. |
| |
|Acting Captain W. E. Brown, fire boat |
|No. 23, cut by glass. |
| |
|Peter Ryan, No. 15, flying |
|glass.--_Milwaukee Free Press._ |
Or:
| =The Dead:= |
| |
|Mrs. Charles Smith, 14 W. Gorham |
|street. |
| |
|John Johnson, 1193 Chatham street. |
| |
| =The Injured:= |
| |
|Thomas Green, 1111 Grand street; face |
|cut by flying glass. |
| |
|James Brown, 176 Orchard avenue; |
|internal injuries; may die. |
(c) _Manner of Death._--A number of fatalities at the beginning always
attracts attention. Not infrequently the manner or the cause, especially
in the case of a single death, is worth the first place in the lead--not
as "One man killed----" but as "Crushed beneath a falling wall, a man
was killed." If a man burns to death in a very unusual way, or for an
unusual reason, we are more interested in the way he was burned, or the
reason that he burned, than in the mere fact that he was burned to
death. The first line then tells us how or why he was burned. Thus:
| To save his money, which he hoped would|
|some day raise him from the rank of a |
|laborer to that of a prosperous merchant,|
|Hing Lee, a Chinese laundryman, ran back |
|into his burning laundry at 3031 Nicollet|
|avenue today, after he was once safe from|
|the flames, and was so badly burned that |
|physicians say he cannot |
|live.--_Minneapolis Journal._ |
=2. Injuries.=--Very often no one is killed in a fire but some one is
injured. For example, five firemen are overcome by ammonia fumes or two
men are seriously injured by a falling wall. This then becomes the
feature. Injuries to human beings, if serious or in any considerable
number, take precedence over other features, just as loss of human life
does. Here is an example from the press in which all the injuries are
gathered together at the beginning:
| Six firemen and two laborers were |
|overcome by smoke, while three other |
|firemen received minor injuries by flying|
|glass in a fire which broke out yesterday|
|morning at 10:30 o'clock in the |
|Wellauer-Hoffman building, at, |
|etc.--_Milwaukee Free Press._ |
=3. Rescues.=--(a) _Number of People Rescued._--When people are rescued
from great danger in a fire their escape makes a very good feature. If
many of them are rescued or escape very narrowly, the mere number of
people saved deserves the first place, as:
| More than 150 men and women were saved |
|from death today in a fire at 213-217 |
|Grand street by toboganning from the roof|
|of the burning structure on a board chute|
|to the roof of an adjoining five-story |
|building.--_New York Mail._ |
(b) _Manner of Rescue._--But more often the manner of their escape
interests us most. If a man slides down a rope for four stories to
escape death by fire we are more interested in how he saved himself than
in the fact that he didn't burn, and so we tell how he escaped, in the
first line. In the same way, if unusual means are used to save one or
more persons, the means of rescue is usually worth featuring. For
example:
| Overcoats used as life nets saved the |
|lives of a dozen women and children in a |
|fire of incendiary origin in the |
|three-story frame tenement house at 137 |
|Havemeyer avenue, Brooklyn, to-day, |
|etc.--_New York Mail._ |
=4. Property Threatened.=--Death and injury are the commonest unexpected
circumstances in fire stories, but they are not the only ones that may
be worth featuring. There is an inconceivable number of things that may
happen at a fire and overshadow all interest in the fire itself. A good
feature may be found in the property that is threatened. Often the fire
in itself is insignificant, but because of a high wind or other
circumstances it threatens to spread to neighboring buildings or to
devastate a large area. In such a case the amount of property threatened
or endangered deserves a place in the very first line, especially if it
exceeds the amount of property actually destroyed and if it can be put
in a striking way; _i. e._, the entire waterfront district, or
twenty-five dwelling houses, or $5,000,000 worth of property. When
contrasted with the small amount of damage actually done, the amount
that is threatened becomes more important. Thus:
| Fire that for a time threatened |
|$2,000,000 worth of property destroyed |
|$15,000 worth of lumber owned by the |
|Milwaukee Lumber Company, 725 Clinton |
|street, yesterday.... |
| |
|The territory between Mitchell street |
|and the Kinnickinnic river and Reed |
|street, to the lake, containing |
|manufactories, dwellings and stores, was |
|menaced.--_Milwaukee News._ |
=5. Fire Fighting.=--Not unusually a serious fire results from the fact
that it was not checked for some reason or other during its earlier
stages. Perhaps the whole thing might have been avoided, or, on the
contrary, a big fire may be extinguished with unexpected ease or unusual
skill. In rare cases this matter of very efficient or very inefficient
fire fighting is of sufficient importance to take the first place in the
lead. For example:
| Almost total lack of water pressure is |
|blamed for the big loss in a fire started|
|by a firebug to-day in the five-story |
|factory building of Lamchick Brothers, |
|manufacturing company, 400-402 South |
|Second street, Williamsburg.--_New York |
|Mail._ |
| |
| Rotten hose, which burst as fast as it |
|was put in use, imperiled the lives of |
|more than a score of firemen to-day at a |
|blaze which swept the three-story frame |
|flat house at Third avenue and |
|Sixty-seventh street, Brooklyn, from |
|cellar to roof, etc.--_New York Mail._ |
=6. Crowd.=--Not uncommonly in the city a tremendous crowd gathers to
watch a fire and blocks traffic for hours. In the absence of other
significant incidents--death, great loss, etc.--the reporter may begin
his story with an account of the crowd present or the blockade of
traffic. Such a beginning should always be used only as a last resort
when a fire has no other interesting phase, for crowds always gather at
fires and only a very serious blocking of traffic is worth reporting.
Thus:
| Fully 15,000 persons were attracted to |
|the scene of the fire in the portion of |
|the plant of the Greenwald Packing |
|Company, Claremont Stock Yards, which was|
|discovered at 4:56 yesterday |
|afternoon.--_Baltimore American._ |
| |
| Twenty-five thousand people jammed |
|Broadway between Bleecker and Bond |
|streets yesterday noon and had the |
|excitement of watching 250 girls escape |
|from a twelve-story loft building which |
|was afire.--_New York Sun._ |
=7. Miscellaneous.=--There is an infinite number of things that may
happen at a fire and overshadow the mere fire interest. These are the
things that make one fire different from another, and whenever they are
of sufficient importance they become the feature to be played up in the
first line of the introduction. It would be impossible to enumerate all
the unexpected things that might happen during a fire. It is this
element of unexpected possibilities that makes the reporting of fires
interesting, and an alert reporter is ever on the lookout for a new and
unusual development in the fire to be used as the feature of his story.
Here are the leads of a few fire stories clipped from the daily
newspapers:
| With her home on fire and the smoke |
|swirling around her head, Mrs. B. B. |
|Blank, a well-known leader of the |
|social set of Roland Park, bravely |
|stood by her telephone and called upon |
|the Roland Park Fire Company for aid |
|shortly after 8 o'clock this |
|morning.--_Baltimore Star._ |
| |
| Four charming young women attired in |
|masculine apparel were the unexpected |
|and embarrassed hosts of four companies |
|of fire department "laddies" last night, |
|when fire broke out, etc.--_Milwaukee |
|Free Press._ |
| |
| For the first time since its |
|installation the high-pressure water |
|power system was relied upon solely last |
|night to fight a Broadway fire, and |
|Chief Croker said that he was well |
|satisfied with its work. The fire began |
|on the third floor of the six-story, |
|etc.--_New York Times._ |
C. FIRE STORIES WITH MORE THAN ONE FEATURE
It would appear from the foregoing examples that almost every fire story
has a feature. And so it usually has. The great majority of fires that
are worth reporting at all have some unusual incident connected with
them that overshadows the mere fire itself. Sometimes the features are
not of great significance, but it is only as a last resort that a
reporter begins his story with "Fire"--only when the most ordinary of
fires is to be covered.
Unusual features are so common in connection with fires that very often
a single fire has more than one unusual feature. Perhaps the cause of
the fire is exceptionally striking and at the same time the amount of
property destroyed is of great news value in itself. Or the time and
some unexpected attendant circumstance are both worth the first place.
In that case the reporter has to choose between the two features and
begin with the one that seems to him to be the more striking. The other
feature or features may often be arranged in the order of importance
immediately after the most striking fact at the beginning, provided that
this does not make the lead unduly complicated.
For instance, a cold storage warehouse burns and four firemen are
overcome by the fumes from the ammonia pipes. Next door is a hospital
and the flames frighten the patients almost into a panic. Either one of
these incidents is worth the first line of the story. But which one is
of the greater importance? Naturally the element of danger to human life
must be considered first and the actual disabling of four firemen is of
greater significance than a possible panic in the hospital. Following
that line of logic our story would begin:
| Four firemen were overcome by ammonia |
|fumes and a panic in the St. Charles |
|Hospital was narrowly averted, as a |
|result of a fire which destroyed the cold|
|storage warehouse of, etc. |
Such a lead would not be too complicated for practical purposes. But
suppose that around the corner from the cold storage warehouse is a
livery in which fifty horses are stabled. The flames frighten the horses
and they break loose and stampede in the streets. The story now has
three features of striking interest. It would be possible to combine
them all in the lead and to begin in this way:
| Four firemen were overcome by ammonia |
|fumes, a panic was narrowly averted in |
|the St. Charles Hospital, and fifty |
|frightened horses stampeded in the |
|streets as a result of a fire, etc. |
But see how far from the beginning the fire, the actual cause of it all,
is placed. The fire is buried behind a mass of details and the reader is
confused. The lead is not a happy one. The only thing to do is to break
up the mass of details and put part of them immediately after the lead.
The arrangement is a matter that must be left to the judgment of the
reporter.
This, however, is an extreme case because the various features are so
disconnected and separate. The reporter would have little trouble if the
several features were more alike. For instance, if one of the walls of
the building had fallen and killed three firemen the case would have
been simpler. The death of these men so far overshadows the other
unusual incidents that it drives them out of the lead altogether. For we
do not care about horses and frightened patients when men are crushed
beneath falling walls. All that we are concerned with in our lead now is
the dead and injured--with a feature like this we can trust our readers
to go into the story far enough to pick up the other interesting
features; we would begin in this way:
| Three firemen were killed by falling |
|walls and four others were overcome by |
|ammonia fumes in a fire which destroyed |
|the cold storage, etc. |
The combination of dead and injured makes a good beginning, and it is
always advisable to begin with such an enumeration whenever it is
possible. Where the features are not so significant as death and
injuries the matter of arranging more than one striking detail at the
beginning of the lead becomes a greater problem. It must be left to
one's own judgment and common sense. The lead must not be too long or
complicated, and one must hesitate before burying the really important
facts of the story behind several lines of more or less unusual details.
Just as soon as the lead becomes at all confusing take out the details
and put them into the story later.
VII
FAULTS IN NEWS STORIES
Before we go on to the consideration of other kinds of news stories it
will be well to consider in greater detail the facts we have learned
from writing up fires. Our fire stories should have taught us a number
of things about the form of the news story. Let us sum them up.
=Paragraph Length.=--We have seen that newspaper writing has a
characteristic style of its own. In the first place notice the length of
a newspaper paragraph. Count the number of words in an average paragraph
and compare it with the number of words in a literary paragraph. We find
that the newspaper paragraph is much shorter. There is a reason for
this. Imagine a 150-word literary paragraph set up in a newspaper. There
are about seven words to the line in a newspaper column and one hundred
and fifty words would make something over twenty lines. Try to picture a
newspaper made up of twenty-line paragraphs; it would be extremely
difficult to read. We glance over a newspaper hastily and our haste
requires many breaks to help us in gathering the facts. Hence the
paragraphs must be short; the very narrowness of the newspaper column
causes them to be shortened. The average lead, you will find, contains
less than fifty words and the paragraphs following it are not much
longer.
=Sentence Length.=--Notice sentence lengths as compared with literary
sentences. You will find that newspaper sentences usually fall into two
classes: the sentences in the lead and the sentences in the body of the
story. The first sentence is usually rather long--thirty to sixty words.
But the sentences in the body of the story are much shorter than most
literary sentences. Why is this? It results from exactly the same thing
that makes the newspaper paragraphs short--the need of many breaks.
Thus, after we finish a lead, we must fall into short sentences. They
need not be choppy sentences, but they must be simple and easy to read.
THE LEAD AND THE BODY OF THE STORY
Our study of the fire story has shown that newspaper stories always have
two separate and distinct parts: the lead and the body of the story. In
writing the story a reporter must consider each part separately,
although the reader does not distinguish between the two parts. Before
writing a word the reporter must decide exactly what facts and details
he is to put in the lead and exactly what fact he is going to play up in
the first line, taking care to begin with the most interesting part of
the story. After the lead is finished he writes the main body of the
story in accordance with the rules of ordinary English composition. Each
part must be separate and independent of the other.
=The Lead.=--The lead itself is always paragraphed separately. Usually
it consists of a single sentence, although it is much better to break it
into two than to make the sentence too long and complicated. As we have
said before, the lead must not only tell the most interesting fact or
incident in the story, but it must answer the natural questions that the
reader immediately asks about this matter; i.e., when, where, what, why,
who, and how. These questions must be answered briefly and concisely in
their order of importance, and the most unusual answer or the most
striking part of the story must precede all the rest. Beyond the answers
to these questions there is no space for details in the lead. Every word
must have a purpose and a necessary purpose or it must be cut out and
relegated to the body of the story. No space should be given to
explanations of minor importance. State the content of the news story
as completely, accurately, and concisely as possible so that the reader
may know just what happened, when it happened, where, to whom, and
perhaps how and why it happened. Then begin a new paragraph and start
the body of the story.
Many editors require that the lead consist of one long sentence and yet
it must be grammatical. Many reporters forget all about English grammar
in their attempt to crowd everything they know into one sentence. But
mere quantity does not make the lead good; it must be grammatical and
easy to read. The verb must have a grammatical subject and, if it is an
_active_ verb, it must have a grammatical predicate. Clauses and
modifiers must be attached in a way that cannot be overlooked. Dangling
participles and absolute constructions should be shunned. All of the
modifying clauses must be gathered together either before or after the
principal clause. Everything must be compact and logical. Many papers
disregard this matter, as will be seen in some of the extracts quoted in
this book, but the best papers do not.
Every lead should be so constructed that it may stand alone and be
self-sufficient. Never should a reporter trust to headlines to enlighten
his readers upon the meaning of the lead--the exact reverse of this
must be true. The story is written first and the headlines are written
from the facts contained in the lead--and usually by another man. In
writing the lead disregard the existence of headlines, for many readers
do not read them at all. This is but an amplification of the old rule of
composition that any piece of writing should be independent of its
title. The title may be lost, but the essay must be clear without it.
There are many ways of beginning a lead in order to embody the feature
in the first line. At first glance the operation of putting the emphasis
of a sentence at the beginning, rather than at the end, may seem
difficult, but with a clear idea of the rules of dependence in English
grammar a reporter may transpose any clause to the beginning and thus
play up the content of the clause. For instance, in this lead,
| Fire, starting in a moving picture |
|theatre, 4418 Third avenue, drove the |
|tenants of the building out into the icy |
|street while the snowstorm was at its |
|height shortly before 12 o'clock last |
|night. |
the striking feature of the story is buried--we do not get the unusual
picture of a little group of people shivering in the street during a
blinding snowstorm while they watch their homes burn. A simple
transposition of the _while_-clause puts the feature in the first line.
Thus:
| While the snowstorm was at its height |
|shortly before 12 o'clock last night, |
|fire, starting in a moving picture |
|theatre, 4418 Third avenue, drove the |
|tenants of the building out into the icy |
|street. |
The lead is not perfect now; it might be greatly improved, but it is
better than before.
A few of the possible beginnings for a lead are:
1. _Noun._--The simplest beginning of a lead is of course the use of a
noun as subject of the principal verb. For example, "Fire destroyed the
residence of----" or "A flashlight setting fire to a lace curtain
started a fire----" or "The Plaza Hotel had a few uncomfortable moments
last night----" etc. The subject of the verb may of course have its
modifiers--adjectives and phrases--but it should not be separated too
widely from its verb. One point is to be noted in the use of a simple
noun at the beginning; an article should not precede the noun if it can
be avoided, for the very simple reason that an article is not worth the
important space that it takes at the beginning of the lead. In the case
of fire no article is necessary. In other cases it is usually possible
to put in an adjective or some other word that will take the article's
place. However, never begin a story like this: "Supreme Court of the
United States decided----" or "Young man in evening dress was arrested
last night----" or "House of John Smith was destroyed yesterday----".
Obviously something is lacking and, if no other word will supply the
lack, use the article, _the_ or _a_. When the _noun_-beginning is used
the reporter must never forget that two or more nouns, however
different, if subject of the same verb, require a plural verb. The verb
may be active or passive, whichever is more convenient, but rarely is
the object of an active verb put first--simply because English cannot
bear this transposition of subject and predicate.
2. _Infinitive._--Other parts of speech aside from nouns may be subjects
of verbs and so other parts of speech as subjects of the principal verb
of the lead may be placed at the beginning of the lead. An infinitive
with its object and modifier may occupy the first line as subject of the
main verb; e.g.:
| To rescue his own son during the |
|burning of his own house was a part of |
|yesterday's work for Fireman Michael |
|Casey, who, etc. |
Here the infinitive "to rescue" and its object are the subject of the
verb "was," and the construction is perfectly grammatical.
Unfortunately the English language has another infinitive which very
much resembles a present participle--the infinitive ending in _-ing_;
e.g., _rescuing_. Without an article this part of speech must, of
course, be used only as an adjective, but with an article it becomes an
infinitive, to be treated as a noun; e.g., _the rescuing of_. It would
be perfectly grammatical to begin the above lead in this way: "The
rescuing of his own son ... was the work, etc." But it would be
ungrammatical to begin it thus: "Rescuing his own son was the work,
etc." For in the second case the word "rescuing," if used with an
object, is not an infinitive but a participle, and must be used only as
an adjective, thus: "Rescuing his own son, Fireman Casey performed his
duty, etc.," or "In rescuing his own son, Fireman Casey performed his
duty." The two uses should never be confused.
3. _Clause._--Another expression that may be used as subject of the
lead's principal verb is a clause--usually a _that_-clause. For
instance, "That the entire wholesale district was not destroyed by fire
last night is due to, etc." Here the _that_-clause is subject of the
verb is and the expression is entirely grammatical as well as very
useful as a beginning.
4. _Prepositional Phrase._--When the feature of a story is an action
rather than a thing, a noun can hardly be used to express it. Very
often this lead may be handled by means of a prepositional phrase at the
beginning. For example, one of the stories in the last chapter begins:
"With her home on fire and with smoke swirling around her head, Mrs.
John, etc." In this case the prepositional phrase modifies the subject
and should not be far from it. Another variation of this is the
prepositional phrase of time, modifying the verb; e.g., "During the
wedding of Miss Mary Jones, last night, the house suddenly caught fire,
etc." This beginning is effective if it is not overworked, but the
reader should never be held back from the real facts of the story by a
string of complicated phrases, intended to build up suspense.
5. _Participial Phrase._--Very much like the prepositional phrase
beginning is the participial beginning. "Sliding down an eighty-foot
extension ladder with a woman in his arms, Fireman John Casey rescued,
etc." It must be borne in mind that the participial phrase must modify a
noun and there should be no doubt in the reader's mind as to the noun
that it modifies. It would of course be absurd to say "Sliding down an
eighty-foot extension ladder, fire seriously burned John Casey----," but
such things are often said. Never should this participial phrase be used
as the subject of a verb, as "Returning home and finding her house in
ashes was the unusual experience of Mrs. James, etc." The phrase must
always modify a noun just like an adjective.
6. _Temporal Clause._--A feature may often be brought to the beginning
of the lead by a simple transposition of clauses. Should the time be
important a subordinate _when_ or _while_ clause may precede the
principal clause of the sentence; i.e., "When the snowstorm was at its
height early this morning, a three-story brick building burned, etc.,"
or "While 15,000 people watched from the street below, 250 girls escaped
from the burning building at, etc."
7. _Causal Clause._--Should the cause of an action or an occurrence be
attractive enough for the first line, a _for_ or a _because_ clause may
begin the lead. "Because a tinsmith upset a pot of molten solder on the
roof of pier No. 19, two steamers were burned, etc."
* * * * *
This does not exhaust the list of possible beginnings. There are a dozen
possible constructions for the beginning of any story; these are merely
the commonest ones. Anything unusual or of doubtful grammar should be
avoided because of the many possible alternatives that present
themselves. And in every lead correct grammar should be considered
above all else. If a lead is ungrammatical no clever arrangement of
details can make it effective or other than ludicrous. For instance,
this lead, taken from a newspaper, illustrates an unfortunate attempt to
crowd too many details into a short lead:
| Bitten by a rattlesnake, Myrtle Olson's|
|leg was slashed with a table knife, |
|washed the wound with kerosene, then |
|covered the incision with salt by her |
|mother. Myrtle still lives. |
Another paper tried to arrange it more happily, thus:
| Bitten by a rattlesnake, Myrtle Olson's|
|mother slashed her daughter's leg with a |
|table knife, washed the wound with |
|kerosene, then covered the incision with |
|salt. Myrtle still lives. |
There is evidently something wrong in this. It would be a good exercise
to try to express the idea grammatically.
* * * * *
Before we go on to the consideration of the body of this story a few
_Don'ts_ in regard to writing leads may be in order.
Don't begin a lead with a person's name unless the person is well known.
We are always interested in anything unusual that a man may do or
anything unusual that he may suffer, but unless we know the man we are
not at all interested in his name. Suppose that a man performs some
thrilling act or suffers some unusual misfortune in a city of 100,000
people. Probably not more than one hundred people know him, and of that
number only one or two will read the story. Then why begin with his name
when his action is of greater interest to all but a few of our readers?
And yet every reader wants to know whether the victim is one of his
friends. Therefore the man's name must be mentioned in the lead,
although it should not come at the beginning. On the other hand, if the
man is prominent in the nation or the community and well known to all
our readers, his name adds interest to the story and we begin with the
name. There is a growing tendency among American newspapers to begin all
of their stories with a name. The tendency appears to be the result of
an attempt to break away from the conventional lead and to begin in a
more natural way--also an easier way. But the name beginning is after
all illogical, and any reporter is safe in following the logical course
in the matter. If the name is not important begin with something that is
important.
Don't waste the main verb of the sentence on a minor action while
expressing the principal action in a subordinate clause. This is a
violation of emphasis. For example, "Fatally burned by an explosion in
his laundry, Hing Lee was taken to the hospital." Naturally he would be
taken to the hospital, but why put the emphasis of the whole sentence on
that point?
Don't resort to the expression "was the unusual experience of----" "was
the fate of----" or any like them. Every word in the lead must count,
and here are five words that say nothing at all. Use their place to tell
what the unusual experience was. For instance, don't say "To stand in a
driving snowstorm and watch their homes burn to the ground was the
unusual experience of two families, living at, etc."; say instead,
"Standing in a driving snowstorm two families watched their homes burn
to the ground." The latter says the same thing more effectively in less
space. The use of this expression--"was the unusual experience of"--is
always the mark of a green reporter.
Don't overwork the expression "Fire broke out." All fires "break out,"
but usually we are more interested in the result of the fire than in its
"breaking out." Try to use some expression that will give more definite
information.
Don't be wordy. Editors are always calling for shorter and more concise
leads. If you can say a thing in two words don't use half a dozen. For
example, "Four members of the local fire department were rendered
unconscious by the deadly fumes from bursting ammonia pipes." This takes
three times as much space as "Four firemen were overcome by ammonia
fumes," and it does not express the idea any more effectively.
Don't introduce minor details into the lead. If the reader wants the
details he may read the rest of the story. Take the following lead as an
example:
| Rushing back into his burning laundry, |
|a one-story brick building, to rescue |
|from the flames his savings, amounting to|
|$437, with which he hoped to raise |
|himself from the rank of laborer to that |
|of a prosperous merchant, and which was |
|hidden under the mattress of his bed in |
|the back room of the laundry, Hing Lee, a|
|Chinaman, who lives at 79 Nicollett |
|avenue and has been in this country but |
|three months, was overcome by smoke and |
|so seriously burned that he had to be |
|removed to the St. Mary Hospital and may |
|not live, when his establishment was |
|destroyed by a fire which, starting from |
|the explosion of the tank of the gasolene|
|stove on which he was cooking his dinner,|
|gutted his laundry, entailing a loss of |
|$1,000, shortly before noon to-day. |
It is entirely grammatical, but if the reader succeeds in wading through
it there is nothing left to tell about the fire. Why not begin the
story in this way and leave something for the rest of the story?
| Because he rushed back into his burning|
|laundry to rescue his savings, Hing Lee, |
|a Chinese laundryman, 79 Nicollett |
|avenue, was seriously burned to-day. |
Don't waste the first line of the lead on meaningless generalities. Get
down to the facts at once. For instance, "The presence of mind and
bravery of Fireman David Mullen saved Mrs. Daniel Looker from being
burned to death in her flat, etc." We are willing to grant his bravery
and presence of mind, but we want to know at once what he did: "By
sliding down an eighty-foot extension ladder through flames and smoke
with an unconscious woman in his arms, Fireman David Mullen rescued Mrs.
Daniel, etc." Equally useless is the beginning, "A daring rescue of an
unconscious woman from the fourth story of a blazing flat building was
made by Fireman David Mullen to-day, etc." Tell what the daring rescue
was and let the reader manufacture a fitting eulogy.
Don't exaggerate the facts to make a feature. When a few persons are
frightened don't turn it into a dreadful panic. Every little fire is not
a holocaust and the burning of a small barn does not endanger the
entire city, unless your imagination is strong enough to guess what
might have happened had there been a high wind and no fire engines. A
narrow escape from death does not always excuse the beginning, "Scores
killed and injured would have been the result, _if_----" All beginnings
of this kind give a false impression and do not tell the truth. If a
story has no striking feature be satisfied to tell the truth about it
without trying to make a world-wide disaster out of it for the sake of a
place on the front page. Exaggeration for a feature is one of the bad
elements of sensational journalism. For example, seven lives were lost
in this fire, but this is the way the story was written, for the sake of
a three-column scare-head:
| That 500 sleeping babes and 100 more |
|who were kneeling in prayer in St. |
|Malachi's Home, a Roman Catholic |
|institution for the care of orphans at |
|Rockaway Park, are alive to-day is due to|
|the coolness of the nuns in charge and |
|the children's remembrance of their |
|teacher's fire drills. |
The suspense is built up in such a way that at the end of the lead we do
not know what happened and read on with breathless interest to find that
there was a small fire at the Home and seven children were burned.
=The Body of the Story.=--"A good beginning is half done," according to
the proverb. In writing a news story a good beginning is more than half
done--two-thirds at least. The lead is the beginning, and when that has
been written we are ready to go on to the body of the story with a clear
conscience.
Our lead has told the reader the main facts of the case and the most
unusual feature. If he reads further he is looking for details. In
giving him these we return to the ordinary rules of narration. We start
at the very beginning of the story and tell it logically and in detail
to the end. We tell it as if no lead preceded it and repeat in greater
detail the incidents briefly outlined in the lead. Never should the body
of the story depend upon the lead for clearness. If the feature of the
story is a rescue and you have briefly described the rescue in the lead,
ignore the lead and describe the rescue all over again in the body of
the story in its proper place. The number of details that are to be
introduced into the story is limited only by the space that the story
seems to be worth. But no point should be mentioned in the story unless
space permits of its being made clear.
The ordinary rules of English composition apply to the writing of the
body of the story. The copy must be paragraphed, cut up into paragraphs
that are rather shorter than ordinary literary paragraphs, since the
narrowness of the newspaper column makes the paragraph seem longer.
Heterogeneous details must not be piled together in the same paragraph,
but the facts must be grouped and handled logically. No paragraph should
be noticeably longer than the others, and it is decidedly bad to
paragraph one sentence alone simply because it does not seem to go in
with any other sentence. If the fact is important expand it into a
paragraph by the introduction of further details; if it is unimportant
either cut it out of the story altogether or attach it to the paragraph
to which it seems most logically to belong.
One fact, already stated, must be borne in mind as the body of the story
progresses. The report should be built up in such a way that the editor
can slash off a paragraph or two at the end without injuring the
story--without sacrificing any important facts. To do this the reporter
should bring the important parts of the story as near the beginning as
the logical order will permit. The interest of a perfect news story is
like an inverted cone. The interest is abundant at the beginning and
gradually dwindles out until there is nothing more to say when the end
is reached. Just how far the dwindling should be carried depends upon
the amount of space that the story seems to be worth in the paper.
This may seem difficult. It may be hard to see how a story can be told
in its logical order while at the same time the most interesting facts
are placed at the beginning, even if they logically belong near the end.
For example, we may take the story of an unusual robbery. A well-dressed
man goes into a grocery store to get some butter and tries to rob the
grocer. In the ensuing scuffle the would-be robber escapes. A young
woman who happens to be passing sees the end of the fight and pursues
the robber down the street until he runs into a saloon. She calls a
policeman who is standing on the corner and the officer rushes into the
saloon, up three flights of stairs and finds the robber on the roof
behind a chimney. The officer shouts to another policeman, and together
they arrest the robber.
Now, what is the most interesting thing in the story? Probably the
pursuit--a young woman chasing a robber down the street. Our lead might
be written in this way:
| After being chased down Sixth street by|
|a young woman, a robber, who had |
|attempted to rob the grocery store of |
|Charles Young, 1345 Sixth street, was |
|arrested on the roof of a saloon at 835 |
|Sixth street, at 7 o'clock last night. |
The lead might be arranged in a different way, but these are the facts
that it would contain. Before we consider the arrangement of the body of
the story it may be well to go back to the interviews by which we
secured the story. In getting the facts we would probably talk to Young,
the groceryman, and to the saloonkeeper into whose establishment the
robber fled. We could probably interview the policeman who made the
arrest, but let us suppose that the young woman could not be found. The
groceryman would tell us about the attempted robbery and the escape,
with the girl in pursuit. The saloonkeeper would tell us how the man
fled into his saloon and ran up the stairs to the roof; then how two
policemen came and made the arrest. The policeman could tell us how a
young woman ran up to him and told him that a robber had fled into the
saloon; then he would describe the arrest. None of these stories is told
just as we want the newspaper story--each one tells us only a part of
the story. If the finished story were written by a green reporter it
would probably tell the story in the order in which it was obtained.
That is if the reporter saw the policeman first, then the saloonkeeper,
and lastly the groceryman; his story would tell in the first paragraph
what the policeman said, in the second paragraph what the saloonkeeper
said, and in the last paragraph what the grocer said. At least that is
the way in which green reporters in the classroom attempted to write
the story.
But, obviously, that is not the logical way to tell the story. The
finished account should be written in the order in which it happened:
i.e., first the robbery, then the pursuit, and lastly the arrest. This
would be the ideal way to tell the story--according to the rules of
English composition--if we could be sure that the entire story would be
printed. But if it were written in this way and the editor decided to
slash off the last paragraph, what would go? Obviously the arrest would
not be printed; and the arrest was quite interesting. We must find some
way to bring the arrest nearer to the beginning. This may be done by
selecting the most interesting parts of the story--by picking out the
high spots, as it were. In this story the high spots are the attempted
robbery, the pursuit, and the arrest. The details that fill in between
are interesting, but not so interesting as these high spots. Hence these
high spots of interest must be pushed forward toward the beginning.
After the lead the story would begin at the beginning and tell the
affair briefly by high spots in their proper order. It might be
something like this:
| As Charles Young was closing his |
|grocery last evening a young man came in |
|and asked for a pound of butter. Young |
|turned to get it and his customer struck |
|him over the head with a chair. The |
|grocer grappled with his assailant and |
|they fell through the front door. In the |
|scramble, the robber broke away and ran |
|down Sixth street. A young woman who was |
|passing screamed and ran after him until |
|he disappeared into a saloon. |
| |
|The young woman called Policeman Smith, |
|who was standing nearby on Grand avenue, |
|and the latter found the would-be robber |
|on the roof of the saloon. After a |
|struggle, Smith arrested the man, with |
|the aid of another policeman. |
The above account tells us briefly the most interesting parts of the
story. A copyreader might not find it perfect, for the assault is
allotted too much space and the pursuit too little, but it tells the
story in its baldest aspect. This, with the lead, could be run alone.
However, perhaps the story is worth more space; at any rate, many
interesting details have been omitted. If so, go back to the most
interesting part of the story--the assault, perhaps, or the pursuit--and
tell it with more details. Then retell some other part with more
details. If your readers are interested enough to read beyond the first
three paragraphs they want details and will not be so particular about
the order--for they already know how the story is going to end.
This is one way of meeting the requirements of logical order and
dwindling interest. This is a particularly hard story to arrange in the
conventional way since we must have the whole story to be interested in
any single part--it has too many striking incidents in it. On the other
hand, a story which contains only one striking incident is much easier
to handle. Suppose that we are reporting a fire which is interesting
only for its cause or for a daring rescue in it. Our lead would suggest
this interesting element and the first part of our story would be
devoted entirely to the cause or to the rescue, as the case might be.
But it is better to sketch briefly, immediately after or very close to
the lead, the entire story, for our readers want to know how it ends
before they can be interested in any particular part. If we sketch the
whole story and show them that there is only one important thing in the
story, they will be satisfied to read about the one striking incident
without wondering if there is not something more interesting further on.
If we leave the conclusion of the story to the end of our copy the
editor may cut it off and leave our story dangling in midair. Every
story must be treated in its own way, according to its own incidents and
difficulties; no two stories are alike in substance or treatment. In
every one our aim must be to keep to the logical order and at the same
time to put the most interesting parts of the story near the beginning.
The construction of the body of a story may be illustrated more clearly
by a fatal fire story--since fire stories are more uniform, and hence
easier to write than other news stories. Let us suppose that the story
is as follows: At four o'clock in the afternoon a fire started from some
unknown cause in the basement of a four-story brick building at 383-385
Sixth Street, occupied by the Incandescent Light Company. Before the
fire company arrived the flames had spread up through the building and
into an adjoining three-story brick building at 381 Sixth Street,
occupied by Isaac Schmidt's second-hand store and home on the first and
second floors and by Mrs. Sarah Jones's boarding house on the third. The
Schmidts were away and Mrs. Jones's lodgers escaped via the fire
escapes. Her cook, Hilda Schultz, was overcome by smoke and had to be
carried out by Jack Sweeney, a lodger. Mrs. Jones fell from the fire
escape and was badly bruised. Meanwhile the firemen were at work on the
roof of the burning four-story building. Blinded by the smoke, one of
them, John MacBane, stepped through a skylight and fell to the fourth
floor. His comrades tried to rescue him by lowering Fireman Henry Bond
into the smoke by the heels; they were unsuccessful and Bond broke his
arm in the attempt. The fire was confined to the lower floors of the two
buildings and extinguished. In searching for MacBane, the firemen found
him suffocated on the fourth floor where he had fallen.
The feature of the story is evidently the one death and the three
injuries. Our lead might be written as follows:
| One fireman was suffocated and three |
|other persons were injured in a fire in |
|the Incandescent Light Company's plant, |
|383-385 Sixth street, and an adjoining |
|three-story building, late yesterday |
|afternoon. |
This lead would suggest to the reader many interesting details to come
in the body of the story, and evidently the details are not all of equal
importance. The story could be told in its logical order, but, since the
death is more interesting than the origin of the fire and the injuries
are more significant than how the fire spread, it is obvious that it
would not be best to tell the story in the order in which it is told
above.
Disregarding the lead, we must cover the following details in the body
of our story:
Description of buildings and occupants.
Origin of fire.
Discovery of fire.
Spread of flames.
Injury of Mrs. Jones.
Rescue of Hilda Schultz.
Death of MacBane.
Injury of Bond.
Fire extinguished.
This is the order in which things occurred at the fire. However, in our
lead, we have drawn attention to our story by announcing that it
concerns a fire in which a man was killed; the death therefore should
have first place in the body of the story. Hence, in the second
paragraph immediately after the lead, we must tell how MacBane fell
through the skylight and was suffocated. Along with his death we may as
well tell how Bond broke his arm trying to rescue MacBane. Our lead has
also announced two other injuries and, hence, they must be included
next--that is, our third paragraph must be devoted to the injury of Mrs.
Jones and the rescue of the unconscious Hilda. But as yet our details
are hanging in the air because we have not said anything about the
buildings or the fire itself. In the next paragraph it would be well to
describe the buildings and their occupants and to give a very brief
account of the course of the fire--perhaps in this way:
| Flames were first discovered in the |
|basement of the Incandescent building and|
|before the fire department arrived had |
|spread through the lower floors and into |
|the adjoining three-story building. The |
|absence of elevator shafts and air-shafts|
|enabled the firemen to extinguish the |
|blaze before it reached the upper floors.|
This tells the main course of the fire, but there are some interesting
details to add: first, the origin of the fire; next, the discovery; then
more about how the fire spread; and lastly, how the fire was
extinguished. Our story by paragraphs would read as follows:
1st Paragraph--The lead.
2d Paragraph--Death of MacBane and injury of Bond.
3d Paragraph--Mrs. Jones's injury and Hilda's rescue.
4th Paragraph--Buildings, occupants, brief course of fire.
5th Paragraph--Detailed account of origin of the fire.
6th Paragraph--How the fire was discovered.
7th Paragraph--More about the spread and course of the fire.
8th Paragraph--How the fire was extinguished.
9th Paragraph--Loss, insurance, extent of damage.
Thus, while telling the story almost in its logical order, we have
picked out the high spots of interest and crowded them to the beginning.
Our readers will get the facts just about as fast as they wish to read
them and in the order in which they wish them. Our story may be run in
nine paragraphs or even more; or the editor may slash off anything after
the fourth paragraph without taking away any of the essential facts of
the fire. This method of telling would fulfill all the requirements of
an ideal news story. A similar outline of the facts that any story must
present will often help a reporter to tell his story as it should be
told. After listing the details he may number them in their order of
importance and check them off as he has told them.
* * * * *
This idea of throwing the emphasis and interest to the beginning applies
to the individual paragraphs and sentences of the story, as well. Each
paragraph must begin strongly and display its most interesting content
in the first line. The emphatic part of each sentence should be the
beginning. A glance at any newspaper column shows why this is necessary.
The body of a news story is the place for the reporter's skill and
style. He is given all the liberties of ordinary narration and should
make the most of every word. His individual style comes into play here.
If the interest can be increased by a bit of dialogue the reporter may
put it in. If the facts can be presented more effectively by means of
direct quotation, the words of any one whom the reporter has interviewed
may be of interest. However, these things must not be overworked because
every trick of writing loses its effectiveness when it is overworked.
Dialogue used only to give facts which might be told more clearly in
simple direct form should seldom be used. Dialogue in a news story is
used only to color the story and not to reproduce the interviews by
which the facts were obtained. In gathering the facts of a story it is
sometimes necessary to interview a number of people, but these
interviews should not be quoted in the resulting story. Many a green
reporter tries to give his story character by telling what the policeman
on the corner, the janitor, and a small boy in the street told him about
the incident. He succeeds only in dragging out the length of his story
and confusing the reader. After all, the purpose of a newspaper is to
give facts--and the clearer and the more direct the method the better
will be the result.
In striving for clearness and interest a reporter must remember that one
of his greatest assets is concreteness of expression. Of all forms of
composition newspaper writing possesses probably the greatest
opportunity for definiteness. Facts and events are its one concern;
theories and abstractions are beyond its range. Hence the more definite
and concrete its presentation of facts, the better will be its effect.
The reporter should never generalize or present his statements hazily
and uncertainly--a fact is a fact and must be presented as such. He must
try to avoid such expressions as "several," "many," "a few"--it is
usually possible to give the exact number. He must continually ask
himself "how many?" "what kind?" "exactly when?" "exactly what?"
Expressions like "about a dozen," "about thirty years old," "about a
week ago," "about a block away," are never so effective as the exact
facts and figures. Definite concrete details make a news story real and
vivid. The real reporter of news is the one who can see a thing clearly
and with every detail and present it as clearly and distinctly.
VIII
OTHER NEWS STORIES
The fire story is obviously not the only news story that is printed in a
daily newspaper, but a study of its form gives us a working knowledge of
the writing of other news stories. The fire story is probably the
commonest news story, and it is by far the easiest story to handle, for
its form has become somewhat standardized. We know just exactly what our
readers want to know about each fire, and within certain limits all
fires, as well as the reports of them, are very much alike. There is
seldom more than one fact or incident that makes one fire different from
another and that fact we always seize as the feature of our report.
However, the fire story has been taken only as typical of other news
stories. Now we are ready to study the others, using the fire story as
our model in writing the others.
There is a vast number of other stories that we must be able to write,
and they lack the convenient uniformity that fires have. Not only does
every story have a different feature, but it is concerned with a
different kind of happening. One assignment may call for the report of
an explosion, another the report of a business transaction, and another
a murder. In each one we have to get the facts and choose the most
striking fact as our feature. Never can we resort to the simple
beginning "Fire destroyed," but we must find a different beginning for
each assignment.
Just as in the fire story, the lead of any news story is the most
important part. It must begin with the most striking part of the event
and answer the reader's _Where?_ _When?_ _How?_ _Why?_ and _Who?_
concerning it. All the rules that apply to the fire lead apply to the
lead of any story.
It would be impossible to classify all the news stories that a newspaper
must print. The very zest of reporting comes from the changing variety
of the work; no two assignments are ever exactly alike--if they were
only one would be worth printing. Newspapers themselves make no attempt
to classify the ordinary run of news or to work out a systematic
division of labor; a reporter may be called upon to cover a fire, a
political meeting, a murder, a business story, all in the same day. Each
one is simply a story and must be covered in the same way that all the
rest are covered--by many interviews for facts. For our study it may be
well to divide news stories into a few large groups. The groups overlap
and are not entirely distinct, but the stories in each group have some
one thing in common that may aid us in learning how to write them. At
most, the list is only a very incomplete summary of the more important
kinds of news stories and is intended to be merely a suggestive way of
supplying the student with necessary practice.
=1. Accidents.=--Accident stories may be anything from a sprained ankle
to a disastrous railroad wreck, but they all depend upon one element for
their interest. They are all printed because people in general are
interested in the injuries and deaths of other people--physical calamity
is the common ground in all these stories.
The number of possible accidents is infinite, but there are some common
types that recur most often. Among these are: railroad, trolley,
railroad crossing accidents; runaways; electrocutions; explosions;
collapse of buildings; marine disasters; cave-in accidents; elevator,
automobile, aviation accidents.
The feature of any accident story is always, of course, the thing that
made the story worth printing, and that is usually the human life
element. The feature of an accident story is almost always the number of
dead and injured. Most reports of railroad wrecks begin with "Ten
persons were killed and seventeen were injured in a wreck, etc." The
same is true of any accident story; if more than one person is killed it
is usually safe to begin with the number of fatalities. In this
connection it may be noted that the death of railroad employees seldom
makes a story worth printing; they may be included in the total number,
but if no passengers are killed, fatalities among trainmen seldom give a
story any news value.
Accident stories of course have many other possible features; newspapers
report many accidents in which no one is killed. In that case some other
element gives the story news value and that element must be played up as
the feature. Perhaps it is the manner in which the accident happened or
the manner in which a person was killed or injured, as in an automobile
accident. The cause of the accident may be the most interesting part of
the story: train-wreckers or a broken rail in a railroad wreck, or the
cause of an explosion. Very often an accident is reported simply because
some well-known person was connected with it in some way; the name then
becomes the feature and comes into the first line. A story may be worth
printing simply because of the unusual manner of rescue; such a feature
is often played up in stories of marine accidents, cave-ins, etc. Not
infrequently some of the unusual attendant circumstances give a story
news value: e.g., a policeman dragged from his horse and run over by an
automobile while he is trying to stop a runaway.
Here are some accident stories from the newspapers:
Fatalities:
| Six men were killed and a dozen |
|seriously injured early to-day by an |
|outbound Panhandle passenger train |
|crashing into the rear end of a Chicago, |
|Milwaukee and St. Paul stock train at |
|Twelfth and Rockwell streets.--_Chicago |
|Record-Herald._ |
Manner:
| Run down by her own automobile, which |
|she was cranking, at First and G streets,|
|northwest, Dr. Alma C. Arnold, a |
|chiropractic physician, 825 Fifteenth |
|street, northwest, was forced against the|
|wheel of a passing wagon and seriously |
|injured this morning.--_Washington |
|Times._ |
Cause:
| Over-balanced by a granite stone |
|weighing four tons, the entire cornice |
|over the west portico of the new west |
|wing of the capitol fell to the ground |
|this afternoon, carrying with it Daniel |
|Logan, foreman for the Woodbury Granite |
|Company.--_Madison Democrat._ |
Attendant Circumstances:
| With a blast that shook the entire city|
|and was believed by many to be an |
|earthquake, three boilers in the new |
|engine house of the Pabst brewery on |
|Tenth street, between Chestnut street and|
|Cold Spring avenue, exploded at about 4 |
|o'clock this morning.--_Milwaukee Free |
|Press._ |
=2. Robberies.=--Another large class of news stories is concerned with
robberies of various kinds. Unfortunately for the reporter, very few
robberies are alike; beyond the common ground of the interest in the
amount stolen and the cleverness of the robber's work, there is seldom
any one thing that may be looked for as the feature of a robbery story.
The reporter must decide what in the story makes it worth printing.
Robbery stories may include anything from petty thievery to bank
defaulting. Some of the possibilities are horse and automobile stealing,
burglary, hold-ups, train and street-car robbery, embezzlement, fraud,
kidnapping, safe-cracking, shop and bank robbery. It is well for the
reporter who has to cover a story of this class to acquaint himself with
the distinctions that characterize the various kinds of robbery and the
various names applied to the people who commit this sort of crime: e.g.,
robber, thief, bandit, burglar, hold-up man, thug, embezzler, defaulter,
safe-cracker, pick-pocket.
In general the chief interest in robbery stories is in the result of
the work--the amount taken--usually accompanied by a term to designate
the sort of robbery. Just how the crime was committed is often the
feature, as in a train robbery or a clever case of fraud. If the victim
or victims are at all well known their names may become the most
interesting thing in the story--or even the name of a well-known
criminal or band of robbers. In some stories, especially if another
paper has already covered the story, the pursuit or capture of the
criminals is often interesting; the stories of bank robberies often
begin in this way. Other attendant circumstances, such as the number of
persons who witnessed the crime, may be the feature. In hold-ups,
burglaries, and crimes of that sort, the death or wounding of the victim
is often played up. Sometimes the reason for the crime, as in a
kidnapping case, is of great significance. In the case of a robbery of a
bank or any other institution which depends upon credit for its
business, the story usually begins with, or at least mentions near the
beginning, the present condition of the robbed institution. It is safe
to say that in no case is the name of the criminal, the manner of his
arrest (if it is not unusual), the police station to which he was taken,
or the charge preferred against him worth a place in the lead.
Some robbery stories from the daily press:
Amount taken:
| Furs worth $40,000 were stolen in the |
|early hours of yesterday morning within a|
|stone's throw of Madison Square. |
|Apparently a gang in which there was a |
|woman expert in choosing only the best |
|furs carried off the costly skins, |
|etc.--_New York World._ |
Manner of hold-up:
| Seized by thugs in broad daylight as he|
|was crossing the railroad tracks at the |
|foot of First avenue east, Fred Butzer, a|
|stonemason of Butler, Minn., was thrown |
|to the ground, a gag placed in his mouth,|
|his pockets were rifled of $36.--_Duluth |
|News-Tribune._ |
Unusual sort of pickpocket:
| A young man in evening dress, who was |
|going down into the subway station at |
|Times Square with the theater crowd that |
|filled the entrance just outside of the |
|Hotel Knickerbocker early last night, |
|paused, knocked a woman under the chin |
|and took away her silver chatelaine purse|
|containing $20 as deftly as he might have|
|flicked the ash off his cigarette. Then |
|he disappeared.--_New York Times._ |
Unusual thieves:
| Two girl thieves not more than twelve |
|years old and small in stature for their |
|age have been operating with great |
|success in the different stores in the |
|neighborhood of Amsterdam avenue and |
|Seventy-ninth street. Five or six thefts,|
|etc.--_New York Telegram._ |
Pursuit and capture:
| After a chase along Forty-second street|
|and up the steps of the Hotel Manhattan, |
|a woman, who said she was Sadie Brown, |
|thirty-three years old, of No. 215 West |
|Forty-sixth street, was arrested early |
|today on suspicion of having picked the |
|pocket of a man at, etc.--_New York |
|Telegram._ |
Present conditions of robbed bank (second paragraph of an embezzlement
story):
| Banking Commissioner Watkins this |
|afternoon declared that he found the bank|
|perfectly sound, that all commercial |
|paper was found intact, that none of the |
|accounts have been juggled and that no |
|erasures of any kind were |
|discovered.--_Philadelphia Inquirer._ |
Unusual sort of burglar:
| Wearing a Salvation Army uniform, a |
|burglar was caught early yesterday in the|
|home of Walter Katte, a vice-president of|
|the New York Central railroad, at |
|Irvington-on-the-Hudson.--_New York |
|World._ |
=3. Murder.=--The reports of crimes of this sort can hardly be
classified, for there are so many things that may be worth featuring in
any murder case. The story itself is usually of such importance that the
mere fact that a murder has been committed gives it news value even if
there is nothing unusual in the crime--just as in the case of a
featureless fire story that begins with "Fire." The handling of a crime
depends upon the character and circumstances; the reporter must weigh
the facts in each case for himself. However, we usually find a feature
in the number of persons murdered, the manner in which the crime was
committed, the name of the victim, if he or she is well known, the
reason for the deed, or in some of the many attendant circumstances,
such as arrest, pursuit, etc. One rule must always be followed in the
reporting of a murder story: the reporter must confine himself to the
necessary facts and omit as many of the gruesome details as possible. He
must tell it in a cold, hard-hearted way without elaboration, for the
story in itself is gruesome enough. Just as soon as a murder story
begins to expand upon shocking details it becomes the worst sort of a
yellow story.
Examples of murder stories from the newspapers:
Manner:
| After crushing in the head of his |
|superior officer with an axe, James |
|Layton, boatswain of the Liverpool |
|sailing ship Colony, refused to submit to|
|arrest, and, still waving the bloody |
|weapon, committed suicide by jumping into|
|the sea.--_New York Mail._ |
Motive:
| In revenge for a beating he received |
|the day before, Gaetona Ambrifi yesterday|
|shot and instantly killed Frank |
|Ricciliano, a sub-section foreman on the |
|Pennsylvania Railroad, while they were |
|working on the roadbed near Peddle |
|street, Newark.--_New York Sun._ |
Prominent name:
| Mayor William J. Gaynor of New York |
|City was shot and seriously, perhaps |
|fatally, wounded on board the steamer |
|Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at 9:30 as he |
|was sailing for Europe. |
Resulting pursuit:
| The police of Brooklyn have another |
|murder mystery to unravel through the |
|finding early today of the body of Peter |
|Barilla on Lincoln road, near Nostrand |
|avenue, Flatbush. There were two bullet |
|wounds in the body and four stab wounds |
|in the back.--_Brooklyn Eagle._ |
Attendant circumstances:
| A hundred or more persons who were |
|about to take trains witnessed the |
|shooting to death of a Jersey City |
|business man in the Pennsylvania Railroad|
|station there this afternoon.--_New York |
|Mail._ |
=4. Suicide.=--What is true of murder stories is also true of suicide.
Each individual case has an unusual feature of its own. We ordinarily
find a good beginning in the manner of the suicide, the name of the
person who has killed himself if he is well known, the reason for the
act, or some one of the attendant circumstances--often the manner of
resuscitation if the crime is unsuccessful. For some unexplained reason
many papers do not print accounts of ordinary suicides, except when the
individual is prominent. At any rate the story must be told without
gruesome details and as briefly as possible.
Examples from the press:
Name:
| William L. Murray of Rockview avenue, |
|North Plainfield, paying teller of the |
|Empire Trust Company of New York, |
|committed suicide at Scotch Plains early |
|this afternoon by shooting himself in the|
|head. No reason is assigned for the |
|act.--_New York Sun._ |
Motive:
| Driven insane by continued brooding |
|over ill health, Miss Ada Emerson, a |
|former teacher in the Beloit city |
|schools, killed herself in a crowded |
|interurban car Saturday afternoon by |
|slashing her throat with a |
|razor.--_Beloit Free Press._ |
Here the manner is the feature, but it is not played up in the first
line because it is too horrible.
=5. Big Stories.=--The big stories of catastrophes are usually handled
on a large scale--played up, as the newspaper men say. The story in
itself is of sufficient importance to make it unnecessary to play up any
single feature of the story. However, the reporter, in looking for a
good beginning, often finds it in the most startling fact in the story.
If he is reporting a riot he usually begins with the number of killed
or injured, the amount of property destroyed, the character of the riot,
or the cause, as in this example:
| In an effort to bring about the |
|reinstatement of one of their number who |
|had been discharged for non-unionism, a |
|hundred or more journeymen bakers wrecked|
|the bakeshop of Pincus Jacobs, at No. |
|1571 Lexington avenue, early this |
|morning.--_New York Evening Post._ |
In the case of a storm the human life element is of greatest importance,
then the damage to property, and last, the peculiar circumstances. For
example:
| CLEVELAND, Dec. 11.--Fifty-nine lives |
|were the cost of a storm which passed |
|over Lake Erie Wednesday night and |
|Thursday, and more than $1,000,000 worth |
|of vessel property was destroyed.--_New |
|York Evening Post._ |
If the story is concerned with a flood the human-life element is first,
then the damage, the cause, the freaks of the flood, or the present
situation. For example:
| PARKERSBURG, W. Va., March 10.--Three |
|persons are known to have perished in a |
|flood which swept down upon the city on |
|Friday when two water reservoirs on |
|Prospect Hill burst without warning. |
|Forty houses were destroyed and many |
|persons are missing. The property damage |
|will be nearly $500,000. |
=6. Police Court News.=--The ordinary run of police court news is in a
class by itself. Usually the only news value in the story depends upon
some unusual incident or circumstance that attracts the attention of the
reporter. This is of course the source of many of the stories of crime,
mentioned before, but many stories turn up at the police courts which
are not concerned with crime, although in some cases they are concerned
with criminals. In this field of reporting there are many opportunities
for the human-interest story which will be taken up in a later chapter.
When the incident is reported in an ordinary news story the feature is
usually in some attendant circumstance and the story might well be
classed with one of the above groups. Here are two examples from the
daily press:
| Because he did not have sufficient |
|money to buy flowers for his sweetheart, |
|Henry Trupke, aged 21 years, forged a |
|check for $22.50 on a grocer, J. |
|Sieberlich, 781 Third street, and after a|
|week's chase was caught last night as he |
|got off a Wisconsin Central |
|train.--_Milwaukee Sentinel._ |
| But a few hours before receiving a |
|sentence of two years in the house of |
|correction for stealing furs from the |
|store of Lohse Bros., 117 Wisconsin |
|street, John Garner, self-confessed |
|thief, was married to Rose Strean, one |
|of the witnesses in the case, which was |
|tried yesterday in the municipal |
|court.--_Milwaukee Free Press._ |
=7. Reports of Meetings, Conferences, Decisions, etc.=--This group
includes all reports of meetings, or conferences, of bodies of any sort,
political or otherwise, reports of judicial or legislative hearings or
decisions, or announcements of resolutions passed. Such as:
| WASHINGTON, Jan. 15.--Acquisition of |
|the telegraph lines by the government and|
|their operation as a part of the postal |
|system is the latest idea of Postmaster |
|General Hitchcock. Announcement was made |
|today that a resolution to this effect |
|will be offered to Congress at the |
|present session.--_Wisconsin State |
|Journal._ |
There is always one thing in these stories that gives them news
value--the purpose or result of the conference, hearing, or
announcement. This purpose or result, of course, must be played up. The
one point that the reporter should remember is that a well-written lead
begins with the result or purpose of the meeting or announcement rather
than with the name of the meeting or the name of the body that makes the
announcement. Never begin a story thus: "At a meeting of the Press Club
held in the Auditorium last night it was resolved that----" Transpose
the sentence and begin with a statement of what was resolved. In the
following story the order is wrong:
| The Supreme Court of the United States,|
|through the opinion delivered by Justice |
|Vandevanter, today declared |
|constitutional the employers' liability |
|law of 1908. |
The import of the decision is buried; it should be written thus:
| The employers' liability law of 1908 |
|was today declared constitutional by the |
|Supreme Court of the United States. |
|Justice Vandevanter delivered the opinion|
|of the court, made in four cases. |
In these stories, as in all other news stories, the lead must begin with
the fact or statement that gives the story news value. Burying this fact
or statement behind two or three lines of explanation spoils the
effectiveness of the lead. A student of journalism may gain very good
practice in the writing of news stories by looking over the leads that
appear in the daily papers and transposing those leads which bury their
news behind explanations. The first line of type in a lead is like a
shop's show window and it must not be used for the display of packing
cases.
=8. Stories on Other Printed Matter.=--A large part of a newspaper's
space, especially in smaller cities, is devoted to stories based on
printed bulletins, announcements, city directories, legislative bills,
and published reports of various kinds. Sometimes a news story is
written upon a pamphlet that was issued for advertising
purposes--because there is some news in it. In all of these stories the
reporter must look through the pamphlet to find something of news value
or something that has a significant relation to other news. Smaller
papers often print stories on the new city directory; the increase or
decrease in population is treated as news and a very interesting story
may be written on a comparison of the names in the directory. In
university towns the appearance of a new university catalog or bulletin
of any sort is the occasion for a story which points out the new
features or compares the new bulletin with a previous one. Reporters and
correspondents in political centers, like state capitals, get out
stories on committee and legislative reports and on new bills that are
proposed or passed by the legislature. The writing of these stories is
very much like the reporting of a speech, which will be discussed later.
The newest or most interesting feature in the report or bill is played
up in the lead as the feature of the story, followed by the source of
the story, the printed bulletin upon which the story is based; thus:
| A new plan for placing the control of |
|all water power in the state in the hands|
|of the legislature was proposed in the |
|minority report of Senators J. B. Smith |
|and L. C. Blake, of the special |
|legislative committee on drainage, issued|
|today. |
These eight classes of news stories do not include all the news stories
that a newspaper prints, but they are in a way typical of all the others
that are not mentioned. It will be noted from these that all news
stories, just like the fire story, are usually written in about the same
way. Each one has a lead which begins with the feature of the
story--i.e., the fact or incident in the story which gives it news value
and makes it of interest--and concludes by answering the reader's
questions, when, where, who, how, why, concerning the feature. Each
story begins again after the lead, and in one or more paragraphs
explains, describes, or narrates the incident in detail and in logical
order. This body of the story which follows the lead, while following in
general the logical order, is so written that its most interesting facts
are near the beginning and its interest dwindles away toward the end.
This is to enable the editor in making up his paper, to take away from
the end of any story, as we have seen before, a paragraph or more
without spoiling the story's continuity or depriving it of any of its
essential facts. The form of the conventional fire story may be used as
a model in the writing of any news story.
In writing the body of a story to explain, describe, or narrate the
incident mentioned in the lead, every effort should be directed toward
clearness. This is particularly true of stories which are in the main
narrations of action. The number of facts that may be included must
depend upon the length of the story; if all of the facts cannot be
included without overburdening the story, cut out some of the details of
lesser importance, but treat those that are included in a clear readable
way. Short sentences are always much better in newspaper writing than
long involved sentences. Pronouns should always be used in such a way
that there can be no doubt in regard to their antecedents. If a
relative clause or participial expression sounds awkward make a separate
sentence of it. In other words, be simple, concise, and clear--that is
better in a newspaper than much fine writing.
IX
FOLLOW-UP AND REWRITE STORIES
The terms "rewrite story" and "follow-up, or follow, story," are names
which newspaper men apply to the rehashed or revised versions of other
news stories. A large newspaper office employs one or more rewrite men
who spend their entire time rewriting stories. To be sure, a part of
their work consists of rewriting, or simply recasting, poorly written
copy prepared by the reporters. But the major part of their work, the
part that interests us, involves something more than that. It involves
the rejuvenation of stories that have been printed in a previous edition
or in another paper, with the purpose of bringing the news up to the
present moment.
News ages very rapidly. What may be news for one edition is no longer
news when another edition goes to press an hour later. A feature that
may be worth playing up in a morning paper would not have the same news
value in an evening paper of the same day. The news grows stale so
quickly because new things are continually happening and new
developments are continually changing the aspect of previous stories.
If a story has been run through two or three editions and new
developments have changed it, the story is turned over to a rewrite man
for consequent alteration. A story in a morning paper is no longer news
for an evening paper of the same date, but a clever rewrite man, with or
without new developments added to the story, can recast it so that it
will appear to contain more recent news than the original story. The
story of an arrest in a morning paper begins with the particulars of the
arrest; but when the evening paper's rewrite man has rearranged it for
his paper it has become the story of the trial or the police court
hearing which followed the arrest. Perhaps the evening paper sends a man
to get the later developments in the case, but every rewrite man knows
the steps that always follow an arrest and he can rewrite the original
story without additional information. His account of the later
developments is called either a rewrite or a follow-up story, depending
upon the method employed. The same fundamental idea of rejuvenating the
former story governs the preparation of both the rewrite and the
follow-up story, but while the rewrite story contains no additional
news, the follow-up presents later facts in addition to the old news.
=1. The Rewrite Story.=--The rewrite story is primarily a rehashing of a
previous news story without additional facts. It attempts to give a new
twist to old facts in order to bring them nearer to the present time.
Without the aid of later facts the rewrite man can only select a new
feature and revise the old facts. For example, suppose that a $100,000
grain elevator burns during the night. The fire would make a big story
in a city of moderate size and the papers next morning would treat it at
length. If no one were killed or injured the story would probably begin
with a simple announcement of the fire in a lead of this kind:
| Fire destroyed the grain elevator of |
|the H. P. Jones Produce Company, First |
|and Water streets, and $50,000 worth of |
|wheat at 2 o'clock this morning. The |
|total loss is estimated at $150,000. |
Then the reporter would describe the fire at length, including all
obtainable facts. By afternoon almost every one in the city has read the
story--and yet the afternoon papers must print something about the big
fire. If no new facts can be obtained the previous story must be
rehashed and presented with a new feature that will make it appear to be
a later story. It is useless to begin the evening story with a mere
announcement of the fire, for that is no longer news, and the rewrite
man must find a new beginning to attract the attention of his readers.
Perhaps in looking over the morning story, he finds that the fire was
the result of spontaneous combustion in the grain stored in the
elevator. In the morning story this fact was rather insignificant in the
face of the huge loss, and most readers passed over it hastily. The
rewrite man, however, who has no later facts at his command, may seize
it as a new feature. Instead of beginning his story with the fact of the
fire, which is already known, he begins with the cause, which appears to
be later news. His lead may be as follows:
| Spontaneous combustion in the wheat |
|bins of the H. P. Jones Produce Company's|
|elevator, First and Water streets, |
|started the fire which destroyed the |
|entire structure with a loss of $150,000 |
|this morning. |
Or if the rewrite man is not so fortunate as to discover a new feature
as good as this, he may have to resort to beginning with a picture of
the present results of the fire--thus:
| Smouldering ruins and a tangled mass of|
|steel beams are all that remain of the H.|
|P. Jones Produce Company's $100,000 |
|grain elevator, First and Water streets, |
|which was destroyed by fire this morning.|
It will be noticed that, while these new rewrite leads begin with a new
feature, each new lead contains all the facts presented in the previous
lead and is told with an eye to the man who has not read the earlier
account. After the lead the rewrite man retells the whole story for the
benefit of readers who did not see the morning papers and rearranges the
facts so that they appear new to those who read the previous stories.
Facts which the other papers buried he unearths and displays; details
which appear to be later developments he crowds to the beginning. The
whole story is sorted and rewritten in a new order and with a new
emphasis. The result is a rewrite story which appears to be later,
although it contains no new facts at all. It is seldom, of course, that
such a rewrite story is used for local news, for very rarely is it
impossible for a later paper to discover new facts. But in the case of
news from the outside world, from other cities, the simple method of
rehashing old facts must often be resorted to. If the story is based
upon a single dispatch announcing an earthquake in Hawaii or a shipwreck
in mid-ocean, many rewrite stories must be printed on the same facts
before another message brings later news and additional details. An
example of this is the treatment of the first few stories of the wreck
of the White Star liner _Titanic_. The story was a big one, but the
first dispatches were very meager and many rehashings of these few facts
had to be printed before later and more definite news could be obtained.
The simple rewriting of an old story ordinarily involves a condensation
of the facts. If a morning paper printed two thousand words on the grain
elevator fire above, an afternoon paper of the same day would hardly
treat the story at such length. For the story is no longer big news. If
a story has run through the first editions of a morning paper it would
be cut down, as well as rehashed, in the later editions of the same
paper. The story of the fire loses its initial burst of interest after
the first printing, and only the essential facts and the facts that can
be rejuvenated can be reprinted. The 2,000-word version in the morning
paper may be worth only five hundred words or less four hours later.
=2. The Follow-up Story.=--If new facts are added to a story between
editions the new version is no longer a simple rewrite story. It becomes
a follow-up story, for it follows up the subsequent developments in the
previous story and corresponds to the second or succeeding installments
of a serial novel in which each installment begins with a synopsis of
previous chapters. For example, if, in the grain elevator fire story,
the body of a watchman were found in the ruins after the morning papers
have gone to press, the story would immediately have a different news
value for the evening papers. The story of the big fire is old, but the
discovery of the body is new. Hence the rewrite man would begin with the
later development--perhaps thus:
| The body of a watchman was found this |
|afternoon in the ruins of the H. P. Jones|
|Produce elevator, which burned to the |
|ground this morning with a loss of |
|$150,000. |
The new story, while retelling the principal facts in the previous
account, would give prominence to the latest news, the discovery of the
body. As an example from a newspaper, let us take the follow-up of a
murder mystery. The first stories on this murder simply said that a
grocer had been found dead in the cellar of his store and murder had
been suggested. The follow-up on the next day (printed here) deals with
a new development--has a new feature--and carries the story one step
further in the attempt to unravel the mystery:
| Developments yesterday in the story of |
|the killing of James White, the Park |
|street grocer, tended to support the |
|contention of Coroner Donalds and the |
|police that White was not murdered, but |
|died by his own hand. |
=3. Analysis.=--So far we have treated the rewrite story and the
follow-up story separately, but for the purposes of analysis and study
they may be treated together, because the same fundamental idea governs
both. Dissection of the follow-up story will also show us what the
rewrite story is made of.
From the above clippings it will be seen that the lead of the follow-up
story is very much like that of any news story. The lead has its feature
in the first line and answers the reader's questions concerning that
feature. It is simply a new story written on an old subject which has
been given a new feature to make it appear new. Furthermore, it will be
noticed that the lead of the follow-up story is complete in itself,
without the original story that preceded it. Although the whole idea of
the follow story is based on the supposition that all readers have read
every edition of the paper and are therefore acquainted with the
original story, yet for the benefit of those readers who have not read
the previous story, the follow-up must be complete and clear in itself.
New facts are introduced into the follow story, but its lead tells the
main facts of the original story so that no reader will be at loss to
understand what it is all about--in other words, it gives a synopsis of
previous chapters. In many follow-up stories the new developments are
supplemented by an entire retelling of the original story. This is
especially true when one paper is rewriting a story which broke too late
for its preceding edition and was covered by a rival paper. At any rate,
every follow-up story, like every other news story, must be so
constructed as to stand by itself without previous explanation.
| Of the 142 bodies of victims of the |
|Triangle Waist Company's fire on |
|Saturday, that had been taken to the |
|morgue up to noon yesterday when it was |
|decided that all the dead had been |
|recovered, all but 45 had been identified|
|today. |
This is a follow-up of a story two days before. Every reader of the
paper probably knew everything that had been printed previously about
the fire, and yet this lead very carefully recalls the fire to the
reader's mind. Later in the story the principal facts of the original
story are retold as if they were new and unknown.
It is interesting to see what in any given newspaper story can be
followed up for a later story. The would-be reporter may get good
practice in writing follow-up stories from the mere attempt to study out
the next step in any given new story. With this next step as his feature
he may try to write a follow-up story without additional information,
and then compare it with other follow-up stories. For every news story
contains within it clues to what may be expected to follow.
When any serious fire occurs certain additional facts may always be
expected to follow. The finding of more dead, the unravelling of a
mysterious origin, the re-statement of the loss, and the present
condition of the injured are some of the possibilities that a rewrite
man considers when he tries to prepare a follow-up story on a fire. The
Washington Place fire in New York on March 25, 1911, furnished admirable
material for the study of the rewriting of fire stories. The fire
occurred on Saturday afternoon too late for anything but the Sunday
editions. The original story as it appeared in the Sunday papers and the
Monday issues, of papers which had no Sunday editions, began like this:
| One hundred and forty-one persons are |
|dead as a result of a fire which on |
|Saturday afternoon swept the three upper |
|floors of the factory loft building at |
|the northwest corner of Washington place |
|and Greene street. More than |
|three-quarters of this number are women |
|and girls, who were employed in the |
|Triangle Shirt Waist factory, where the |
|fire originated.--_Boston Transcript, |
|Monday._ |
The Monday stories on the fire followed up various phases as shown in
the following. Each one while indicating that the story was a follow-up
retold the principal incidents in the fire.
| The death list in the Washington place |
|and Greene street fire was swelled today |
|to 145, a majority of the victims being |
|young girls.--_Monday morning--second |
|story._ |
| At dawn today it was estimated that |
|25,000 persons had visited the temporary |
|morgue on the covered pier at the foot of|
|East Twenty-sixth street, set aside to |
|receive the bodies of those who perished |
|in the Washington place fire on Saturday |
|afternoon.--_Monday morning--second |
|story._ |
| The horror of the fire in the ten-story|
|loft building at Washington place and |
|Greene street late Saturday afternoon, |
|with its heavy toll of human lives, grows|
|blacker each succeeding hour.--_Monday |
|afternoon._ |
| Of the 142 bodies in the morgue as a |
|result of the Triangle Shirt Waist |
|factory fire, all but fifty had been |
|identified this morning.--_Monday |
|afternoon._ |
On Tuesday other lines opened up for the rewrite man:
| Sifting down the great mass of |
|testimony at their disposal, city and |
|county officials hoped today to draw |
|closer to the source of responsibility |
|for Saturday's factory fire horror in |
|which 142 persons lost their lives. |
|Investigations started |
|yesterday.--_Tuesday afternoon._ |
| With all but twenty-eight of the |
|victims of the Triangle Shirt Waist |
|factory horror identified, District |
|Attorney Whitman continues steadily |
|compiling evidence. Funerals for scores |
|of victims are being held today, while |
|the relief fund, etc.--_Tuesday |
|afternoon._ |
| Borough President McAneny of Manhattan,|
|the district attorney's staff, the fire |
|marshal, the coroner and the state labor |
|department are bending every energy |
|toward fixing the blame for the loss of |
|the 142 lives in the, etc.--_Tuesday |
|afternoon._ |
| Union labor, horrified by the full |
|realization that the waste of human life |
|in the Triangle Waist factory fire might |
|have been saved had existing laws been |
|enforced, today arranged for a monster |
|demonstration of protest, etc.--_Tuesday |
|afternoon._ |
And so the stories ran for many days until newspaper readers had lost
all interest in the fire. Most of the stories were simply retellings of
the original story with a new bit of information in the lead. People
were ravenous for more details about the fire and the follow stories
supplied them until they were satisfied. Rarely is a fire worth so many
retellings.
A serious accident is often followed up in one or more editions. If many
people are killed or injured, the revised list of dead or the present
condition of the injured always furnishes material for a follow-up.
Sometimes the fixing of the blame, as in a railroad accident, or other
resulting features are used as the basis of the rewriting.
In the case of a robbery the commonest material for a follow-up story is
the resulting pursuit or capture. Very often a final report of the loss,
the present condition of a robbed bank or public institution, or perhaps
the regaining of the booty, makes a feature for a new story. But usually
the follow-up is concerned with the pursuit, capture, or trial. This is
especially true if the original story has been told by an earlier paper
and another later paper wishes to print a more up-to-date story on the
robbery, such as:
| MINOCQUA, Wis., Oct. 22.--It now begins|
|to look as if the bandits who robbed the |
|State Bank of Minocqua early Tuesday |
|morning would make their escape with the |
|booty. (This is followed by a re-telling |
|of the entire story of the robbery and an|
|account of the pursuit.) |
The most usual follow-up of a murder story is interested in the pursuit,
capture, or trial of the perpetrator of the deed. For example:
| Following the discovery of the body of |
|Pietro Barilla, an Italian, of Woodhaven,|
|Long Island, who was stabbed to death by |
|four men, presumably Black Hand members, |
|in Lincoln Road, near Flatbush, early |
|yesterday morning, the police arrested |
|three men yesterday. |
Very often the present condition of the victim of an attempted murder
calls for a new story. The stories following the attempted murder of
Mayor Gaynor of New York are good examples of the latter. If a mystery
surrounds the crime a possible solution is grounds for a new story. The
stories which might follow the unraveling of the mystery surrounding the
fictitious death of the grocer, mentioned at the beginning of this
chapter, would be second-day murder stories. The original story, let us
say, was something like this:
| James White, a groceryman, was found |
|dying yesterday with a bullet wound in |
|his abdomen, in the cellar of his grocery|
|store at 1236 Park street. |
The next story on the murder would be concerned with the unraveling of
the mystery, thus:
| The preliminary inquiry yesterday by |
|Coroner John F. Donalds, into the |
|mysterious death of James White, the Park|
|street grocer, resulted in the conclusion|
|that White was murdered. |
And so the stories might run on day after day following the solution of
the case like the succeeding chapters of a continued novel, and each one
gives the synopsis of the preceding chapters in its lead, as every good
follow-up story should do.
Suicide stories seldom offer material for follow-up stories unless there
is some mystery surrounding the case. Sometimes the present condition of
a resuscitated victim of attempted suicide or the disposition of the
estate of a suicide offers material for rewriting.
Serious storms and floods are usually followed up for several days.
Readers are always interested in the present condition of the devastated
region. Very often the list of dead and injured is revised from day to
day, and any attempt to lend aid to the unfortunate victims is always a
reason for a later story.
Any meetings, conferences, trials, conventions, or the like must be
followed up day by day with succeeding stories. Each story is complete
in itself, but each one adds one more chapter to the report of the
meeting. This method of following a continued proceeding calls for a
series of follow-up stories; examples of the stories that follow a
continued legal trial will be given later under Court Reporting.
* * * * *
Many other illustrations might be given of follow-up stories that appear
daily in the newspapers. In the last analysis, the follow-up or the
rewrite story is nothing more than an ordinary news story, and as such
must be written in the same way. It begins with a lead which plays up a
feature and answers the reader's questions about the subject; the body
of the story runs along like the body of any news story. But it is
different in being a later chapter of a previous account; while complete
in itself, it must not only indicate the previous story, but must tell
its most important facts for readers who may have missed the previous
story. It is simply a news story which is tied to a previous story by a
string of cause and effect.
=4. Following Up Related Subjects.=--In this connection it may be well
to mention another kind of follow-up story that is usually written in
connection with big news events. It is written to develop and follow up
side lines of interest growing out of the main story. In its most usual
form it is a statistical summary of events similar to the great event of
the day--such as similar fires, similar railroad wrecks, etc., in the
past. Any big story attracts so much attention among newspaper readers
that the facts at hand are usually not sufficient to supply the public's
demand for information on the subject. To satisfy these demands editors
develop lines of interest growing out of the main event. They interview
people concerning the event and concerning similar events; they describe
similar events that have taken place in the past; they summarize and
compare similar events in the past--in short, they follow up every line
of interest opened up by the big story and write stories on the result.
These stories are of the nature of follow-up stories in that they grow
out of, and develop, the main story in its greatest extent.
For example, the wreck of the ocean liner _Titanic_ called for
innumerable side stories because the public's interest demanded more
facts than the newspapers had at hand to supply. Hence, the papers wrote
up similar shipwrecks in the past, gathered together summaries of the
world's greatest shipwrecks, interviewed people who had been in any way
connected with shipwrecks or with any phase of this shipwreck, described
glaciers and icebergs, estimated the depth of the ocean where the
_Titanic_ sank, described the White Star liner and other liners,
pictured real or imaginary shipwrecks, and developed every other related
subject. The real news in all this mass of material was very meager, but
the related stories satisfied the greedy public and helped newspaper
readers to understand and to picture the real significance of the meager
news.
In the same way a disastrous fire, like the burning of the Iroquois
Theater, calls for innumerable outgrowing stories. Even when the event
reported in the main news story is not sufficiently important to call
for related stories, it is often accompanied by a list (usually put in a
box at the head of the story) of other similar events and their results
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