VOCATIONAL SERIES

EDITED BY
E. HERSHEY SNEATH, Ph.D., LL.D., Yale University

THE YOUNG MAN AND JOURNALISM

VOCATIONAL SERIES
Edited by
E. HERSHEY SNEATH
Ph.D., LL.D., Yale University

The Young Man and the Law. Simeon E. Baldwin.

The Young Man and Teaching. Henry Parks Wright.

The Young Man and Civil Engineering. George Fillmore Swain.

The Young Man and Journalism. Chester S. Lord.

THE YOUNG MAN AND
JOURNALISM

BY

CHESTER S. LORD, M.A., LL.D.

For forty-one years a member of the staff of the New York Sun
and for thirty-three years (1880–1913) its managing editor

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and printed. Published November, 1922.

Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.

EDITOR’S PROSPECTUS

One of the most important decisions a young man is called upon to make relates to the determination of his life-work. It is fraught with serious consequence for him. It involves the possibilities of success and failure. The social order is such that he can best realize his ends by the pursuit of a vocation. It unifies his purposes and endeavors—making them count for most in the struggle for existence and for material welfare. It furnishes steady employment at a definite task as against changeable effort and an unstable task. This makes for superior skill and greater efficiency which result in a larger gain to himself and in a more genuine contribution to the economic world.

But a man’s vocation relates to a much wider sphere than the economic. It is intimately associated with the totality of his interests. It is in a very real sense the center of most of his relations in life. His intellectual interests are seriously dependent upon his vocational career. Not only does the attainment of skill and efficiency call for the acquisition of knowledge and development of judgment, but the leisure that is so essential to the pursuit of those intellectual ends which are a necessary part of his general culture is, in turn, dependent, to a considerable extent, upon the skill and efficiency that he acquires in his vocation.

Nor are his social interests less dependent upon his life-work. Men pursuing the same calling constitute in a peculiar sense a great fraternity or brotherhood bound together by common interests and aims. These condition much of his social development. His wider social relationships also are dependent, in a large measure, on the success that he attains in his chosen field of labor.

Even his moral and spiritual interests are vitally centered in his vocation. The development of will, the steadying of purpose, the unfolding of ideals, the cultivation of vocational virtues, such as industry, fidelity, order, honesty, prudence, thrift, patience, persistence, courage, self-reliance, etc.—all of this makes tremendously for his moral and spiritual development. The vocationless man, no matter to what class he belongs, suffers a great moral and spiritual disadvantage. His life lacks idealization and is therefore wanting in unity and high moralization. His changeable task, with its changeable efforts, does not afford so good an opportunity for the development of the economic and social virtues as that afforded the man who pursues a definite life-work. It lacks also that discipline—not only mental, but moral—which the attainment of vocational skill and efficiency involves.

But notwithstanding the important issues involved in a man’s vocational career, little has been done in a practical or systematic way to help our college young men to a wise decision in the determination of their life-work. Commendable efforts are being put forth in our public schools in this direction, but very little, indeed, has been done in this respect in the sphere of higher education. To any one familiar with the struggles of the average college student in his efforts to settle this weighty question for himself, the perplexities, embarrassment, and apparent helplessness are pathetic. This is due largely to his ignorance of the nature of the professions and other vocations which appeal most strongly to the college man. Consequently, he does not know how to estimate his fitness for them. He cannot advise to any extent with his father, because he represents only one vocation. Neither can he advise advantageously with his instructor for he, too, is familiar with the nature of only one profession.

For this reason, a series of books, dealing with the leading vocations, and prepared by men of large ability and experience, capable of giving wise counsel, is a desideratum. Such men are competent to explain the nature and divisions of the particular vocations which they represent, the personal and educational qualifications necessary for a successful pursuit of the same, the advantages and disadvantages, the difficulties and temptations, the opportunities and ideals; thus, in an adequate way, enabling the student to estimate his own fitness for them. They are also able to make valuable suggestions relating to the man’s work after he enters upon his vocation.

Fortunately, in the present Series, the Editor has been able to secure the services of some of the most eminent experts in the country to prepare the respective volumes—men of large knowledge and experience, who have attained wide recognition and genuine success in their “callings.” It is a pleasure to be able to place at the command of the many thousands of students in our American colleges the wise counsel of such experienced and distinguished men.

The “Vocational Series” will consist of twelve books written by representatives of different vocations, as follow:

1. The Young Man and the Law

Hon. Simeon E. Baldwin, LL.D., Professor of Law, Emeritus, Yale University, ex-Governor and ex-Chief Justice of Connecticut

2. The Young Man and the Ministry

Rev. Charles R. Brown, D.D., LL.D., Dean of the Divinity School, Yale University

3. The Young Man and Teaching

Professor Henry Parks Wright, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor Emeritus and formerly Dean of Yale College

4. The Young Man and Medicine

Lewellys F. Barker, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Medicine and Chief Physician, Johns Hopkins University

5. The Young Man and Journalism

Chester Sanders Lord, M.A., LL.D., formerly Managing Editor, New York Sun

6. The Young Man and Banking

Hon. Frank A. Vanderlip, M.A., LL.D., formerly President of the City National Bank, New York

7. The Young Man and Business

8. The Young Man and Mechanical Engineering

Lester P. Breckenridge, M.A., Eng.D., Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University

9. The Young Man and Electrical Engineering

Charles F. Scott, Sc.D., Eng.D., Professor of Electrical Engineering, Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University

10. The Young Man and Civil Engineering

George F. Swain, LL.D., Professor of Civil Engineering, Harvard University

11. The Young Man and Farming

L. H. Bailey, M.S., LL.D., formerly Director of College of Agriculture, Cornell University, and Editor of Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, Rural Science Series, Garden Craft Series, Rural Text-Book Series, Cyclopedia of Agriculture, etc.

12. The Young Man and Government Service

Hon. William Howard Taft, D.C.L., LL.D., ex-President of the United States, and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court

E. Hershey Sneath.

BY WAY OF EXPLANATION

The sole object of the following chapters is to tell a young man what is likely to happen to him if he goes into the newspaper business.

Many young men think of entering journalism, but journalism is to them a maze of mystery. What does it offer as a profession or a vocation? they ask. What is the nature of the business? What are its rewards? Naturally enough they continue to wonder what kind of preparatory study is desirable. How does a young man make a beginning and how does the beginner make progress? What are the recognized standards of newspaper success? How is news collected and prepared for the public? How is a newspaper conducted? What are the duties of each member of a big newspaper staff? What goes on in a newspaper office, anyway?

The book was begun with the intention of answering some of these queries, but it gradually drifted into talk about various phases and features of the business. The original intention has not been lost sight of, however. The purpose is to indicate what journalism offers to a young man as a means of livelihood. It seeks neither to glorify nor to disparage the newspaper.

The book is elementary: not intended or expected to interest or inform newspaper editors of experience.

C. S. L.

Brooklyn, New York,
Nineteen hundred and twenty two.

CONTENTS

THE YOUNG MAN AND JOURNALISM

CHAPTER I

BEGINNING IN NEWSPAPER WORK—THE REPORTER’S FIRST EXPERIENCES—UNPLEASANT TASKS

The beginner in newspaper work usually starts as a reporter of the simplest and most unimportant kind of routine news. The city editor tells him what to do and how to do it. The start is made easy for him. The prevailing supposition that reporters go out into the streets and hunt for news is far from fact. They do so in the small cities but not for big newspapers.

Newsgathering has become vastly systematized. Nineteen twentieths of the news comes through established channels of information and this explains why nearly all newspapers have the same facts. The sources of information are known in all newspaper offices. If a man falls dead in the street, or a fire starts in an important building, or an automobile crushes a child, or anything unusual happens in any street, it is known to every city editor within a few minutes; for a policeman reports it to police headquarters immediately, and reporters grab it. Similarly, shipping news is sent to the ship-news office; cases of sudden or unexplained death must be made public by official physicians; public parades and demonstrations are anticipated through the permit bureau, and so on. All day and all night this kind of news pours in to the city editor. With almost instant judgment he decides on its news value, discards it or hustles a reporter for the details. The new man gets the least important of this kind of work.

The city editor keeps a future book—like milady’s engagement calendar—in which under proper date he records the events to be of that day: business meetings, conventions, adjourned cases, public dinners, everything and anything requiring the presence of a reporter. It is one of the important factors of the newsgetting system. Its proper keeping involves constant drudgery and painstaking care in the reading of newspapers for announcements or for clews to anything that is to happen. He reads, for instance, that an important business meeting has appointed a special committee to report at the next meeting; but no date of the next meeting is given. So he asks the new reporter, maybe, to ascertain and record it in the future book. The new man does many such errands, verifies many statements of fact, chases down many rumors.

In the great blizzard of March, 1888, when all transportation lines in New York City were abandoned came the story that several funeral processions were snowed under in Greenwood cemetery. A new reporter was sent. He toiled through storm and snow waist deep to the burial place and back, a task requiring something like six hours to accomplish, and ended the day’s experience by thawing out his frozen feet in a bucket of water. And what he wrote was: “The rumor that three funeral processions were snowed under in Greenwood cemetery was found on investigation to be untrue.”

The city editor has many sources of information similar to those just mentioned. In the big cities he is responsible for getting the news of the urban district, a task that involves almost every kind of newsgetting. This is especially true of New York City, for taken all in all nearly everything happens in New York that can happen anywhere. It is of metropolitan reporting that we are speaking just now.

The new reporter is asked to make news reports of the simplest of happenings. The narration of ordinary events is the easiest of all newspaper writing. Any intelligent high school boy can catch the knack of it and many a bright newspaper office boy has gone on to better things by absorbing that knack. It is easy to acquire because it may be largely imitative—that is, almost all routine news reports are written in the same groove of construction and in very much the same language, year in and year out, for news topics constantly repeat themselves.

By routine reports are meant accounts of public meetings, conventions, legislative proceedings, trials in the courts, market reports, accidents, fires, suicides and petty crimes. These things are of the utmost importance to the newspapers. They constitute a large proportion of the news of the day. They are the very life of the news columns as presenting a record of the day’s events. They are easy to write because they are written in the same manner day after day for they are constantly recurring. The puzzled young writer cannot go far astray if he turns back in the newspaper files to a similar meeting or accident or event and imitates that report. But let him be warned that if he continues to work in that way he becomes a routine writer, a hack reporter, and his advancement ceases.

It is in this deadly dull routine writing of routine news that we have our poorest and most slovenly newspaper results. The indifferent work done in this direction is more conspicuous in the London newspapers than in our own for there news reports have been reduced almost to formula.

We have said that the dates of fixed events to come are accumulated in the future book—meetings of all sorts, lectures, balls, sporting contests, celebrations, ceremonials, excursions and the like, of which the number and the variety are innumerable. To each of these a reporter is sent. Usually he is told before he starts about how long an article is expected of him. But he is charged to note especially anything unusual, odd, strange, or queer that may happen or be said. And always he must report to the desk, before he begins to write, for instructions as to the exact length of his article. Often two or three reporters are sent to a big meeting, one to write the introduction, another the first half of the speaking and a third the remaining part of the proceedings. This is to save time; and often the first half has been written and is in type before the last man has quit the meeting. Likewise in cases of big disasters, big celebrations, big sporting events, six or eight men are sent, each with a definite part to cover. Each writes his part and the copy reader dovetails them together into one continuous article. Team work of this sort is common enough in big offices.

The new reporter gets his fling at all of this kind of work. If he has the genuine newspaper spirit he is fascinated by his every experience. He searches the paper eagerly for the bit he has contributed. With a glow of satisfaction he contemplates his little record of a news event standing out in clear type, and he reads it again with those shivery gusts of emotion sometimes called “the thrill of authorship.”

After a time, from the writing of petty paragraphs, he finds himself contributing articles a third or a half a column in length. The older men begin to notice his work, speak to him in praise of a well-constructed sentence or a nicety of verbal expression, ask him to come along with them to the beanery for a taste of coffee and cakes before going home for the night. He begins to participate in that most helpful and stimulating thing—the comradeship of the office. He comes daily in contact with forty or fifty men—garrulous veterans, and middle-aged marvels, and youthful geniuses who are doing all kinds of newspaper stunts from constructing ponderous editorial articles and criticisms to exploiting The Stiletto in Stanton Street or The Bludgeon on the Battery. These men are good-natured critics of each other’s work and not less ready to praise than to condemn or question. They take interest in a new man of promise and help him. They read the newspapers and the periodicals, and the new books—for an intimate knowledge of contemporaneous events is essential to their progress. There are few dullards among them, few without positive opinions and a vocabulary to express them. Our young man greatly enjoys their explosive comments and their ferocious conclusions. They are so alert, so alive to everything that is going on. Their conversation is so interesting to him. The atmosphere is surcharged with good fellowship. Nobody is taking himself very seriously yet everybody is doing something in a businesslike way. Somehow things are different in the newspaper office from what he had expected.

The business of reporting becomes more fascinating as the reporter, gaining in skill and in ability, achieves to higher grade work. To write of big and important events becomes his ambition. It gives him prestige among his fellows, for it is the management’s testimonial of confidence in him. Not until after careful consideration does the managing editor name the men who are to report a national political convention, or the inauguration of a president of the United States, or a great celebration. The very best members of the staff are summoned to write of such events and the assignment comes to be considered as an office reward of merit.

To do the big thing of the day is one of the prizes of the reportorial business. Indeed, it may be said of the newspaper man, that from his earliest beginnings always there is something higher to be attained until he becomes the editor in chief.

In the newspaper offices of cities of the larger size, reporters develop into desk editors, city editors, managing editors, music or dramatic or book critics, or editorial writers. Many prefer to do outside work rather than become editors or critics—prefer to write for the news columns, to mingle with the outside world and take part in its stirring events rather than face the routine and the monotony of desk work.

They are especially interested in taking an out of town commission for the investigation of a subject of wide importance—a rebellion in Mexico, an uprising against the government in Cuba, a crisis in Canadian politics, a conflict between labor and capital in Colorado, a socialistic struggle in Schenectady.

Such assignments call for thorough investigation at first hand on the spot, call for an acquaintance with the leaders of the movement that frequently becomes familiar and lasting, call for practical intimate study of the convulsion itself. Information thus gained may, after its publication in the newspaper, be used again in magazines, in books of record or in fiction. The special writer, for instance, who spends a month with the striking miners in the Michigan copper district comes to know much about life and labor there, about the copper industry, mining methods, the relation of the price of copper to miners’ wages, the smelting of ore, the transportation of the raw and the finished product and a thousand other details of the business.

The newspapers do a vast amount of this kind of work. Its proper exploitation necessitates intelligent treatment by the writer. His information forms the basis for editorial comment, not only by the editors of his own newspaper but by those of other sheets, the periodical press, magazines and reviews; and also frequently it leads to government investigation or interference or regulation. Two or three years of this kind of work give a large fund of information to the writer. It is of immeasurable service to him as long as he lives.

Likewise the man who writes for the news columns on national politics finds himself most agreeably employed. In reality he is a specialist. All of his time is required to keep apace with the kaleidoscopic changes of American political life. He must be familiar with the important politics of every state and every big city, for they have immediate relation to the politics of the nation. To that end he makes many journeys. His most valuable asset is personal acquaintance with public men—the men who make politics and political history—and the more intimate the acquaintance the more interest and confidence he may be able to inspire. The political writer seeks to meet public men on every possible occasion, seeks to keep in touch with them and with the politics they represent.

If a conspicuous political leader in a Western state goes East it will be a part of his routine to see the political writers. With them he goes over the political situation of his region, tells them just what is going on and what is contemplated. Some of the talk is confidential, and the writer keeps the confidence. In turn the writers interest him in what they know of the politics of the East and of other states. In this way—so briefly indicated—the political writer comes to comprehend the politics of the nation. He must read all obtainable political literature and must absorb political information from any source at hand.

As said elsewhere in this book, you cannot learn politics from a textbook; you must absorb the politics of the day by a study of the events of the day, and great mental ability is required to keep apace with them. Political conclusions made to-day are upset by the events of to-morrow. The issues of one election are forgotten in the burning questions of the next. The newspapers and the periodical press are great sources of information, but greater than these is association by the newspaper writer with the men who are making politics.

The writer of national politics makes frequent trips to Washington. He goes to the national political conventions and to many of the state conventions. He is called on to write sketches of important candidates and obituary notices of statesmen. His opinions and his information are sought by editorial writers and by public men themselves. The magazines ask him for special articles. The political managers pay him for campaign literature. The greater his experience the more his services are in demand. Not infrequently he is called into party councils or is entrusted with delicate political missions. Candidates and leaders seek his advice and his influence. Presidents, cabinet officers, senators, governors and mayors tempt him to quit newspaper writing to become their secretaries—and these places are usually stepping stones to higher public life. Several presidents of the United States have chosen newspaper writers to be their private secretaries, half of the governors of New York State, in the last thirty years, and nearly every mayor of New York City have drawn their secretaries from the ranks of newspaper writers.

Moreover writers on national politics frequently are called to the post of Washington correspondent, and here too, in yet greater degree, are these same requirements essential to success. Washington is the headquarters of national politics. Nearly every congressman is a political leader in his home district as well as in his state, and his activities and ambitions are quickened in the national capital. It is the place of all places to study political movement. The correspondent enjoys the personal acquaintance of presidents, cabinet officers, foreign diplomats, the makers of party policies, the framers of administrative measures, and from them he comes to know what they are doing. Many state secrets are told to him in confidence; to betray that confidence is to make him persona non grata and to destroy the possibility of getting additional information. The supposition that the newspaper writer prints everything he hears is silly. Indeed, public men have come to know that a safe way to keep a political secret is to tell it to the newspaper correspondents with the injunction that it is not to be printed.

In addition to the gathering of political information the Washington correspondent writes of the doings of Congress. This of course involves study of public questions, the burning questions of the day. It furnishes a volume of information to the young man who is to continue his career as a journalist or who may turn to public or professional life, involving, as it does, study of engineering triumphs like the Panama canal, public improvements like the development of Western irrigation, tariff changes, taxation, national banking systems, the problems of domestic shipping and foreign commerce. The correspondent comes to know about diplomacy, the making of treaties, the relation of labor to capital, railway management, government regulation of traffic—and so on almost without limit.

The correspondent must know about these things if he is to write intelligently about them. He must be familiar with the business of the departments, must understand the army and the navy, should know the whereabouts of every regiment and every ship of importance. He should know the name and the politics and the post of every American diplomat, should know government finances—indeed, should know everything the government does. These things constantly are recurring in new and unexpected ways and they must be treated as important news of the day.

Not less fascinating to the young reporter is his daily contact with men of affairs whom he meets in the course of his news collecting; not less interesting his intimacy with the events of the day that pulsate and inspire. His work becomes so varied. It all is so new. His experiences are so interesting; and they become the more so as he gains in experience and is asked to do higher grade work. In his book on Newspaper Reporting Mr. John Pendleton of London says:

The reporter is the collector of news for the circulation of which the paper really exists. On his report of the Premier’s speech the editor bases his leading article. He records the splendor of the Queen’s drawing room, and the want and wretchedness of the poor. No festival is complete without him; and he turns up at every calamity. He chronicles the deeds of the hero and the crimes of the miscreant. He tells how the pulse of commerce beats in every market of the world. Science and art are beholden to his pen; and even religion itself has to thank him for some of its spread. He has become a necessity to newspaper production and no inconsiderable figure in national life.

The reporter is not sent out haphazard; he is out for a purpose and that purpose is the collection at first hand of facts and information that are supposed to interest a multitude of readers. If they are interesting to those who read them, how much the more so to the young man who, after investigation and verification to his own satisfaction, puts his conclusions on paper!

And note, if you will, how important is the work. Since the first use of printers’ type the great events of the world, the events that have moved and influenced mankind, that have made the history of the world, have been announced first of all in the newspapers. They have been proclaimed to the world not by clergymen from the pulpit, or lecturers from the platform, or orators in legislative halls, not through the medium of books or magazines or pamphlets, or by the writers of editorial articles, or by critics—but in burning type by reporters.

It seems but yesterday, that midnight hour, when a reporter burst into the working room of a morning newspaper with the exclamation: “He’s got it—we are going to have the electric light in every part of every house and over every desk in this room.” He had hurried from Edison’s first big test of the division of the electric current: had seen a hundred electric bulbs glowing in all their fascinating brightness by electricity transmitted over wires. And the people marveled at what he wrote about it.

Within the span of my own newspaper experience, reporters have given first information to the world of the discovery and development of electric lighting, heating, cooking and propulsion; of Roentgen rays; of the telephone; of the phonograph; of the automobile; the player piano; of the typesetting machine and the multiple page printing press; the shoe-making machine; of breech-loading guns, machine-made cartridges and diabolical explosives; of the airplane and the zeppelin; of wireless telegraphy; of steel construction in big buildings; of the marvels of construction in gigantic locomotives and steamships, in subways, and elevated railroads, bridges, and aqueducts; of bacillus treatment in medicine and the wonders of abdominal surgery; and hundreds of other developments of science. We have seen the declaration of a dozen wars and the signing of a dozen peace treaties; the announcement of the death of monarchs and the birth of princes, the assassination of rulers and the inauguration of their successors.

Some reporter has announced the discovery or the fact of every one of these things. He has been compelled to study the subject enough to write about it understandingly, and that study has brought him in contact with the men who have caused or invented it.

The reporter mingles constantly with the men who control the affairs of the world. This not only is fascinating, but it gives him confidence in himself, gives him personal address, ease of manner and of conversation, manliness of presence. It sharpens his wits. It takes away that paralyzing emotion so often felt by youth when in the presence of greatness. Nothing can be more stimulating to the intellect than association with intellectual men.

The reporter who writes of an important event usually is asked to continue on the case as long as it is of public interest. The man who wrote the narrative of the murder of White by Harry Thaw wrote of Thaw’s publicities for a long time afterward. The man who reports a big labor strike is called on to report the next strike. He gets interested in the subject, makes it a study, and becomes authority on the relations between labor and capital. In this way as time goes on the reporter comes to be a sort of specialist in several topics and the knowledge thus acquired is of great value to him when he comes to editorial writing, or magazine work, or authorship of any kind, or if he goes into the law or into the public service or any other business. There is not any other employment probably in which a young man may gather so extensive a general contemporaneous knowledge as in newspaper reporting in a big city.

The speakers at a public banquet may drone on for an hour or so without saying anything or giving utterance to a sentence worth reporting and then something of supreme importance may be said. The good reporter recognizes its worth instantly; the poor one does not.

Colonel William Rockhill Nelson, who won fame as editor of the Kansas City Star, had this to say in an address to the students of a School of Journalism:

There is just one point I wish to emphasize to the young men who are expecting to engage in newspaper work. That is, that the reporter is the essential man on the newspaper. He is the big toad in the puddle.

Young fellows looking forward to a newspaper career often have in mind an editorship of some sort. They want to guide and instruct public opinion. The trouble is that the public doesn’t yearn to have its opinion guided and instructed. It wants to get the news and be entertained.

Consider who are making the real newspapers and magazines to-day. Not the grave and learned publicist who is giving advice on the state of the Nation from the seclusion of some hole in the wall; not the recluse with a bunch of academic theories.

It is the reporter with the nose for news. He is the only fellow who has any business around newspapers or magazines. In general his job is not to produce literature, but to do reporting.

Often a good pair of legs makes a good reporter. The newspaper man must always be on the job, always hustling, always ready to go to any inconvenience or suffer any fatigue to get the news. And above all, so far as routine reporting goes, he must be honest and accurate.

Charles Dickens, who was a reporter before he became a writer of novels, says of some of his experiences:

I have often transcribed for the printer, from shorthand notes, important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark lantern in a post chaise and four, galloping through a wild country and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour.

The very last time I was at Exeter, I strolled into the castle yard there to identify, for the amusement of a friend, the spot on which we “took” as we used to call it, an election speech of Lord John Russell at the Devon contest, in the midst of a lively fight maintained by all the vagabonds in that division of the country and under such a pelting rain that I remember two good-natured colleagues, who chanced to be at leisure, held a pocket handkerchief over my notebook after the fashion of a State canopy in an ecclesiastical procession.

I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep—kept in waiting, say, until the Woolsack might want restuffing.

Returning home from political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been in my time belated in miry by-roads, toward the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheel-less carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post boys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew.

Of the reporter’s familiarity with limitless phases of life it has been said:

The reporter of to-day has to be courageous, sharp as a hawk, mentally untiring, physically enduring. He comes in contact with everybody from monarchs to beggars, from noblemen to nobodies. He sees the tragedy and the comedy of human life, its cynicism and toadyism, its patient struggling and feverish ambition, its sham and subterfuge, its lavish wealth and deepest poverty, its good deeds and most hideous crime.

Mr. H. G. Wells says of writers that “they meet philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, and the great.”

As illustrating the high place a man may make for himself while writing for the news department of a newspaper, let us quote from an editorial article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

Of Saxon stock though of Irish birth, a Royal scholarship graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, William Crooke, for forty years of the New York Sun’s staff as a news writer and nearly all that period in charge of the Sun’s Brooklyn news, came to be known to every police and fire department official, to most of the clergymen and all the big politicians of either party in old Brooklyn as “Billy Crooke”; always respectfully and often affectionately regarded, trusted by every one because he never betrayed a confidence and never misrepresented any communication or interview.

Mr. Crooke, qualified by high education for the writing that analyzes and illuminates the world’s happenings, and a keen incisive stylist in his reporting work, was satisfied to be a reporter. He felt to the full the dignity of what he was doing; he realized that it is news that makes a newspaper, not features and not comment. He was a newspaper-maker in the best sense. Kindliness, dry humor, accurate observation, integrity, and dignity made “Billy” what he was.

In most of the college publications one may find under the heading of Alumni Notes, an item such as this:

“’18, John F. Jenkins has accepted a position on the editorial staff of the New York Star.”

This means that Jenkins has got a job as a reporter. But Jenkins did not have the easy time getting it that the paragraph in the college paper would lead one to suppose. Nor did he “accept” the post: the Star accepted him. Before Jenkins landed on the Star he visited five newspaper offices, reached the assistant city editor of two, the city editor of one. He did not get beyond the office boy guarding the portals of the others.

Jenkins left four of the offices with a definite feeling that New York was none too cordial to a budding newspaper man. But he failed to consider, because he did not know, that two or three young men visit the city room of a metropolitan newspaper every day on an errand similar to his. And he failed to realize, because he did not know, that in normal times a conservative newspaper hires about one new reporter a month.

The city editor of the Star happened to need a man when Jenkins called. Jenkins was a college man; that was in his favor. His manner of approach was pleasing to the man who was thinking of hiring him. If the impression was good to the city editor it would also be good to the men to whom Jenkins might be sent as a reporter. His conversation was direct and to the point. He didn’t make extravagant talk about his ability; he was frank in saying that he didn’t know anything about the newspaper business, but wanted to learn and was willing to work hard to make good. He would be glad to take twenty dollars a week at the start and asked only for a trial.

“All right, report to-morrow at one o’clock,” said the city editor and Jenkins left the office in a daze with a job. He had been trying for three days to get one and the interview that landed it had consumed not more than three minutes.

Jenkins got the job because he was clean, intelligent and looked like good material. He had not made the mistake of thinking that impertinent aggressiveness would impress the man who was to hire him. He had not made the mistake of failing to remove his hat when he sat down beside the city desk to make his appeal. Several men had made that mistake with the city editor of the Star. A man who did not know enough to remove his hat even in an office, did not have manners enough to approach many of the men to whom the Star would send him. Jenkins did not waste the time of the city editor on nonessentials, and it was to be presumed that he would be as businesslike with those with whom he came in contact later as a reporter. Jenkins also had personality. He acted as though he meant business and realized that newspaper work was pleasant but not play. He had no letters of recommendation and the city editor didn’t ask for any. Letters are easy to get and as a rule do not count for much. Personality, such as Jenkins’s, counts a lot.

The reporter must be prepared to meet the active men of the world: the men who are doing the constructive work of the world. He must have presence and address to attract their attention. Usually he is a stranger to them. His presence is unwelcome to them. Experience has attested that the college boy is better fitted for this task than any other kind of beginner. He is familiar with the ways of society and has some notion of the public questions of the day and the vital problems of life. The green young man of uncouth appearance, of clumsy presence, of faltering, stammering speech makes a mighty poor reporter.

Many newspaper office boys become good reporters. In constant contact with the editorial force they absorb knowledge of the business. Noneducated or partly educated youths may and do become excellent reporters of routine news, but they rarely get beyond the imitative stage. In the race for higher journalistic honors the college boys easily outstrip them.

A welcome addition to the staff is the man who comes from a country newspaper. Many of the ablest of American journalists began their careers in rural offices. The country boy usually knows something of the technical side of the business. Likely enough he has learned to set type or run a typesetting machine, has lent a hand in the mailing room or the delivery department, has mastered many details that, though not essential, have given a comprehensive notion of how newspapers are made.

Nor should the young man from the country, ambitious for city experience, stay away from the city through fear of competition or through timidity. Do not be afraid. The newspaper men of the city are not smarter than those in the country. I recall the youngster from a small up-state daily who with fear and trembling accepted a chance to work a few days on trial, in a big city office, as reporter. He went smashing around town for routine news and found the work not difficult. In a week confidence had conquered timidity. He observed the other reporters and workers and said to himself, “I can compete with these men”—and he did compete with them to his gratifying success.

Fascinating as the reporter’s life may be, it nevertheless has its unpleasant moments, its many hardships. The hours of work are irregular and unlimited. Men on the big metropolitan morning newspapers report for duty at noon, one or two o’clock; those of the evening staffs at seven or eight, A.M.; and all are supposed to work as long as their services are required—not infrequently for fifteen hours. Newspaper-making is a continuous performance, especially for reporters. Frequently those employed in it suffer great discomforts through physical fatigue, lack of food and sleep, and exposure to weather conditions.

One of the court reporters of a morning newspaper in New York was finishing his work in the late evening. He had been on duty some ten hours and his work had been hard. Suddenly came the big explosion of the great munitions plant at Morgan, New Jersey, and the weary young writer was told to hustle out there. At Perth Amboy he encountered the military guard thrown out to prevent approach to the burning buildings. In his attempts to get along he was arrested six times and detained. He phoned his facts to the office and was told to stay on. He could find no place to sleep—couldn’t have slept if he had—could hardly find a place to sit down even, could get nothing to eat or drink. Explosion after explosion followed hour after hour. And when at length he reached the office he was too exhausted to write a word. So they sent him to bed for six hours and then he wrote his report.

Very many other men had a similar experience that day and night. They were in constant danger of their lives, badly fed and without rest. They were driven from place to place by the military guard, and most of them were arrested over and over again. It was one of the most trying disasters to report of which we have record.

Several reporters nearly lost their lives while crossing Great South Bay in a tempest to the scene of a shipwreck on the beach. They capsized in a sail boat and the life-saving guard barely gave rescue.

Men sent to the Johnstown flood found the town wrecked, scantily provisioned, and with no sleeping accommodations. They were compelled to stay there a week under most distressing conditions while the search for the dead continued.

The reporting of the great national political conventions requires unceasing effort for a week or more, the utmost vigil through night and day. Important committees are reaching decisions, new pacts and combinations are being formed, and the entire situation may be changing from hour to hour. There is no sleep for the unfortunate correspondent; he must be awake to the instant. The reporting of what is done in the public sessions of the convention is the least of his labors.

When a man of importance falls mortally ill a reporter is detailed to watch him—to obtain the earliest announcement of his death. The vigil is constant. In scores of instances reporters have sat on the man’s doorstep waiting for him to die. This sort of work involves all the monotony of sentry duty. It is disagreeable in the extreme.

The newspaper boys are asked to do many unpleasant things. They are compelled to invade private homes and to ask agonized parents why a son or a daughter has committed suicide or has done a disgraceful act; to ask a husband whether it is true that his wife has run away with a neighbor, or ask a wife whether her husband is a fugitive from justice. The assignments that take a writer into a family that has been disgraced by one of its members are the most unpleasant, probably, of any that fall to him.

Indeed there is little of joyousness in any search for information that some one wishes to conceal. Yet every editor knows that in very many important cases to be chronicled some one is interested in concealing the real facts. The people who want their affairs screened from public gaze constitute a multitude. Diplomats are reticent. Government officers are evasive. Political plans are kept in the shadow, for publicity has ruined many a political plot. Bank officials seek to conceal defalcations. Insurance companies try to hush great losses. Society leaders wish to minimize society scandals. Usually in these cases the inquirer is lied to deliberately and calmly, or the door is slammed in his face, or the person sought refuses to be seen, or the reporter is sent on a fool’s errand elsewhere—anything to be rid of him. Some one has said that the newspaper man is asked to lie about people almost as often as he is asked to tell the truth.

To obtain exact truth always has been surrounded by difficulties. Almost every historian complains of the task of establishing the truth of history. He finds the literature of the time at variance with the facts; public documents and records absolutely contradicting one another; while the recollections and reminiscences of the oldest inhabitants are fanciful dreams. It was Talleyrand who said of a treaty that if it contained no ambiguities some should be inserted.

The young newspaper writer finds his task of telling the truth quite as difficult, not only because so many persons seek to conceal the truth but also from the well-known fact—recognized and constantly commented on in our courts of law—that two persons rarely see or hear or comprehend alike. Honest witnesses give different versions.

But the newspaper manager expects the reporter to get the exact facts, and frequently the unfortunate writer finds himself compelled to resort to trickery and all kinds of subterfuge to do so. If he fails to get the facts his advancement in the office is checked. Inquiry is made into the cause of his failure and if good reason for it appears it may be forgotten. If it is through carelessness or indolence he is discharged, and the reason for dropping him is known within twenty-four hours in every other newspaper office in the city. It is all very unpleasant.

If the new reporter be so unfortunate as to begin his career on a dishonest or an extremely sensational sheet he may suffer an experience yet more disagreeable, for he may be asked to distort the truth deliberately. Fortunately this is not a frequent request: Very few newspapers seek to print falsehoods or ask their men to pen untruths. Much less of that sort of thing prevails than disgraced the press of twenty-five years ago; yet a few editors remain who seem to think that exaggeration and falsification attract more readers than does the truth, and they demand that all news reports be colored with spectacular embellishment. This is unpleasant as well as unprofessional. It is demoralizing to a young writer. It is disastrous to his reputation for serious, trustworthy work. Yet more serious as well as more repulsive is the necessity occasionally imposed by dishonest editors on the reporter of blackening a man’s reputation or exalting the deeds of a scoundrel. But this does not happen often.

The confusion and noise of the office often annoy the young writer and lessen his ability to do himself justice. The news is usually written and handled in one large room. Twenty or thirty reporters, subeditors and office boys are doing rush work. A noisy reporter blows in, as though carried on a whirlwind, talks all the time, shouts for an office boy, calls for reference books and newspaper files and drinking water all in one breath, and keeps it going. Hurry-up telephone bells are jingling and men are bawling through the transmitters. Typewriters resound their staccato clicking. Call bells are striking and reporters are tapping their desk tops for office boys, and the boys are tumbling over one another in response, and are darting from desk to desk with copy. Persons are coming and going all the time, talking and laughing and shuffling. The old hands are used to it; but the young man accustomed to the silence of the study room sometimes develops symptoms of insanity.

Of serious consideration, also, is the fact that morning newspaper work sadly interferes with social and home life and with a host of amusements and entertainments and pleasures enjoyed by day workers. In the big cities members of news staffs seldom dine at home. The news writers go on duty early in the afternoon if not before; the news editorial staff at six o’clock or thereabouts, all to remain until well after midnight. Dinner parties, theater parties, dancing parties—all evening social life may be enjoyed on the one day only of the seven, known as the day off. The newspaper man toils while others play—and his night’s work ends somewhat dismally by his dragging home at two o’clock in the morning, maybe through storm or sleet or tempest, to a cold, cheerless, silent, dark home—a home unattractive under these conditions despite every effort to make it otherwise.

To the hard-working man of ordinary occupation there comes a certain sense of enjoyment in the relaxation following business effort. He does not want to go immediately and stealthily to bed. The morning-newspaper man is compelled to do so. The day worker enjoys his homecoming, his leisurely evening repast, the diversions of the few hours preceding sleep. It is the bright spot in the day. The newspaper man rolls off the editorial bench into bed.

This demoralization of home and social life constitutes a very great objection to entering the newspaper business. It affects nine-tenths of the morning-newspaper staff. If the young journalist chances to marry it imposes hardships on the young wife. Usually she begins her married life by loyally and cheerfully trying to sit up until long after midnight to greet him on his return—but not for long. The coming of children and the establishing of a home compel normal rest and other attentions, and she reluctantly ceases her long waiting vigil. Instead of greeting him with a daintily prepared bit of warm food she now puts out a plate of cold stuff left over from the day before, which he mechanically masticates or not as his mood suggests; and a little later on it is decided that he might stop at a night restaurant for a bite, if he is hungry. As she cannot go out in the evening with him she misses many of the social pleasures to which presumedly she had been accustomed and which she had expected in her new life. But most of all she misses his presence and his attentions.

CHAPTER II

THE COLLECTION OF NEWS AND THE PREPARATION OF COPY FOR THE READER

The young man just beginning a newspaper career gets a violent shock almost immediately. He discovers that some one is revising his articles, changing his words, shortening his sentences, omitting entire paragraphs. It gives him much anxiety.

All newspaper copy is revised. Very little news or general matter is printed as written originally. It undergoes “editing” by copy readers, of whom there are twelve to twenty in the big city offices. The editorial articles are revised by the editor in chief. Other copy for the editorial page—letters to the editor, communications, verse, comments from other newspapers, and the like—is prepared by his assistants. “Editing” copy means preparing it for the compositor, putting it in the exact language in which it is to be printed.

Systematic, careful revision of all copy is necessary not alone to correct error of fact, of judgment, of good taste, but also to regulate the volume of matter. The notion that newspapers print articles “just to fill up” is as absurd as the intimation that they “print anything they can get.” Every newspaper of any account receives, daily, double to four times as much news matter as can be crowded into its columns. The news value of each article or paragraph must have quick, alert consideration. If the reporter has written half a column about an event that is worth twenty lines only of newspaper space the report must be reduced to twenty lines. If an unusual rush of news or advertising compels the order to “cut everything rigidly” it is reduced to ten lines. Just what to print and what to omit are burning questions and the quality of judgment exercised in the decision largely measures the copy reader’s ability.

The men who revise news copy for morning editions get to work at about six o’clock. For convenience they group around large tables, those handling telegraph matter at one desk, the readers of city copy at another, the sporting department workers at a third, while at other desks are the cable editors, the financial and commercial and the real estate men. It is of advantage to have as many as possible of these desks in one room.

How to handle the great volume of matter that pours into the office gives the managing editor much concern. It must be done with a minimum of confusion, for confusion surely creates error and disarranges system. The edition must be put to press on the instant and always the news pages are closed at the last moment, under great stress, with all hands in a rush. The work is well systemized, but no system has yet been invented that can anticipate or provide for the unexpected event that so frequently upsets newspaper offices.

In normal times the managing editor directs how the articles of considerable importance are to be treated and likewise the city editor instructs his men how and to what length they are to write their articles. The size and the quality of the edition may be planned and carried to conclusion with comparative comfort if nothing unforeseen happens. But not infrequently big news breaks out unexpectedly that upsets all calculations and compels a change of all plans. It is the unexpected that drives the news editors frantic and adds to their labors and creates confusion and chaos in spite of everything. Let us recall the Roosevelt attempted assassination, in illustration.

Things were proceeding peacefully in the newspaper office on that evening in October, 1912, when, about nine o’clock, a telegraph flash came from Milwaukee: “Theodore Roosevelt has been shot and killed by a crazy man.”

Here was the biggest news for many a day. Roosevelt was perhaps the nation’s most spectacular citizen. He had been our President. He was known throughout the world. He was running for the presidency as an independent candidate against Wilson and Taft. He had split the Republican party. The election was only a few days away. The political consequences of his death were stupendous.

It is quite impossible to describe what followed in the newspaper work room. The managing editor began dictating telegraph orders:

To the Milwaukee correspondent he said: “Wire with all haste every word you can get about Roosevelt’s visit, what he has said and done since his arrival, every possible detail of the shooting, full description and history of the assassin, where he has lived, so we can run him down. Send every word he utters. Hire a dozen men to help. You can’t wire too much.”

To the Washington correspondent: “Wire 1500 words Roosevelt’s chief acts as President, 1000 on his personal popularity and social life. Interview everybody effect of his death on the election, get White House comment, wire 1000 general effects of the news. You can’t send too much.”

To the Chicago correspondent: “Hurry to Milwaukee. Take two or three men with you. Find our man in the Sentinel office. Hire a special train if necessary. Hire some one to get all he can out of the Chicago newspaper offices.”

Having wired a dozen or so such telegrams to other parts of the country the managing editor summoned the city editor and said to him: “Get your entire staff here, the men who are off to-day and all the emergency men. Put on three or four more copy readers. Find out where Mrs. Roosevelt is and have a man stay right by her: also the rest of the Colonel’s family. Have four or five columns of his obituary prepared. Have interviews with a lot of prominent New York men and politicians of both parties. Have a column written on the effect on the political campaign and also a column of Roosevelt’s reasons for running as an independent candidate. Send to the hotels and theaters. Don’t forget a big portrait of Roosevelt—better have pictures of the entire Roosevelt family and the Oyster Bay home. Keep everybody here until three o’clock.”

To the night editor he said: “The editorial page is full of campaign stuff. Have some one go through every line of it and cut out everything intended to influence a voter against Roosevelt—everything that could be thought unseemly. You will have to leave out two or three of the articles and some of the letters to the editor. Find another editorial or two that will do, on the standing galleys. Get the full force into the composing room. Tell the stereotype men there will be no end of editions all night long—they will want full force. Tell the press room men too; the circulation will be double. Be sure to look out for any slur on Roosevelt. You must get the mail edition off on time. We can’t afford to miss a mail to-night.”

The foregoing indicates a part—and only a small part—of the preparations made for an edition announcing Colonel Roosevelt’s death by assassination. Within fifteen minutes enough matter had been ordered to fill five or six newspaper pages. The entire news staff jumped into the work.

The machinery for that edition began to move promptly in the lines indicated. But in half an hour came this wire from Milwaukee: “Colonel Roosevelt is not dead but has been shot near the heart. Surgeons are making examination.” And through some unexplained cause not another word came from Milwaukee for an hour and a half.

With this second announcement it was necessary to change the plan of the edition to conform to the situation that the Colonel was not dead but possibly was mortally wounded. In the hour and a half of suspense thousands of words came pouring in to the copy readers all written under belief that the attack had resulted in death and all had to be edited to fit the new situation.

Then came word that the Colonel had not been seriously hurt—slightly wounded only—and that he had started for Chicago. It was now nearly midnight and a complete overhauling of the paper was necessary. A new set of instructions had to be sent to everybody. Everything had to be reëdited. What was practically a new edition must be made with very little time in which to make it. As it was, the newspapers printed from three to five pages of matter about the attempted assassination, but they killed many columns relating to the Colonel’s life, the effect of the supposed death on the campaign, appreciations by public men, and so forth. The writers and copy readers were reminded that the Colonel was still a candidate, and that a new issue had been injected into the campaign, that of martyrdom. “Better minimize the martyrdom business,” was the suggestion. The copy readers did a tremendous excess of emergency work that night that went for nothing; so did the correspondents, the reporters, the printers, the telegraph operators, the directing editors—everybody who had to do with getting out the edition.

From reporting to copy reading is a natural step in the progress of the young man in journalism. Copy reading has the advantage of fixed hours, of permanent salary, of a minimum of emergency or extra work and of permitting daily a few hours for recreation or study. It has the disadvantage of being routine work not especially interesting or inspiring, without pecuniary reward of importance (salaries are from forty to sixty-five dollars a week in big newspaper offices and as low as twenty-five dollars in small ones) and of having the attendant danger of getting a man in a rut. Every office has its veteran copy readers who for years have been content to do this work. To perform the service acceptably requires absorbing attention, unceasing vigil, a familiarity with current events, accurate judgment as to the news value of every article and a genius for detecting errors of fact, or grammar, or of any kind.

Colonel John W. Forney said:

No man is competent to edit newspaper manuscript or reprint unless he has been an extensive and analytical reader. He should, moreover, have a quick and keen perception, as well as a retentive memory of notorious facts, of celebrated names and important dates. If he is in doubt he should never fail to consult reliable encyclopedias, technical books, pamphlets and like granaries of information and knowledge.

How does the copy reader exercise his ability? All news copy goes to the readers, telegraph copy to the telegraph desk, the city copy to the city desk and so forth. The head reader glances at each article long enough to absorb a notion of its nature and make a note of its length and passes it to one of the other readers. This man edits it into the form in which it is to appear in the newspaper. If it is too long he reduces it by stripping it of its verbiage and unimportant facts, cutting out entire sentences and even paragraphs. Unconsciously he questions every statement made by the writer, so keen becomes his search for error. If an article on an important subject is inadequate he sends it back to the city editor for amplification or explanation. If the article is unimportant he kills it. Always he has in mind that the sheet is crowded, that there isn’t room for half of what is offered. He acquires the knack of condensation, of making one word express the meaning of half a sentence. He eliminates superfluous statements and obvious explanations and dull conclusions. If he be wise he rereads the article to confirm his own work. Always he seeks to improve the article, to insert a snappy word, to give it life, to smooth the diction or make it more rugged as befits the subject.

When reading news the copy reader must be alert for clews to additional information, for side issues to be added. “The assassin has lived in Canal street, New York” said one of the Milwaukee dispatches—and instantly the copy reader informed the city editor and a reporter was soon on his way to Canal street to learn of the crazy man’s record there. “Mrs. Roosevelt is at the Manhattan Hotel” said another message. A reporter was sent to her.

The copy reader must steel himself against the reporter who tries to be funny and isn’t, against those persons so well known in every newspaper office who seek notoriety by getting their names in print, against the social climbers, against the men who want puffs and free advertising, against the wiles of the press agent and the preposterous stories about the people he is exalting, against the schemers whose success depends on newspaper publicity, the fake charity organizations, the spurious reform agitations, the organizations started merely to give salaries to the people who run them, the multitude of movements created to give some one notoriety, the constant attempts to fool the public—the list is endless.

The copy reader must be familiar with the big events attracting public attention for he may be called to revise their next chapter. Many big cases drag on for months. Above all he should take sympathetic interest in every article he revises and in its writer. His every effort should be to improve the article. My own experience as a copy reader for five years was of utmost usefulness to me. Careful editing of copy fixes the subject matter of the copy in memory almost as securely as though you had written the original.

Surely the copy reader fills an especially important post. It is poor policy to intrust this work to incompetent men. Nevertheless, because of its requirements, it is a post not eagerly sought. It is thought to be a thankless task with little to show for results, with maximum opportunity for error and minimum for praise. The copy reader is unlikely to be sought for promotion. He does not mingle with the outside world as does the reporter. He sees no office visitors as do the editors. His work attracts little favorable attention. If he improves a manuscript the author, not the copy reader, gets the credit. But if you intend to follow the newspaper business, by all means take a turn at copy reading, for it gives valuable experience and information and the practice greatly improves your diction.

As the night advances the avalanche of copy increases, some nights in greater volume than others. It is a curious fact that news volume seems to ebb and flow like the ocean tide, although irregularly, not steadily. For days the news world will be calm, little of interest develops, nothing but routine news offers. And then for days at a time news breaks out from all directions, overwhelming the writing and the revising staffs, upsetting all plans and creating confusion. It is then that the managing editor admonishes: “Gentlemen, the paper is already filled; you must cut everything rigidly”; and the head copy reader, pushing a column manuscript article toward an assistant, commands: “Put it in a quarter of a column”; and the perspiring night editor shouts from the composing room through the telephone: “Can’t take another line except must stuff.” “Must stuff” means matter that simply must be printed. “Stuff” is the common newspaper office vernacular for all copy, whether it be the profound article of the editor in chief or the incident of a crap game on the pavement. The amateur writer’s sensibilities are shocked sometimes when his production is called “stuff.”

But whether the tide of copy is at ebb or flood always there is too much of it and the copy reader’s night ends in the contemplation of a mass of discarded manuscript and a ruin of reportorial reputation.

And on the morrow comes an awful hour of reckoning. The editor in chief misses from his own paper a bit of Washington political news that some other paper had printed. He speaks to the managing editor about it, and the managing editor knowing that the news was in the office and was not printed, damns the copy reader for throwing it away. The city editor who had gone home with visions of two fine fat news features each of an embellished column in length finds in their place two emaciated paragraphs containing naught but cold news facts with no juice in them—he damns the copy readers. The reporters who wrote the column stories, reduced to shreds, surcharge the place with spectacular profanity and damn the copy readers. The men who wrote twelve dollars worth of stuff at space rates and had it cut down to three dollars worth, damn the copy readers. The reporters who wrote reams of routine stuff that did not appear at all, damn the copy readers. Everybody damns the copy readers!

The respectable newspapers of America strive sincerely for accuracy of statement. Reporters are instructed constantly to be accurate. Copy readers and every one else in the place are urged to vigil in the detection of error. The news rush and the consequent confusion in the last half hour before getting to press contribute to the danger of mistake, but for the most part every newspaper article is carefully considered and repeatedly scrutinized.

A news report of importance, for instance, is written by an experienced reporter. Usually it is scanned by the city editor. It is then revised by a copy reader who is supposed to be expert in preparing manuscript. The compositor puts it in type and the proof reader searches it ostensibly for errors in typing, but always must he note any error. He is expected to call to the attention of the night editor any misstatement of fact or violation of newspaper usage or of practice.

Then, too, in almost every office is “the learned proof reader” who bothers himself not with typographical errors but who reads from revised proof sheets in searching quest of anything wrong—misused words, verbal or grammatical slips, misspelled proper names, distortion of any fact—and it is curious what a lot of errors he digs out that have passed everybody else. Likewise in many editorial rooms sits another all-wise man who in a semi-editorial capacity reads proof sheets of all matter in the same search for the undesirable. The managing editor, the night editor, and the night city editor also have proof sheets of all matter which they read devoutly for a dozen reasons. Nevertheless there appeared in one of our especially learned and correct New York newspapers a sentence written by a reporter and passed by the copy reader, the proof reader ordinaire, the learned proof reader, the editorial proof reader de luxe, the managing editor, the night editor and the night city editor—a sentence that read: “He had fractured her skull by hitting it with an empty bottle of beer.”

The same newspaper’s music constituency was moved to emotion one morning on reading that applause followed the singing of “The Soldiers’ Chorus by Faust.” Whether the writer intended to say that Faust sang the chorus, or the chorus was written by Faust, or that it was from the opera of Faust probably never will be known, but the chances are that he inadvertently wrote “by Faust” when he intended to write “from Faust.”

Truth is, that human intelligence has not yet devised a way of keeping error out of printed publications. The public does not understand the painstaking care with which news is presented by well regulated newspapers, nor are the difficulties or the unfavorable conditions under which newspapers are made at all appreciated by people who read. Men of other professions have almost unlimited time for consideration. The lawyer may devote months to the preparation of his case. The clergyman may take seven days to perfect his sermon. The physician at times is called to quick action, but usually he may ponder for hours or days over the condition of his patient.

But quick judgment and quick action are a daily necessity in the newspaper office. The biggest event of the month may explode an hour before time for going to press. The news must be prepared with frantic haste with half the staff tumbling over each other, so to speak, in the rush to be on time. In afternoon sheets all news received after one o’clock and in morning editions after midnight are subject to this acceleration of mind and movement and persons who have not participated in the spasm can little appreciate the opportunity for error.

In these hours a man’s experience, his general knowledge of the business, is of great assistance. It is then that his confidence or his distrust in the source of the information governs. Rumor is the busybody of the business and her moments of greatest activity are just before the time for going to press.

It is true, also, that first accounts of great events are likely to be exaggerated; almost always are greatly exaggerated. The cable flash announcing the blowing up of the Maine in Havana harbor said that not a man remained alive. The first brief telegram telling of the San Francisco earthquake reported that not a building remained standing. With the first report of the assassination of Colonel Roosevelt came the statement that he was dead. First reports of losses of life in great disasters, of losses in big fires, are usually double the actual loss.

It is a vital part of newspaper vigil to question all unusual or extraordinary statements and news editors by habit come to doubt every statement made. This is meant to be said of honest editors; the dishonest ones seek to exaggerate the original exaggeration.

The preparation of newspaper copy in the last hour before going to press gives supreme test to the writer’s powers of concentration, his self-possession, and his agility of mind. It happens frequently that the managing editor says to him, “You have just eight minutes in which to finish that article” and a little later the night editor may cry out: “Close everything for this edition in five minutes.” It is exceedingly disturbing to the young man who is beginning. The experienced men are unmoved. It is common enough for a man to write in an hour after midnight a column or more about a murder, a fire, a calamity, or the obituary of a distinguished person. Men who do this rapid work at the last instant may have been on duty for ten or twelve hours and the climax to the day’s labor calls for greater intensity than anything that has preceded. Physical endurance is involved as well as mental celerity.

The invention of the typewriter has helped vastly to speed up newspaper composition. The reporter may dictate his narrative. In the old days frequently he had to make a long journey to the newspaper office before beginning to work with pen or pencil. Nowadays, if need be, he dictates his report through the telephone to a typewriter in the office. Newspaper correspondents five hundred, and even one thousand, miles away do this kind of emergency telephoning.

Indeed, it may be said that modern invention has revolutionized the process of speeding up newspaper making. When I first went to New York the capacity of the improved newspaper press was eight pages. If a larger paper were wanted the extra pages were printed separately as a supplement many hours before the main eight sheet was put to press. To-day, thanks to the inventor of the multiple printing press, the news editor may decide fifteen minutes before going to press whether to make a twelve page newspaper or a twenty page newspaper or even a thirty-four page newspaper.

The big modern newspaper is made with a speed that is almost bewildering. For, in place of the old laborious journeying to the office, the writing of the news with pen or pencil, the typesetting of the same by hand and the old style stereotyping process requiring half an hour, the printing of sheets limited to eight pages on presses that produced only about fifteen thousand copies an hour—in place of these clumsy processes, news reports are dictated over the telephone, the matter is set by machinery in a fraction of the time formerly required, is stereotyped in six minutes and set going on half a dozen presses with a capacity each of more than thirty thousand copies an hour.

The reporting of big events that may be anticipated, like the inauguration of a president, a great festival in honor of a martial hero or in commemoration of peace, or a popular demonstration of any sort—anything that is scheduled to happen, is carefully arranged for in advance.

It is conceded that the biggest and most important single piece of news handled up to that time in a newspaper office was the story of the loss of the Titanic. The finest steamship that ever had been made struck an iceberg on her first voyage and sank with a loss of fifteen hundred persons, including scores of our well known residents—and that was all we knew of the disaster until the survivors were landed on a New York pier. The wireless had sent a partial list of survivors but not a word of detail about the disaster itself. Public interest was tremendously excited. It was known that the survivors were to land at a given hour in the evening and city editors had plenty of time to arrange for getting the great narrative but limited time for writing it—for newspapers must go to press on the minute in order that mail and express bundles of the edition may catch outgoing trains.

Thirty or forty reporters were sent by each New York newspaper to meet the rescue ship. Each man had a definite thing to do. One man, for instance, was to write a column of just what had been going on in the ship for the twenty-four hours before she sank. Another was to write of the warnings to the Titanic’s officers that ice fields were ahead. Another was to explain just how the ship struck, how she was damaged and how and when she filled and sank. A fourth was to describe in detail how the life boats were manned and launched and who went in them. A fifth was to tell of nothing except what the commander of the ship was doing up to the moment he was lost. Six or eight reporters were instructed to get as many narratives of the experiences of survivors as possible—and so on preparations were made to the completion of every detail that possibly could be anticipated—every man instructed exactly what to do and warned not to attempt anything else.

The preparations for printing this great narrative—and doing it in a hurry—occupied many hours of the time of managing and city editors. The organization of forces was necessary to prevent duplication and confusion, useless running about and tumbling over each other by reporters.

As an additional precaution to save time of reporters in going from the pier to the newspaper office, a dozen telephones were set up in a shed on the pier and a dozen of the reporters were instructed to dictate their reports into the transmitters and a dozen typewriters were ready to take them in the newspaper office.

The first sentence of this big story was written at 10:20 in the evening, and copy for the first edition was shut off two hours afterward. The first edition presses were started on time to the minute with four pages of the disaster. A second edition one hour later had seven pages of disaster matter—the narrative complete—about equivalent in amount to the reading matter of the usual edition of the Scribner monthly magazine.

In doing this task neither the writing force nor the mechanical department was extended or distressed or overworked. They could easily perform the same feat every night in the week under the same organization and loyal staff teamwork.

It is the business and the duty of the managing editor to oversee all of these details. He is the executive officer of the newspaper. His first duty is to carry out the policies of the editor in chief or the owner. He is responsible for what goes into the paper. He is supposed to know what is going on in every hemisphere and in every island of the sea and to have it properly presented in the news columns. He must read the other newspapers and periodicals to know what they are printing and what of their contents should be printed in his own next edition. He hires the staff, except the editorial writers, fixes the salaries, obtains and directly supervises the matter for every column except the editorial page. He must, indeed, keep a sharp eye on that page as well, for it happens frequently that after an editorial article is ready for printing, along comes later news that entirely changes the situation and calls for revision of the article.

He decides questions in dispute. His best asset should be good judgment: judgment what not to print as well as what should be printed; judgment as to proper news values, whether to give one, two, or three columns to an unexpected piece of news that explodes in Washington, Dawson City or off Montauk Point; judgment whether to chance a libel suit on one article or the infringement of copyright in another; whether to minimize a social or a political movement or boom it. And when these questions are flashed on this unfortunate man just as the edition is going to press it must be a quick as well as a decisive judgment.

The managing editor has to deal with men of all ages and of all experiences. A big staff includes cranks, and enthusiasts, students and philosophers, men of every race and religion whose illuminated intelligence reflects every phase of eccentricity, every degree of sanity, as well as every perfection of common sense—men of intelligence, earnestness, sensitiveness, filled with ambition and alive with interest and seeking above all to succeed in the business.

The managing editor needs the coöperation of all these men. A loyal staff is full of suggestions, will go to extremes in support of its leader; an indifferent staff is silent. It depends largely on how the staff is treated by the management, whether it is loyal or indifferent.

Now you cannot manage a newspaper staff as you might a section gang building a railroad. It is not to be expected that intelligent, sensitive writers will spring to their work, will do better work, while smarting under severe reproof or constant nagging. If they do it is because they fear to lose their jobs, rather than from zeal. Not much good newspaper work is done under an uplifted club. Little else than resentment results from angry words.

One reason for Mr. Charles A. Dana’s success may be found in his fine leadership. He inspired the confidence of his helpers by his surpassing knowledge of the business. He encouraged them by his recognition and appreciation of superior work and his absolute justice toward them. He fascinated them by his genial ways. Everybody loved him and would do anything for him. The editor of ability that endears himself to his staff will surely make a great newspaper. The editor whose ability is not respected, who does not recognize good service, who is constantly nagging and complaining and finding fault, and arousing resentment—he will see his circulation slipping away and his influence diminishing. A newspaper staff is made up of delicately constructed, sensitive, self-respecting men and women.

The managing editor hires the staff. And, as the success of the newspaper depends on the writers, it behooves him to be careful in the selection. The staff changes somewhat rapidly, its members drop out to go to better posts on other newspapers or into other businesses and new men are called to their places. Methods of recruiting the staff differ in different offices. Many of the most successful newspapers have a way of hiring young men to join as reporters and gradually advancing them through a continuous process of growth. Thus a man is available always to fill a vacancy and the staff in general is always complete. The real vacancy is at the bottom of the list. Three months’ trial usually tests out a beginner.

The newspaper is overrun with applicants. Every graduating college class includes some men who wish to try the business. The schools of journalism in the United States are turning out about four thousand students yearly who want to go to work immediately. Many broken-down clergymen and discarded school teachers think they can write and they apply along with professional men, clerks, salesmen and others who have failed to make good. A swarm of high school boys come along after graduation. Very many men who have succeeded in country or small city newspapers want to get going in the big cities. Bright newspaper office boys seek to become reporters and go on to success. It is from all of these that the staff is recruited. The managing editor of experience comes to know almost by instinct whether an applicant will make a good newspaper man, and while few of those who come are selected, it is also true that a large proportion of those who are taken make good.

The supervision of the modern newspaper is much more difficult than it was forty years ago for the reason that the staff is four or five times as large. The size of the sheet has been more than quadrupled. The managing editor no longer finds it possible to read every paragraph in proof sheet before its publication; he must trust to his helpers. The increased volume of matter compels increased labor in originating it, increased attention to its consideration and preparation for printing. The managing editor’s work literally is fourfold what it used to be. The tendency of the hour is toward yet larger editions.

CHAPTER III

NEWSPAPER COMPOSITION—THE ART OF WRITING IN SIMPLE YET ENTERTAINING FASHION

The young man just starting in journalism is asked to write in the simplest words and the shortest sentences at his command. He is told that the reader wants facts rather than elegances of expression and that the plainest language is the best newspaper style.

By plain language is not meant the language of the child’s primer, but rather the use of good Saxon concrete nouns and active verbs in sentences not embellished with verbose phrases. Nevertheless, when editors tell the young reporter to use the plainest language they mean usually that they will be satisfied with it in his routine reporting. But they encourage the study of “how to produce rich effects by the use of familiar words,” how to write not only with steadiness and strength, but also with those little embellishments of incidental word and phrase that lift the work above the commonplace. And they unceasingly urge the necessity of good writing—for not anywhere is good writing appreciated more than in a newspaper office.

To write the simple language requires much study and practice—more, indeed, than to write the other kind. It is natural for people, children especially, to use simple words, but the schools and colleges have taught, until within a few years, the writing of rather high-sounding prose. Textbooks have reflected Dr. Johnson’s ornate paragraphs, Macaulay’s massive profundities, Washington Irving’s beautifully rounded florid sentences, and Sir Walter Scott’s superlatives. For years and years they were commended to students of literature for imitation. The effect of this teaching remains. We find it difficult to write in the same simplicity with which we talk. It does not come natural to us. The editor gave fine advice to the cartoonist from whom he wanted an article. Said the cartoonist: “He just offered me one suggestion—inasmuch as I was not a regular writer—that I refrain from trying to write and simply tell in my own words as though I were telling it to my wife.” That’s it: refrain from trying to write if you wish to write in simple language and simple style.

It is well enough to write as you talk if you are a good talker. Hundreds of articles of advice in the last fifty years have urged young men to write as they talk. But almost all talk is without study, is commonplace, is not the expression of consecutive thought, is disjointed construction. It is recognized that dictated articles have less finish than those penned. Nevertheless, the direct way, the simplest way is undoubtedly the best way of writing. Emerson says: “The speech of the street is incomparably more forceful than the speech of the academy.” Lafcadio Hearn says of Kipling: “No one has managed to produce great effects with so few words.”

But why speak of it as “newspaper style,” when there isn’t any such thing? Almost every kind of writing is used by newspapers. All kinds of literature are printed in them—the scholarly essay, the article of argument, the expository editorial paragraph, the story of fiction, the language of verse, the consideration of art, music, the play, all sorts of description of all kinds of happenings in every part of our old earth—and all are written without uniformity of diction or construction. There is no style that the newspaper rejects. The experienced editor seeks diversity of writing and of topic in every column. He studies to that end.

Some style of writing is so plain that you do not notice it. It is like the well dressed man whose clothing is so simple and appropriate that it is not attracting attention wherever he goes. Merimee said of Stendhal that he despised mere style and insisted that a writer had attained perfection when we remember his ideas without recalling his phrases. Of George Saintsbury, the English critic, it was said: “He always thought it of more importance to utter the thought than to care about the form of utterance.... If he had given more attention to style we should have been deprived of some of the benefits of his knowledge.”

Indeed, some great newspaper narratives are of such absorbing interest in themselves—great disasters like the sinking of the Lusitania or the Titanic—that the reader’s attention is entirely concentrated on the facts and he does not notice the diction or the construction. No matter how disjointed or horribly written the narrative may be he finishes it with the impression that he has read a great article. Nevertheless, every article is the better for good telling. And probably no greater newspaper accomplishment exists than the ability to write well. It is of increasing value as the young man goes on to higher grade work.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in a lecture to the Cambridge students urges them to study writing and to practice writing, to write and rewrite with intent to gain facility in diction and in the fashioning of sentences, and especially to seek to make their prose “accurate, perspicuous, persuasive, and appropriate.” He would insure greater accuracy by the study and practice of the use of words. Thought and speech being inseparable, it follows that we cannot use the humblest processes of thought—cannot resolve to take our bath hot or cold, or decide what to order for breakfast—without forecasting it in some form of words. Words, in fine, he urges, are the only currency in which we can exchange thought even with ourselves. Does it not follow, then, that the more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall give to our thoughts? “And by drilling ourselves to write perspicuously we train our minds to clarify our thought, since language is the expression of thought. The first aim of speech is to be understood and the more clearly we write the more easily and surely we will be understood. Not to be understood is to be a sloven in speech.”

Lafcadio Hearn urged the students of the University of Tokyo to study the construction of sentences—to write them over and over again until they were nearly perfect, saying:

A thing once written is not literature.... No man can produce real literature at one writing.... To produce even a single sentence of good literature requires that the text be written at least three times.... For literature more than for any other art the all-necessary thing is patience.

He advised the students to write a practice piece and put it away for a week. Then to revise it and put it away again, and to continue the process of revision until they could improve it no more.

Tolstoy rewrote his important work three or four times. Rossetti revised “The Blessed Damosel” in many editions until the last was quite unlike the first. Tennyson changed his productions over and again. Gray was fourteen years in perfecting the “Elegy.” It is notorious that Sir Walter Scott’s later novels, written at great speed, are much inferior to his earlier more leisurely work. Samuel Butler’s masterpiece “The Way of All Flesh” was under construction for twelve years.

All literary history furnishes examples of great authors who toiled long over their manuscripts. Macaulay devoted more time to revising his essays than to writing them. Their superiority over his history, as literary products, is revealed by study of them. The history was written more hurriedly. The essays are the product of nearly one hundred years ago, but they serve to illustrate the possibilities of our language and the beauties of thoughtful writing and intense thinking. We look elsewhere in vain for such adroit phrasing and such thunder-claps of climax. Study them, young man!

Some present-day writers criticize Macaulay for his long-drawn sentences, his reiteration and his wanderings from the narrative into a confusion of details. Yet Macaulay was imitated by essayists for fifty years. His style was the vogue. And Macaulay in turn had both praised and criticized in no feeble fashion his great predecessor, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had been the vogue for nearly a hundred years.

The men of greatest reputation as critics, Sainte-Beuve, Edmund Gosse, Macaulay, Saintsbury and others, put intensive study into what they wrote. If they were to review a book they made a study of the subject of the book and of the life and mentality of the author: and sometimes their production was of more use to the world than the book itself. Their works are not so much read in this money-making age, but they are among the great contributions to thoughtful literature and the student of journalism will read them with great profit to himself. For your own work is to be thoughtful work—work intended to persuade and influence readers to your own way of thinking.

Writing for newspapers differs from other literary work in this: the newspaper writer has little opportunity for revision. Almost all articles for daily sheets are written at a single sitting. The writers of editorial articles have several hours in which to compose and usually they get a proof sheet for revision. The writers of short news articles may read and correct their manuscript. But in the big offices as soon as the reporter who is writing an article of any considerable length has finished two or three pages they are grabbed by an office boy, hurried to a copy reader who revises them as best he may and rushes them to the composing room to be typed. The writer does not see his pages again, does not read them over, even, after writing them. All big reports—stories of great disasters, of football matches, of public meetings or demonstrations are prepared with this haste.

The play house and opera critics compose under these same trying conditions with no opportunity for leisurely thought or revision. It is difficult, indeed, to write of a great performance in a whirlwind of hurry, with less than two hours for deliberate and consecutive thought. The French critic’s way of presenting a news paragraph in the edition following the performance and reserving a carefully prepared review for a later-date publication commends itself; but the American newspapers continue to print exhaustive comments on first-night performances two or three hours after the fall of the curtain. The opera critic has the advantage of attending rehearsals of new operas and he may prepare parts of his article in advance, but rehearsals are spiritless, for performers have not the inspiration and response of the audience.

Intensity of thought and concentration must engross the newspaper writer. He must prepare himself by study and practice to throw every atom of his mental vitality into the work, to write immediately and without expectation of revision exactly what should appear in the newspaper. Mind discipline is a powerful factor. The man must school himself to work under conditions of mental anguish, physical distress, heart sorrow or unhappiness of any sort. He cannot surrender to moods, whims, or to physical sensations. He must continue hour after hour, day after day, with the same hurry-up speed. As in crowded Broadway, if you cannot keep up with the procession you must be trodden on or take to a side street, so must the active newspaper man everlastingly keep going. It is largely a matter of mind discipline, of study and of practice, of intense mental concentration and of swiftness of thought.

Please do not undervalue the priceless benefits of practice—of practice that will give skill in saying exactly what you want to say the first time you say it. In leisurely writing you may rewrite and change and make perfect, but in newspaper writing you have one dash only at it without much opportunity for change or revision. Your reputation as a newspaper writer hangs on that one attempt. You can cultivate the gift of ready speech in writing just as many a finished orator has cultivated it in speaking.

It is said of President Woodrow Wilson that early in his youth he appreciated the advantages of ready speech and set about to improve himself in its use. He practiced speaking long and constantly. In the seclusion of his room he conducted imaginary debates, talking to himself on first one side and then the other of some public question. On his walks, while a student, he addressed the crags and peaks, the winding rivers, the peaceful meadows—all for practice in the quick use of language, the shading of sentences and the putting of emphasis on climaxes of thought and conclusion. And he became one of the most interesting and convincing and scholarly public speakers this country, or any other country for that matter, has ever known.

The young writer should seek to rise above the commonplace. It was said of Machiavelli that “having adopted some of the maxims then generally received he arranged them more luminously and expressed them more forcibly than any other writer.” The young writer should cultivate the art of making his words and sentences exude the very spirit of the occasion—the art of describing joyous events with joyous words and of shadowing melancholy happenings in the language of gloom. He should seek the faculty of “making obscure truth pleasing, of making repulsive truth attractive.” Let him follow the counsel of a distinguished critic who says:

Choose concrete nouns rather than vague, abstract woolly ones.

Use straightforward speech rather than circumlocution.

Remember that the first virtue, the touchstone of masculine style is the use of the active verb and concrete noun. When you write in the active voice, “They gave him a silver teapot” you write as a man. When you write, “He was made the recipient of a silver teapot” you write jargon.

Avoid overworked words is common advice to young journalists. An article in the Writer has much to say of ways by which the constant use of the word “said” may be prevented. “Said” sometimes becomes monotonous, especially in the dialogue of fiction; but almost always another verb may be found to express the author’s meaning. The Writer printed a list of three hundred and eighty-two verbs, found in about fifty magazine stories, which had been used instead of “said.” Frequently the use of a verb helps to make more concise as well as to avoid the word “said.” “‘It hurts,’ said John, in a complaining tone,” is not so good as “‘It hurts,’ John complained.” Again, “‘Please help me,’ said the beggar in pitiful beseeching appeal,” is better expressed by “‘Please help me,’ the beggar pleaded.” The language is rich in verbs.

Another greatly overworked word, and a slow word as well, is the word “show.” It does seem as though the average newspaper writer cannot think of any other word when he writes that “this action”—or “this event”—or “this conclusion”—or “this computation shows that”—etc., when he might say, attests, evinces, betokens, bespeaks, implies, indicates, proves—or any other suitable verb of the twenty-five or more he may find in a thesaurus.

Constant looseness of speech is found in the use of explanatory phrases that might be expressed by a single verb. The verb is the heart of language life, the soul of expression. Why, for instance, do we write, “He reflected on the situation” when “he cogitated” would express all?

Let us illustrate a bit more:

He spoke reprovingly to the boy. He chided the boy.

He spoke in a mocking, deriding manner. He jeered.

His breath came convulsively and brokenly. He gasped.

They exchanged idle words and gossip. They babbled.

He gave utterance again to the thought. He echoed the thought.

He was filled with wonder. He marveled.

He busied himself with the affairs of his neighbors. He meddled.

He thought over the situation. He meditated.

He uttered a suppressed groan. He moaned.

She spoke in low indistinct words. She mumbled.

His was an exhibition of empty talk. He palavered.

I am aware that these things are elementary—exceedingly elementary, but they are of utmost import to young newspaper writers. Slovenly, disjointed, confused diction must retard your progress.

It was constant study that made Dana and Greeley the great journalists that they were. Neither of them wasted a minute. If at the close of the day’s work Dana’s final proof sheet was promised to him in seven minutes he withdrew from the little revolving book-rack on his desk a copy of the Greek Testament and utilized the seven minutes by reading it. Never was a question of fact raised but he joined in the search for the truth of it in the most enthusiastic manner. His zeal and his interest were a source of inspiration to the staff. With him study was the key to every problem.

When in 1880 he asked me to be the managing editor of the Sun, the answer was:

“Mr. Dana, I do not know enough to be your managing editor.”

“What do you mean by that?” was his question.

“I mean that the managing editor of your newspaper should have wide, extensive, general information. I know very little about politics, or finance, or art, for instance. A managing editor should have expert knowledge of them.”

“What is the objection to your devoting a little time each day to the study of these things in which you feel yourself deficient,” was Mr. Dana’s calm reply. “I did not know so much about them myself, when I first came to the city as I do to-day.”

I now appreciate that whatever progress I afterward made in the business came largely from this suggestion; and I feel like passing it along to the young man who aspires to newspaper honors. How true it is that to achieve you must study to the limit of your resources; you must think to the limit of your intelligence; you must strive to the limit of your endurance—then you have done your best and that marks the measure of your success.

Study—persistent, laborious, intelligent study—is the key to success in writing. Occasionally a genius startles the public with a spontaneous facility for the use of words and sentences, but the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine of us newspaper plodders must achieve our purposes by the hardest kind of hard work. We must study the derivation of words, the varied uses of words. And if we are to keep up with these snappy times we must hunt for strong masculine nouns, and rapid-fire verbs, and staccato adjectives, and sudden adverbs. Almost always we can find a better word than the one that first suggests itself, if we hunt for it. Almost always we may shorten and simplify a sentence if we study it.

The word spoken may be forgotten. The word written stands for all time. The orator may move his hearers by eloquence, by gesture, by facial expression, by the tricks of public speaking, even though his actual words be feeble or not well chosen, or his conclusions be not convincing. His words may be forgotten—certainly will not be remembered unless preserved—but they have been reinforced by his arts of eloquence, maybe by his audacity of speech, by his personality, and the net result is favorable. The orator’s bluff may at times serve him well, but the words of the writer must stand on their own merit for all time. Type inspires little emotion. There are few typographical tricks that cause heart-flutter or mental spasm. Just plain words alone—words, words, words, nearly every one of which is already familiar to the reader, must make the writer’s success or failure. How important that every word be studied.

The young journalist cannot be urged too strongly to study the use of words. Every word in the language has its correct use; a vast number are used incorrectly. You will find it a most interesting study. If you doubt its interest, be so good as to open your dictionary to any haphazard page and read intently for fifteen minutes. You will find words the existence of which you had not known, the meanings of which you had not understood. Observe the derivation and the primary meaning of the word and you cannot miss the proper use. You cannot put time to better purpose, if you seek for excellence in English composition, than by studying the English dictionary a few minutes every day.

When a writer is sure of his information, is sincere in his attitude, and is eager and enthusiastic for its presentation, the words and the sentences usually come to him with ease. It is when he is shaky over his facts, or insincere, or dishonest, that his words become feeble, and lack convincing quality, do not ring true. It is curious how often dishonest journalism convicts itself through timidity of diction.

The English language is reaching afar. Those there are who predict that eventually it will be spoken everywhere. Already it is the language of more than two hundred million persons. It will carry the tourist all over the globe by the established routes of travel,—through the streets of Japan, and the bazars of India, and the South Sea islands of the Pacific. Tennyson said to Sir Edwin Arnold: “It is bad for us that English will always be a spoken speech, since that means that it will always be changing and so the time will come when you and I will be as hard to read as Chaucer is to-day.”

Indeed, the English language is changing constantly. We are eliding letters, lopping off terminations, cutting out phrases and abolishing circumlocution. It is not so old a language as a score of others and every opportunity for improvement exists. It is, indeed, “an improvable language.”

Compare, if you please, any modern narrative with the beginning of Chaucer’s “The Tale of Melibeus”:

A young man called Melibeus, mighty and riche, begat upon his wif, that called was Prudens, a doughter which that called was Sophie. Upon a day byfel, that for his disport he is went into the fields him to play. His wif and his doughter eek hath he laft in-with his hous, of which the dores were fast shut. Thre of his olde foos have it espyed, and setten laddres to the walles of his hous, and by the wyndowes be entred, and beetyn his wyf, and woundid his doughter with fyve mortal woundes in fyve sondry places, that is to sayn, in her feet, in her hondes, in her eeres, in her nose, and in her mouth; and lafte her for deed, and went away.

Or imagine if you can to what small space a modern newspaper copy reader would reduce the following bit of Washington Irving prose that was printed in school readers sixty years ago as an example of graceful writing and felicity of expression:

In one of those somber and rather melancholy days in the latter part of autumn when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together and throw a gloom over the decline of the year I passed several hours rambling around Westminster Abbey. There was something congenial to the season in the mournful magnificence of the old pile; and, as I passed its threshhold, it seemed like stepping back into the regions of antiquity and losing myself among the shades of former ages.

Usage is amplifying the service of many words whose primary meaning is obvious from their Latin derivation. Dexter is the Latin word meaning the right hand, and strictly speaking “dextrous movements” should mean right hand movements. But usage has brought dexterity to mean readiness, skill, adroitness, aptitude, both physical or mental. Macaulay uses it constantly in all of these meanings. “Manufacture” is easily traced to the Latin origin manus, the hand, and facio, to make—to make by hand. But we have come to use “manufacture” for the making of anything, by machinery, or chemical processes, or in any way other than with the hand. And who shall say that these usages, these enlargements of the meaning of dexterity and manufacture, have not improved the English language?

More than ever before is there present-day need for the use of plain, understandable English. We live in a money-making age—an age of industrial development, in which machines are doing the work that brains used to do, in which vocational and technical education are demanded of our schools and colleges, and in which the cry for technical literature is insistent. Experts only understand the technical words and the language of their specialty, hence the cry for writers who can translate technical language into plain English that any reader may understand. Dean West, of Princeton, has deplored the inability of many professors to teach orally or in writing in any other language than the dialect of their specialties. Lacking in literary training they are unable clearly to say what they think.

Some one asked William T. Stead, the English journalist, whether he would have an astronomer or a newspaper writer prepare an article on sun spots, and Stead’s instant reply was that the astronomer would write it for astronomers in language that no one else would understand, but the reporter would tap the brain of the specialist and so serve out his knowledge that the ordinary reader would understand.

All the tendency of present-day writing is to translate technical language, scientific terms, professional formula, and medical terms into plain common sense English. Let the good work go on!

And let not the young man contemplating a journalistic career be persuaded that newspaper English is not good English. The men who wrote for the newspapers of the Spanish-American War, of the great political movements of Europe of later years, of our great industrial developments, and of the World War in particular, are the very men who have rewritten these things into history for magazines and for book publishers. When they wrote this information for the newspapers, distinguished college professors and learned critics called it “journalese”; when it appears in the reviews and in books they speak of it as “literature.”

In praise of newspaper writing as good training for writers, Anatole France has this to say:

It is an inveterate prejudice to believe that one spoils his pen in writing for the newspapers. On the contrary one gains in that way suppleness as also ease and that readiness without which the phrase does not move gracefully and never smiles. It is a good school say what one will.

Some of the modern English seems very practical and easy to understand. The use of the words “scrapped” and “junked” as verbs seems to have been put permanently into the language by the Washington Disarmament Conference. A well known journal says, “The newspapers were kidding him,” and very likely we will have to accept “kid” as a verb. The entire Navy now says of a man who goes from one place to another that he “shoves off.” It is proper to say of a dissatisfied man that he is “peeved,” according to the dictionaries, but its use is new. Food is now known as “eats” and the pleasures of the pipe or cigar are called “smokes.” A recent head-line said, “Flivvers furnish booze to soldiers.” Another newspaper transforms “hokus” into a verb: “Complained that she hokused him,” while the scholarly New Republic says of some occupation of youngsters that “it gives them no time to go on the loose.”

A new invention brings out a new crop of words. We have “automobile,” “garage,” “speedometer,” “limousine,” “taxi,” “taximeter,” “motorboat,” “motorcycle,” “chauffeur,” all useful and necessary additions to our elastic language. The airplane has brought as many more. Our slang goes on apace.

Make your sheet easy to read, as well as easy to understand. The other day a morning paper in a London cable said, “Wheat sold at 60 shillings a quarter in the corn market to-day.” That sentence gave the mind of the reader a jolt and a pause, in the attempt to translate shillings and quarters into cents and bushels. Few American readers are familiar with foreign languages, hence all words, as well as quotations, in the French, German, or other tongues, should be made into English. Pounds, marks, and francs should be computed into dollars and cents, kilometers into miles. And who knows where in New York State the Thirty-fifth Congress District is? Why not call it the Syracuse district? Or who can tell where in New York City the Sixteenth Precinct police station may be? Why not identify it as the Mercer Street station?

On the first Sunday of President Wilson’s stay in Paris he went to church and the Associated Press report said the clergyman preached from Isaiah ix. 9. Naturally the words of the text were not transmitted at full cable rates; and naturally, too, a certain curiosity was felt as to what they were. Yet of six New York daily newspapers examined, one only had taken the pains to dig out the text and print it. That sheet certainly served its readers better than did the others.

A little discreet exuberance of expression may be tolerated in newspaper writing. Sensational newspapers do no harm as long as they stick to the truth. You may print your editions in red ink, with job type, with headlines a foot high if you like, without other offenses than to exaggerate the importance of your announcement. Typographical eccentricity merely attracts attention. It serves the same purpose as does the orator’s violent gesture or the messenger’s breathless announcement. It excites curiosity, arouses interest.

Now, there is such a thing as harmless exaggeration. It enters largely into our private life. Our dreams of wealth, of success, of happiness are usually far beyond the fulfillment. We exaggerate our prospects, ambitions and promises to ourselves. But this form of exaggeration is most beneficial for it is a spur to ambition and a prod to effort.

The editor is tempted to exaggeration because a little exaggeration makes it a little more interesting. He sees that the exaggerated novel sells while the novel true to life is unnoticed; that the actor who gesticulates and shouts has the loudest applause; that the painter who outdoes nature outsells the artist who is true to fact. Indeed, some philosopher has said that an easy road to success lies through exaggeration. The man who exaggerates his own importance attracts more attention than the modest man. The merchant who exaggerates his wares sells more than the man who does not. Sensational clergymen fill churches while prosy ones preach to empty benches. It was Sidney Smith who remarked: “It is not the first man who says a thing who deserves credit for it, but he who says it so long and so loud that at last he persuades the world that it is true.” Macaulay remarked: “The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature, and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of exaggeration, of fictitious narrative, is judiciously employed.”

But the editor must use exaggeration with great discretion, must not pervert the truth. Gross exaggeration becomes downright lying.

Man’s language cunningly adapts itself to man’s thoughts. Sixty years ago writers were under the influence of what may be described as a literary age—that so-called golden age of the intellect that marked the early years of Victoria’s reign. It was a period of intellectual uplift. People were thinking of literature and talking of literature. Men hurried through their suppers to read to the family circle the stories of Dickens and Hawthorne and Walter Scott. The literary lecture was popular and people went to church for the literary pleasure the sermon afforded. The newspaper editors were writing literature and were urging their staffs to renewed literary effort. The magazines were conspicuous for literary excellence. The theaters were instructive. The writers of poetry and prose sought a nicety of literary expression, a daintiness of diction, a legato of language. Courses of study favored instruction in literature and literary topics, in language and history, in science and philosophy.

And now, if you please, mark the contrast. We are living in a business age. War has blunted our sensibilities, has made us callous, has coarsened civilization. We care little for so-called polite literature. We want the rugged kind. The family circle does not meet for literary exercises. We are thinking of commercialism, of money making, of gigantic locomotives, of immense bridges and tunnels, of aqueducts a hundred and thirty miles long, of skyscraping buildings, flying machines, telephones, typewriting machines, typesetting machines, electric devices. We are thinking of them until we are thinking of little else.

It is the age of the machine. Mechanical processes are doing the work that formerly demanded mental skill. The village blacksmith no longer commands admiration by his picturesque and intelligent forging of the nail and shoe—he buys them ready made by machinery. The learned shoemaker no longer artfully fashions my lady’s dainty slipper—the shoe machine punches it out. We bawl letters and dinner invitations through that mechanical device, the telephone, instead of writing them in the old fashioned courtly way. Time was when men put brains into what they did with their hands; but to-day, machines rather than brains are doing the work of the world.

Our language and our literature cannot escape the influence. Instead of the sweetly gliding words and sentences of the men who translated the Bible, the deliberation of Thackeray, the ornate embellishments of Washington Irving—instead of the soft speaking poetry of 1850 and the flossy velvet prose of 1860 our present-day writers are using whirlwind sentences and words in staccato that bite and scratch and explode. We are changing our diction from the niceties of literary expression to a blunter and a coarser form of expression.

There can be no harm in it, however. The net result is to improve the language. It is taking on the additional strength and agility and brevity that come of our industrial activity. The very magnitude of our undertakings, the very dimensions of our ambitions inspire to greatness of thought and forcefulness of speech. The red blood of war is nourishing the vitals of our language.

CHAPTER IV

THE FASCINATION OF WRITING FOR THE EDITORIAL PAGE

Our young man who has just entered journalism begins soon to look longingly toward the editorial page. He wants to become an editorial writer. He longs to get into the world’s controversies, to thump Presidents, to crush cabinets, to pulverize politicians, to rebuke rulers, to sandbag ignorance, sin and superstition whenever they raise their swollen heads. His immature notion of editorial writing is to smash into somebody or something. He has a lot to learn.

The editorial page is the most important part of the newspaper. It gives the sheet its greatest distinction, its widest influence, its chief reputation—gives the editor his proudest satisfaction. It is here that the editor shows to the public the true measure of his ability and inspires the confidence and the respect of his community, if at all.

The editorial article is a little essay on a current topic. You may glorify the topic by giving it conspicuous importance in the strongest language at command, or you may minimize it by inane flabby comments on its weakest features and by ignoring its essentials. You may give it fine literary flavor, or you may drool over it. The tricks of the trade come with practice.

Editorial writing is fascinating. To wield influence always gives satisfaction. For centuries it has been the ambition of orators and writers to influence men’s thoughts, to direct men’s actions.

Creative work is perhaps the most enjoyable of all work. In the newspaper it has come to be the most important. An original editorial article summons all the creative ability of the writer. It is the product of his years of study and experience. The news department may be conducted without an access of book learning, for news getting has become so systematized and its principles so easy to learn that it is difficult to invent a new way of treating the news. But before you have been an editorial writer many months you will have called into precious use all of your reasoning powers, all of your philosophy, all of the principles of life and of conduct you may have observed.

These modern days are big with new discoveries and they are first made public through the newspapers. They give glorious opportunity for special study, for mastery of the subject; not necessarily a profound finality of knowledge of it, but a knowledge comprehensive enough to write about it, a knowledge fascinating in itself as a study—enough to give its possessor advantage in social conversation and receptiveness of mind for any new development of the subject.

And it astonishes to discover what a lot of information may be had from just a few hours of acute mental concentration on a given subject. In these modern times the literature, even the textbooks of everything new, are quickly available. The book publishers never were so alert or so spry to furnish technical knowledge. Such facilities for practical study never were known. Mere mention to the modern librarian of the nature of the information sought brings you volumes on the subject in a twinkling.

In large cities where the newspapers are opulent and large staffs are employed, the editorial writer is expected to produce one article only each day. If it be for a morning sheet he has a few hours in which to prepare it; if it be for an evening edition it must be written quickly. But the number of opulent newspapers is few in comparison with the number not able to have large staffs. In almost all American daily newspapers the editorial writer is expected to furnish several articles every day. Always he is hurried. He has little time for study or for proper thought. His task tempts to a condition of routine thought; tempts to the utterance of the obvious, to imitation and the reproduction of the thoughts of others. Hurried writing usually is slovenly writing and that is a reason why nine-tenths of our editorial writing is mediocre.

The editorial writer should devote much time to study. Not in any other profession is there greater necessity for study, greater use for the knowledge that is power. The editor whose cranium is crammed with facts has great advantage over the editor whose cranium is empty, for the mind, especially the editorial mind, feeds on facts. The editor must furnish information and comment on a multitude of facts widely diverse in themselves, topics treating of every phase of human life, every shade of animate or inanimate condition. He must study the topic enough to write on it skillfully. He must convince the reader of his mastery of the subject. Bulwer Lytton’s reiteration that “Knowledge is power” finds constant verification in newspaper editing.

Almost all newspaper editorial articles, critiques of the drama or of music, and all news articles are written at a single sitting and under the constant admonition to “hurry up” both mind and movement. The writer must acquire the art of instant concentration of thought on the one subject, of instantly recalling precedents and of quickly foreseeing results. This everlasting hurry is a serious drawback to good newspaper making; but it is a powerful incentive, also, to quick thinking. What has been said of the politician, that often he must act before he has read or thought, is singularly true of the editor. The editorial writer must understand the political and commercial and social questions of the hour and must be prepared to hop right into a discussion of them at a moment’s notice. He must train himself to use quick judgment and to arrive at quick conclusions.

News intelligence may be so presented that it will have quick influence on the reader. Often it may produce flash conclusions that may be reversed by next day’s news. Many readers glance at headlines and quickly scan news columns and are influenced by what they see without giving it a scrap of intellectual reflection.

But the editorial writer must have real merit to influence other men. He must possess the art of composition, of ready speech, of carrying conviction. He not only thinks for his reader, but he seeks to persuade the reader to his way of thinking. But always the editorial article should be a help to the reader, should inform, interest, explain, elucidate as well as influence.

The modern headline artist has solved the problem of attracting the reader’s attention. The editorial writer has not the advantage of typographical eccentricity to help him; he must attract and convince by what he says.

It is difficult to indicate, even much less to advise the student of journalism, how to study for editorial writing—so vast is the field of desirable knowledge. But first of all he must read the newspapers and the periodical publications, for he must understand the topics that are engaging public thought. The editor must absorb and remember a mass of current facts that will not be recorded in textbooks and histories for months or years to come if indeed they ever are recorded. The newspapers are the first to record great events, the weekly press is next, and the magazines then follow. Histories and textbooks come along later. No other way of keeping up with public events has been discovered. The process is easy and interesting, however.

There should be thoughtful study of the great principles that govern human conduct. All history is useful. And obviously the editor cannot know too much of the fundamentals of government, of law, diplomacy, politics, and political causes, of finance, taxation, philanthropy, the relations of labor and capital and so on—the list is endless. The schools of journalism give much attention to these essentials. Their courses are prepared with great wisdom for the attainment of practical knowledge. Young men who would be journalists will profit greatly by study in these schools.

In almost all of the large newspaper offices there is a daily editorial council composed of the editorial writers, the managing editor, the city editor, the foreign editor, and sometimes the Sunday editor, and the special writers. This council meets at the beginning of the newspaper day. The events of the moment have informal discussion and a general conclusion is indicated by the editor as to what must be the editorial attitude toward them. Thus the editorial policy of the sheet is understood by all. The editor assigns to the writers their topics for discussion.

The editor indicates the paper’s policy toward all public questions and the editorial page is just what he makes it. The newspaper does not rise above its editor. His assistants write as he directs and wishes, without question, regardless of their personal convictions as to the wisdom of the policy or their personal attitude toward it. But an assistant is not often asked to write contrary to his convictions.

The editor usually revises all editorial page articles and his staff does not return for night work as was the practice of morning newspaper editorial writers fifty years ago. One editorial writer remains to comment briefly on any extraordinary news that may develop. This change in general newspaper practice was inspired by the late Charles A. Dana who urged that all editorial comment should be prepared with great deliberation and thoughtfulness, that hastily written articles were perfunctory or were expression of the obvious. He wanted not the editorial expression written at midnight for publication at two A. M. and the other editors came to his way of thinking and doing.