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Title: Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence
       A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of
       Newspaper Writing

Author: Grant Milnor Hyde

Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25968]

Language: English

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    NEWSPAPER REPORTING
    AND CORRESPONDENCE

    A MANUAL FOR REPORTERS,
    CORRESPONDENTS, AND STUDENTS
    OF NEWSPAPER WRITING

    BY

    GRANT MILNOR HYDE, M.A.

    INSTRUCTOR IN JOURNALISM IN THE
    UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.


    NEW YORK AND LONDON
    D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
    1912


    COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
    D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

    Printed in the United States of America


    TO
    MY MOTHER




INTRODUCTION


The purpose of this book is to instruct the prospective newspaper
reporter in the way to write those stories which his future paper will
call upon him to write, and to help the young cub reporter and the
struggling correspondent past the perils of the copyreader's pencil by
telling them how to write clean copy that requires a minimum of editing.
It is not concerned with the _why_ of the newspaper business--the editor
may attend to that--but with the _how_ of the reporter's work. And an
ability to write is believed to be the reporter's chief asset. There is
no space in this book to dilate upon newspaper organization, the work of
the business office, the writing of advertisements, the principles of
editorial writing, or the how and why of newspaper policy and practice,
as it is. These things do not concern the reporter during the first few
months of his work, and he will learn them from experience when he needs
them. Until then, his usefulness depends solely upon his ability to get
news and to write it.

There are two phases of the work which every reporter must learn: how to
get the news and how to write it. The first he can pick up easily by
actual newspaper experience--if nature has endowed him with "a nose for
news." The writing of the news he can learn only by hard practice--a
year's hard practice on some papers--and it is generally conceded that
practice in writing news stories can be secured at home or in the
classroom as effectively as practice in writing short stories, plays,
business letters, or any other special form of composition. Newspaper
experience may aid the reporter in learning how to write his stories,
but a newspaper apprenticeship is not absolutely necessary. However,
whether he is studying the trade of newspaper writing in his home, in a
classroom, or in the city room of a daily paper, he needs positive
instruction in the English composition of the newspaper office--rather
than haphazard criticism and a deluge of "don'ts." Hence this book is
concerned primarily with the writing of the news.

Successful newspaper reporting requires both an ability to write good
English and an ability to write good English in the conventional
newspaper form. And there is a conventional form for every kind of
newspaper story. Many editors of the present day are trying to break
away from the conventional form and to evolve a looser and more natural
method of writing news stories. The results are often bizarre and
sometimes very effective. Certainly originality in expression adds much
to the interest of newspaper stories, and many a good piece of news is
ruined by a bald, dry recital of facts. Just as the good reporter is
always one who can give his yarns a distinctive flavor, great newspaper
stories are seldom written under the restriction of rules. But no young
reporter can hope to attain success through originality and defiance of
rules until he has first mastered the fundamental principles of
newspaper writing. He can never expect to write "the story of the year"
until he has learned to handle everyday news without burying the gist of
his stories--any more than an artist can hope to paint a living portrait
until he has learned, with the aid of rules, to draw the face of a
plaster block-head. Hence the emphasis upon form and system in this
book. And, whatever the form may be, the embodiment must be clear,
concise, grammatical English; that is the excuse for the many axioms of
simple English grammar that are introduced side by side with the study
of the newspaper form.

The author offers this book as the result of personal newspaper
experience and of his work as instructor in classes in newspaper writing
at the University of Wisconsin. Every item that is offered is the result
of an attempt to correct the mistakes that have appeared most often in
the papers of students who are trying to do newspaper writing in the
classroom. The seemingly disproportionate emphasis upon certain branches
of the subject and the constant repetition of certain simple principles
are to be excused by the purpose of the book--to be a text-book in the
course of study worked out in this school of journalism. The use of the
fire story as typical of all newspaper stories and as a model for all
newspaper writing is characteristic of this method of instruction. Four
chapters are devoted to the explanation of a single principle which any
reader could grasp in a moment, because experience has shown that an
equivalent of four chapters of study and practice is required to teach
the student the application of this principle and to fix it in his mind
so thoroughly that he will not forget it in his later work of writing
more complicated stories. It is felt that the beginner needs and must
have the detailed explanation, the constant reiteration and some
definite rules to guide him in his practice. Hence the emphasis upon the
conventional form. Since, in the application of the newspaper principle
of beginning with the gist of the story, the structure of the lead is of
greater importance than the rest of the story, this book devotes the
greater part of its discussion to the lead.

The suggestions for practice are attached in an attempt to give the
young newspaper man some _positive_ instruction. Most reporters are
instructed by a system of "don'ts," growled out by busy editors; most
correspondents receive no instruction at all--a positive suggestion now
and then cannot but help them both. Practice is necessary in the study
of any form of writing; these suggestions for practice embody the method
of practice used in this school of journalism. The examples are taken
from representative papers of the entire country to show the student how
the stories are actually written in newspaper offices.

    Madison, Wisconsin,
        June 3, 1912.




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                          PAGE

          I. GATHERING THE NEWS                         1

         II. NEWS VALUES                               14

        III. NEWSPAPER TERMS                           28

         IV. THE NEWS STORY FORM                       34

          V. THE SIMPLE FIRE STORY                     41

         VI. THE FEATURE FIRE STORY                    50

        VII. FAULTS IN NEWS STORIES                    75

       VIII. OTHER NEWS STORIES                       105

         IX. FOLLOW-UP AND REWRITE STORIES            125

          X. REPORTS OF SPEECHES                      143

         XI. INTERVIEWS                               169

        XII. COURT REPORTING                          192

       XIII. SOCIAL NEWS AND OBITUARIES               204

        XIV. SPORTING NEWS                            219

         XV. HUMAN INTEREST STORIES                   233

        XVI. DRAMATIC REPORTING                       259

       XVII. STYLE BOOK                               276

       APPENDIX I--SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY              294

       APPENDIX II--NEWS STORIES TO BE CORRECTED      311

       INDEX                                          339




NEWSPAPER REPORTING AND CORRESPONDENCE

I

GATHERING THE NEWS


Unlike almost any other profession, that of a newspaper reporter
combines two very different activities--the gathering of news and the
writing of news. Part of the work must be done in the office and part of
it outside on the street. At his desk in the office a reporter is
engaged in the literary, or pseudo-literary, occupation of writing news
stories; outside on the street he is a detective gathering news and
hunting for elusive facts to be combined later into stories. Although
the two activities are closely related, each requires a different sort
of ability and a different training. In a newspaper office the two
activities are rarely separated, but a beginner must learn each duty
independent of the other. This book will not attempt to deal with both;
it will confine itself mainly to one phase, the pseudo-literary
activity of writing news stories.

However, introductory to the discussion of the writing of newspaper
stories, we may glance at the other side of the newspaper writer's
work--the gathering of the news. Where the newspaper gets its news and
how it gets its news can be learned only by experience, for it differs
in different cities and with different papers. But an outline of the
background of news-gathering may assist us in writing the news after it
is gathered and ready for us to write.


=1. Reporter vs. Correspondent.=--There are two capacities in which one
may write news stories for a paper. He may work on the staff as a
regular reporter or he may supply news from a distance as a
correspondent. In the one case he works under the personal supervision
of a city editor and spends his entire time at the regular occupation of
gathering and writing news. As a correspondent he works in a distant
city, under the indirect supervision of the city, telegraph, or state
editor, and sends in only the occasional stories that seem to be of
interest to his paper. In either case the same rules apply to his news
gathering and to his news writing. And in either case the length of his
employment depends upon his ability to turn in clean copy in the form
in which his paper wishes to print the news. Both the reporter and the
correspondent must write their stories in the same form and must look at
news and the sources of news from almost the same point of view.
Whatever is said of the reporter applies equally to the correspondent.


=2. Expected and Unexpected News.=--The daily news may be divided into
two classes from the newspaper's point of view: expected and unexpected
news. Expected news includes all stories of which the paper has a
previous knowledge. Into this class fall all meetings, speeches,
sermons, elections, athletic contests, social events, and daily
happenings that do not come unexpectedly. They are the events that are
announced beforehand and tipped off to the paper in time for the editor
to send out a reporter to cover them personally. These events are of
course recorded in the office, and each day the editor has a certain
number of them, a certain amount of news that he is sure of. Each day he
looks over his book to note the events that are to take place during
that day and sends out his reporters to cover them.

The other class includes the stories that break unexpectedly. Accidents,
deaths, fires, storms, and other unexpected happenings come without
warning and the reporting of them cannot be arranged for in advance.
These are the stories that the paper is most anxious to get and the
things for which the whole staff always has its eyes and ears open.
Seldom are they heard of in time for the paper to have them covered
personally, and the reporting of such stories becomes a separate sort of
work--the gathering and sorting of the facts that can be obtained only
from chance witnesses.


=3. News Sources.=--There are certain sources from which the paper gets
most of its tips of expected events and its knowledge of unexpected
events. These every editor knows about. The courts, the public records,
the public offices, the churches, and the schools furnish a great many
of the tips of expected news. The police stations, the fire stations,
the hospitals, and the morgues furnish most of the tips of unexpected
news. Whenever an event is going to happen, or whenever an unexpected
occurrence does happen, a notice of it is to be found in some one of
these sources. Such a notice or a casual word from any one is called a
"tip" and indicates the possibility of securing a story. The securing of
the story is another matter. A would-be reporter may get good practice
from studying the stories in the daily papers and trying to discover or
imagine from what source the original news tip came. He will soon find
that certain classes of stories always come from certain sources and
that there is a perceptible amount of routine evident in the accounts
of the most unexpected occurrences.


=4. Runs and Assignments.=--Between the news tip and the finished copy
for the compositor there is a vast amount of news gathering, which falls
to the lot of the reporter. This is handled by a system of runs and
special assignments. A reporter usually has his own run, or beat, on
which he gathers news. His run may cover a certain number of police
stations or the city hall or any group of regular news sources. Each day
he must visit the various sources of news on his beat and gather the
tips and whatever facts about the stories behind the tips that he can.
The tips that he secures furnish him with clues to the stories, and it
is his business to get the facts behind all of the tips on his beat and
to write them up, unless a tip opens up a story that is too big for him
to handle alone without neglecting his beat.

Assignments are used to cover the stories that do not come in through
the regular sources, and to handle the big stories that are unearthed on
the regular beats. The editor turns over to the reporter the tip that he
has received and instructs him to go out and get the facts. A paper's
best reporters are used almost entirely on assignments, and when they go
out after a story they practically become detectives. They follow every
clue that the tip suggests and every clue that is opened up as they
progress; they hunt down the facts until they are reasonably sure that
they have secured the whole story. The result may not be worth writing,
or it may be worth a place on the front page, but the reporter must get
to the bottom of it. Whether on a beat or on an assignment every
reporter must have his ears open for a tip of some unexpected story and
must secure the facts or inform the editor at once. It is in this way
that a paper gets a scoop, or beat, on its rivals by printing a story
before the other papers have heard of it.


=5. Interviews for Facts.=--To cover an assignment and secure the facts
of a story is not at all easy. If the reporter could be a personal
witness of the happening which he is to report, the task would be
simpler. But, outside the case of expected events, he rarely hears of
the occurrence until after it is past and the excitement has subsided.
Then he must find the persons who witnessed the occurrence or who know
the facts, and get the story from them. Perhaps he has to see a dozen
people to get the information he wants. Getting facts from people in
this way is called interviewing--interviewing for facts, as
distinguished from formal interviewing for the purpose of securing a
statement or an opinion that is to be printed with the name of the man
who utters it. Although a dozen interviews may be necessary for a
single story, not one of them is mentioned in the story, for they are of
no importance except in the facts that they supply.

For example, suppose a reporter is sent out to get the story of a fire
that has started an hour or two before he goes on duty. All that his
editor gives him is the tip from the fire department, or from some other
source, of a fire at such-and-such an address. When he arrives at the
scene there is nothing left but smoldering ruins with perhaps an engine
throwing a stream on the smoking débris and a few by-standers still
loitering about. He can see with his own eyes what kind of building has
burned, and how completely it has been destroyed. A by-stander may be
able to tell him who occupied the building or what it was used for, but
he must hunt for some one else who can give him the exact facts that his
paper wants. Perhaps he can find the tenant and learn from him what his
loss has been. The tenant can give him the name of the owner and may be
able to tell him something about the origin of the fire. He must find
the owner to get the value of the building and the amount of insurance
carried. Perhaps he cannot find any of these people and must ask the
fire chief or some one else to give him what facts and estimates he can.
If the fire is at all serious he must find out who was killed or
injured and get their names and addresses and the nature of their injury
or the manner of their death. Perhaps he can talk to some of the people
who had narrow escapes, or interview the friends or relatives of the
dead. Everywhere he turns new clues open up, and he must follow each one
of them in turn until he is sure that he has all the facts.


=6. Point of View.=--The task would be easy if every one could tell the
reporter just the facts that his paper wants. But in the confusion every
one is excited and fairly bubbling over with rumors and guesses which
may later turn out to be false. Each person who is interested in the
incident sees and tells it only from his own point of view. Obviously
the reporter's paper does not want the facts from many different points
of view, nor even from the point of view of the fire department, of the
owner, or of the woman who was rescued from the third floor. The paper
wants the story from a single point of view--the point of view of an
uninterested spectator. Consequently the reporter must get the facts
through interviews with a dozen different people, discount possible
exaggeration and falsity due to excitement, make allowances for the
different points of view, harmonize conflicting statements, and sift
from the mass what seems to him to be the truth. Then he must write the
story from the uninterested point of view of the public, which wants to
hear the exact facts of the fire told in an unprejudiced way. Never does
the story mention any of the interviews behind it except when the
reporter is afraid of some statement and wants to put the responsibility
upon the person who gave it to him. And so the finished story that we
read in the next morning's paper is the composite story of the fire
chief, the owner, the tenant, the man who discovered the fire, the widow
who was driven from her little flat, the little girl who was carried
down a ladder through the smoke, the man who lost everything he had in
the world, and the cynic who watched the flames from behind the
fireline--all massed together and sifted and retold in an impersonal way
from the point of view of a by-stander who has been everywhere through
the flames and has kept his brain free from the terror and excitement of
it all.

The same is true of every story that is printed in a newspaper. Every
story must be secured in the same way--whether it is the account of a
business transaction, a bank robbery, a political scandal, a murder, a
reception, or a railroad wreck. Seldom is it possible to find any one
person who knows all the facts just as the newspaper wants them, and
many a story that is worth but a stickful in the first edition is the
result of two hours' running about town, half a dozen telephone calls,
and a dozen interviews. That is the way the news is gathered, and that
is the part of the reporter's work that he must learn by experience. But
after all the gathering is finished and he has the facts, the writing of
the story remains. If the reporter knows how to write the facts when he
has them, his troubles are cut in half, for nowadays a reporter who
writes well is considered a more valuable asset than one who cannot
write and simply has a nose for news.


=7. News-Gathering Agencies.=--This account of news gathering is of
course told from the point of view of the reporter. Naturally it assumes
a different aspect in the editor's eyes. Much of the day's news does not
have to be gathered at all. A steady stream of news flows in ready for
use from the great news-gathering agencies, the Associated Press, the
United Press, the City Press, etc., and from correspondents. Many
stories are merely summaries of speeches, bulletins, announcements,
pamphlets and other printed matter that comes to the editorial office,
and many stories come already written. Almost everybody is looking for
publicity in these days and the editor does not always have to hunt the
news with an army of ferrets. Coöperation in news gathering has
simplified the whole matter. But it all has to be written and edited.
That is why great reporters are no longer praised for their cleverness
in worming their way to elusive facts, but for their ability to write a
good story. That is why we no longer hear so much about beats and scoops
but more about clean copy and "literary masterpieces."


=8. How the Correspondent Works.=--The correspondent gathers news very
much as the reporter does, but he does it without the help of a city
editor. He must be his own director and keep his own book of tips, for
he has no one to make out his assignments beforehand. He has to watch
for what news he can get by himself and send it to his paper of his own
accord, except occasionally when his paper instructs him to cover a
particularly large story. But he gets his tips and runs down his facts
just as a reporter does. Just as much alertness and just as much ability
to write are required of him.

The correspondent's work is made more difficult by what is called news
values. Distance affects the importance of the facts that he secures and
the length of the stories he writes. He must weigh every event for its
interest to readers a hundred or a thousand miles away. What may be of
immense importance in his community may have no interest at all for
readers outside that community. He must see everything with the eyes of
a stranger, and this must influence his whole work of news gathering
and news writing. This matter will be taken up at greater length in the
next chapter.


=9. Correspondent's Relation to His Paper.=--The relations of a
correspondent to the paper or news association to which he is sending
news can best be learned by experience. Every paper has different rules
for its correspondents and different directions in regard to the sort of
news it wants. The rules regarding the mailing of copy and the sending
of stories or queries by telegraph are usually sent out in printed form
by each individual paper to its correspondents. But while gathering news
and writing stories for a distant paper, a correspondent must always
regard himself as a reporter and write his stories in the form in which
they are to appear in print if he wishes to remain correspondent for any
length of time. The following rules are taken from the "INSTRUCTIONS TO
CORRESPONDENTS" sent out on a printed card to the correspondents of the
St. Louis _Star_:

    QUERY BY WIRE ON ALL STORIES you consider are worth
    telegraphing, unless you are absolutely certain _The Star_
    wants you to send the story without query, or in case of a big
    story breaking suddenly near edition time. If you have not time
    to query, get a reply and send such matter as might be ordered
    before the next edition time; send the story in the shortest
    possible number of words necessary to tell it, asking if
    additional matter is desired.

    Write your queries so they can be understood. Never send a
    "blind" query. If John Smith, a confirmed bachelor, whose age is
    80 years, elopes with and marries the daughter of the woman who
    jilted him when he was a youth, say so in as few words as
    possible, but be sure to convey the dramatic news worth of the
    story in your query. Do not say, "Bachelor elopes with girl,
    daughter of woman he knew a long time ago." In itself the story
    which this query tells might be worth printing, but it would not
    be half so good a story as the elopement of John Smith, 80,
    bachelor, woman hater, with the daughter of his old sweetheart.

    When a good story breaks close to edition time and the
    circumstances justify it, use the long-distance telephone, but
    first be reasonably certain _The Star_ will not get the story
    from another source.

    Write your stories briefly. _The Star_ desires to remunerate its
    correspondents according to the worth of a story and not for so
    many words. One good story of 200 words with the right "punch"
    in the introduction is worth a dozen strung over as many dozen
    pages of copy paper with the real story in the last paragraph of
    each. Tell your story in simple, every-day conversational words:
    quit when you have finished. Relegate the details. Unless it is
    a case of identification in a murder mystery, or some similar
    big story, no one cares about the color of the man's hair. Get
    the principal facts in the first paragraph--stop soon after.

    Send as much of your stuff as possible by mail, especially if
    you have the story in the late afternoon and are near enough to
    St. Louis to reach _The Star_ by 9 o'clock the next morning. If
    necessary, send the letter special delivery.

    Don't stop working on a good story when you have all the facts;
    if there are photographs to be obtained, get the photographs,
    especially if the principals in the story are persons of
    standing, and more especially if they are women.

    Correspondents will appreciably increase their worth to _The
    Star_ and enhance their earning capacity by observing these
    rules.




II

NEWS VALUES


Before any one can hope to write for a newspaper he must know something
about news values--something about the essence of interest that makes
one story worth a column and cuts down another, of equal importance from
other points of view, to a stickful. He must recognize the relative
value of facts so that he can distinguish the significant part of his
story and feature it accordingly. The question is a delicate one and yet
a very reasonable and logical one. The ideal of a newspaper, according
to present-day ethics, is to print news. The daily press is no longer a
golden treasury of contemporary literature, not even, perhaps, an
exponent of political principles. Its primary purpose is to report
contemporary history--to keep us informed concerning the events that are
taking place each day in the world about us.

To this idea is added another. A newspaper must be interesting. In these
days of many newspapers few readers are satisfied with merely being
informed; they want to be informed in a way that interests them. To
this demand every one connected with a newspaper office tries to cater.
It is the defense of the sensational yellow journals and it is the
reason for everything in the daily press. There is so much to read that
people will not read things that do not interest them, and the paper
that succeeds is the paper that interests the greatest number of
readers. Circulation cannot be built up by printing uninteresting stuff
that the majority of readers are not interested in, and circulation is
necessary to success.

This desire to interest readers is behind the whole question of news
values. News is primarily the account of the latest events, but, more
than that, it is the account of the latest events that interest readers
who are not connected with these events. Further than that, it is the
account of the latest events that interest the greatest number of
readers. Susie Brown may have sprained her ankle. The fact is
absorbingly interesting to Susie; it is even rather interesting to her
family and friends, even to her enemies. If she is well known in the
little town in which she lives her accident may be interesting enough to
the townspeople for the local weekly to print a complete account of it.
However, the event is interesting only to people who know Susie, and
after all they do not comprise a very large number. Hence her accident
has no news value outside the local weekly. On the other hand, had Susie
sprained her ankle in some very peculiar manner, the accident might be
of interest to people who do not know Susie. Suppose that she had
tripped on her gown as she was ascending the steps of the altar to be
married. Such an accident would be very unusual, almost unheard of.
People in general are interested in unusual things, and many, many
readers would be interested in reading about Susie's unusual accident
although they did not know Susie or even the town in which she lives.
Such a story would be the report of a late event that would interest
many people; hence it would have a certain amount of news value. Of
course, the reader loses sight of Susie in reading of her accident--it
might as well have been Mary Jones--but that is because Susie has no
news value in herself. That is another matter.


=1. Classes of Readers.=--Realizing that his story must be of interest
to the greatest number of people, the reporter must remember the sort of
people for whom he is writing. That complicates the whole matter. If he
were writing for a single class of readers he could easily give them the
news that would interest them. But he is not; he is writing for many
classes of people, for all classes of people. And he must interest them
all. He is writing for the business man in his office, for the wife in
the home, for the ignorant, for the highly educated, for the rich and
the poor, for the old and the young, for doctors, lawyers, bankers,
laborers, ministers, and women. All of them buy his paper to hear the
latest news told in a way that interests them, and he has to cater to
each and to all of them. If he were simply writing for business men he
would give them many columns of financial news, but that would not
interest tired laborers. An extended account of the doings of a
Presbyterian convention would not attract the great class of men with
sporting inclinations, and a story of a very pretty exhibition of
scientific boxing would not appeal to the wife at home. They all buy the
paper, and they all want to be interested, and the paper must,
therefore, print stories that interest at least the majority of them.
That is the question of news values. The news must be the account of the
latest events that interest the greatest number of readers of all
classes.

This search for the universally-interesting news is the reason behind
the sensational papers. Although the interests of any individual differ
in almost every aspect from the interests of his neighbor, there is one
sort of news that interests them both, that interests every human being.
That is the news that appeals to the emotions, to the heart. It is the
news that deals with human life--human nature--human interest news the
papers call it. In it every human being is interested. However trivial
may be the event, if it can be described in a way that will make the
reader feel the point of view of the human beings who suffered or
struggled or died or who were made happy in the event, every other human
being will read it with interest. Human sympathy makes one want to feel
joy and pain from the standpoint of others. Naturally that sort of news
is always read; naturally the paper that devotes itself to such news is
always read and is always successful as far as circulation and profits
go. The papers that have that ideal of news behind them and forsake
every other ideal for it are called sensational papers. Whether they are
good or not is another question.

With this idea of what news values means and the idea that news is worth
while only when it interests the largest number of people of all
classes, we may try to look for the things that make news interesting to
the greatest number of people of all classes. The reporter must know not
only what news is, but what makes it news. He must be able to see the
things in a story that will interest the greatest number of people of
all classes. These are many and intricate.


=2. Timeliness.=--In the first place, news must be new. A story must
have timeliness. Our readers want to know what happened to-day, for
yesterday and last week are past and gone. They want to be up to the
minute in their information on current events. Therefore a story that is
worth printing to-day will not be worth printing to-morrow or, at most,
on the day after to-morrow. Events must be chronicled just as soon as
they happen. Furthermore, the story itself must show that it is new. It
must tell the reader at once that the event which it is chronicling
happened to-day or last night--at least since the last edition of the
paper. That is why the reporter must never fail to put the time in the
introduction of his story. Editors grow gray-headed trying to keep up
with the swift passing of events, and they are always very careful to
tell their readers that the events which they are chronicling are the
latest events. That is the reason why every editor hates the word
"yesterday" and tries to get "to-day" or "this morning" into the lead of
every story. Hence, to the newspaper, everything that happened since
midnight last night is labeled "this morning," and everything that
happened since six o'clock yesterday afternoon is labeled "last night."
Anything before that hour must be labeled "yesterday," but it goes in as
"late yesterday afternoon," if it possibly can. Hence the first
principle of news values is timeliness--news is news only because it
just happened and can be spoken of as one of the events of "to-day" or
of "late yesterday."


=3. Distance.=--Distance is another factor in news values. In spite of
fast trains and electric telegraphs human beings are clannish and local
in their interests. They are interested mainly in things and persons
that they know, and news from outside their ken must be of unusual
significance to attract them. They like to read about things that they
have seen and persons that they know, because they are slow to exert
their imaginations enough to appreciate things that they do not know
personally. Hence every newspaper is primarily local, even though it is
a metropolitan daily, and news from a distance plays a very subordinate
part. It has been said that New York papers cannot see beyond the
Alleghanies; it is equally true that most papers cannot see more than a
hundred miles from the printing office, except in the case of national
news. Any newspaper's range of news sources goes out from the editorial
room in concentric circles. Purely personal news must come from within
the range of the paper's general circulation, because people do not care
to read purely personal news about persons whom they do not know. Other
news is limited ordinarily to the region with which the paper's readers
are personally acquainted--the state, perhaps--because subscribers
unconsciously wish to hear about places with which they are personally
acquainted. Any news that comes from outside this larger circle must be
nation-wide or very unusual in its interest. A story that may be worth a
column in El Paso, Texas, would not be worth printing in New York
because El Paso is hardly more than a name to most New York newspaper
readers. In the same way, the biggest stories in New York are not worth
anything in Texas, because Texas readers are not personally interested
in New York--they cannot say, "Yes, I know that building; I walked down
that street the other day; oh, you can't tell me anything about the
subway." News is primarily local, and the first thing a correspondent
must learn is how to distinguish the stories that are purely local in
their interest from those that would be worth printing a hundred miles
away in a paper read by people who do not know the places or persons
involved in the story. Colonel Smith may be a very big frog in the
little puddle of Smith's Corners, and his doings may be big news to the
weeklies all over his county, but he has to do something very unusual
before his name is worth a line in a paper two counties away. He is
nothing but a name to people who do not know him or know of him, and
therefore they are not interested in him. Every correspondent must watch
for the stories that have something more than a local interest, some
element of news in them that will carry them over the obstacle of
distance and make them interesting to any reader.

It would be impossible to analyze news values to the extent of telling
every conceivable element of interest that will overcome the obstacle of
distance. Yet there are certain elements that always make a newspaper
story interesting to any one.


=4. Loss of life.=--One of these is the loss of human life. For some
strange reason every human being is interested in the thought of death.
Just as soon as a story mentions death it is worth printing, and if it
has a number of deaths to tell about it is worth printing anywhere. Any
fire, any railroad wreck, or any other disaster in which a number of
persons are killed or injured makes a story that is worth sending
anywhere. There seems to be a joy for the reader in the mere number of
fatalities. A story that can begin with "Ten people were killed," or
"Seven men met their death," attracts a reader's interest at once. As a
very natural result, and justly, too, newspapers have been broadly
accused of exaggeration for the sake of a large number. But at present
many papers are inclined to underestimate rather than overestimate,
perhaps to avoid this accusation. In a number of instances in the past
year, among them the Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, the first
figures were smaller than the official count printed later. That does
not mean, however, that newspapers do not want stories involving loss of
life. Any story which involves a large number of fatalities will carry a
long distance, if for no other reason.


=5. Big Names.=--Another element of news values is the interest in
prominent people. The mere mention of a man or a woman who is known
widely attracts attention. Although Colonel Smith of Smith's Corners has
to do something very unusual to get his name in any paper outside his
county, the slightest thing that President Taft does is printed in every
paper in the country. It is simply because of our interest in the man
himself. Some names give a story news value because the names are widely
known politically or financially, some names because they are simply
notorious. But any name that is recognized at once, for any reason,
gives a story news value.


=6. Property Loss.=--Akin to man's love for any account that involves
large loss of human life, is his love of any story that tells about a
huge loss of property. The mere figures seem to have a charm; any story
that can begin with awesome figures, like "Two million dollars," "One
hundred automobiles," "Ten city blocks," has news value. Hence any story
that involves a large loss that can be expressed in figures has the
power to carry a great distance.


=7. Unusualness.=--It is safe to say that newspaper readers are
interested in anything unusual. It does not matter whether it is a
thing, a person, an action, a misfortune; so long as it is strange and
out of the range of ordinary lives, it is interesting. Many, if not
most, newspaper stories have nothing but the element of strangeness in
them to give them news value, but if they are sufficiently strange and
unusual they may be copied all over the country. An unusual origin or an
unusual rescue will give an unimportant fire great news value. And so
with every other kind of story.


=8. Human Interest.=--Along with the element of the strange and unusual,
goes the human interest element. Any story that will make us laugh or
make us cry has news value. Hundreds of magazines are issued monthly
with nothing in them but fictitious stories that are intended to arouse
our emotions, and newspapers are beginning to realize that they can
interest their readers in the same way. No life is so prosaic that it is
not full of incidents that make one laugh or cry, and when these
stories can be told in a way that will make any reader feel the same
emotions, they have news value that will carry them a long distance.
Obviously their success depends very largely upon the way they are told.


=9. Personal Appeal.=--Another element that may give a story news value
is that of personal appeal or application to the reader's own daily
life. Men are primarily egoistic and selfish and nothing interests them
more than things that affect them personally. They can read complacently
and without interest of the misfortunes and joys of others, but just as
soon as anything affects their own daily lives, even a little, they want
to hear about it. Perhaps the price of butter has gone up a few cents or
the gas company has reduced its rates from eighty cents to
seventy-seven. Every reader is interested at once, for the news affects
his own daily life. Sometimes this personal appeal is due merely to the
reader's familiarity with the persons or places mentioned in the story;
sometimes it is due to the story's application to his business life, his
social or religious activities, or to any phase of his daily existence.
That is the reason why political news interests every one, for we all
feel that the management of the government has an influence on our own
lives. The story of any political maneuver--especially if it is one
that may be looked upon as bad or good--carries farther than any other
story. Show that your story tells of something that has even the
slightest effect on the lives of a large number of people and it needs
no other element to give it news value.


=10. Local Reasons.=--These factors and many others give news stories a
news value that will carry them a long distance and make them
interesting in communities far from their source. Many local reasons may
enhance the value of a story for local papers. A paper's policy or some
campaign that it is waging may give an otherwise unimportant event a
tremendous significance. If an unimportant person is slightly injured
while leaving a trolley car the story is hardly worth a line of type.
But if such an item should come to a newspaper while it is carrying on a
campaign against the local street railway company, the story would
probably be written and printed in great detail. Any slight occurrence
that may be in line with a paper's political beliefs would receive an
amount of space far out of proportion with its ordinary news worth. News
value is a very changeable and indefinite thing, and there are countless
reasons why any given story should be of interest to a large number of
readers. And the possibility of interesting a large number of readers is
the basis of news value.


=11. The Feature.=--In connection with the study of news values the
question of feature is important. In editorial offices one is constantly
hearing the word "feature," and reporters are constantly admonished to
"play up the feature" of their stories. Feature is the word that editors
use to signify the essence of news value. Every story that is printed is
printed because of some fact in it that makes it interesting--gives it
news value. The element in the story that makes it interesting and worth
printing is the feature. The feature may be some prominent name, a large
list of fatalities, a significant amount of property destroyed, or
merely the unusualness of the incident. This feature is the element that
makes the story news; therefore it is used to attract attention to the
story. Every newspaper story displays like a placard in its headlines
the reason why it was printed--the element in it that makes it
interesting. "Playing up the feature" is simply the act of bringing this
feature to the front so that it will attract attention to the story.
Just how this is done we shall see later. But when, as a reporter, you
are looking for a feature to play up in your lead, remember that the
feature to be played up is the thing in the story that gives the story
news value. And few stories have more than one claim to news value, more
than one feature.




III

NEWSPAPER TERMS


The newspaper vernacular that is used in the editorial and press rooms
of any daily paper is a curious mixture of literary abbreviations and
technical printing terms. It is the result of the strange mingling of
the literary trade of writing with the mechanical trade of setting type.
For that reason a green reporter has difficulty in understanding the
instructions that he receives until he has been in the office long
enough to learn the office slang. It would be impossible to list all of
the expressions that might be heard in one day, but a knowledge of the
commonest words will enable a reporter to get the drift of his editor's
instructions.

When a young man secures a position as reporter for a newspaper he
begins as a _cub reporter_ and is usually said to be on the _staff_ of
his paper. His sphere of activity is confined to the _editorial_ room,
where the news is written; his relations with the _business office_,
where advertising, circulation, and other business matters are handled,
consists of the weekly duty of drawing his pay. His chief enemies are in
the _printing office_ where his literary efforts are _set up_ in type
and printed. His superiors are called _editors_ and exist in varying
numbers, depending upon the size of his paper. The man who directs the
reporters is usually called the _city editor_, or perhaps the _day_ or
_night city editor_; above him there are managing editors and other
persons in authority with whom the cub is not concerned; and the favored
mortals who enjoy a room by themselves and write nothing but editorials
are called editors or _editorial writers_. There may also be a
_telegraph_ editor, a _sporting_ editor, a _Sunday_ editor, and many
other editors; or if the paper is small and poor all of these editors
may be condensed into one very busy man. On a city daily of average size
there are _desk men_, or _copyreaders_, who work under editorial
direction but feel superior to the reporter because they correct his
literary efforts.

The reporter's work consists of gathering and writing news. In the
office this is called _covering_ and writing _stories_. He is ordinarily
put on a _beat_, or _run_; this is simply a daily route or round of news
sources which he follows as regularly as a policeman walks his beat. The
reporter's work on a special story outside his beat is called an
_assignment_. Any hint that he may receive concerning a bit of news is
called a _tip_. Any bit of news that he secures to the exclusion of his
paper's rivals is called a _beat_, or a _scoop_.

Everything that is written for the paper, whether it be a two-line
personal item or a two-column report, is called a _story_, or a _yarn_,
and from the time the story is written until it appears in the printed
paper it is called _copy_. If the story is well written and needs few
corrections it is called _clean copy_. After the story is written it is
turned over to the copyreader to be _edited_. The copyreader corrects it
and writes the headlines or _heads_; then he sends it to the composing
room to be set in type by the _compositor_. The story itself is usually
set up on a linotype machine and the heads are set up by hand. For the
sake of keeping the two parts of the copy together the reporter or the
copyreader ordinarily gives the story a name, such as "Fire No. 2"; the
bit of lead on which the name is printed is called a _slug_ and the
story is said to be _slugged_. If at any time in its journey from the
reporter's pencil to the printed page, the editor decides not to print
the story, he _kills_ it; otherwise he _runs_ it, or allows it to go
into the paper. When the story is in type, an impression, or _proof_, is
taken of it, and this proof, still called copy, comes back to the
copyreader or the proofreader for the correction of typographical
errors. The gathering together of all of the day's stories into the form
of the final printed page is called _making up_ the paper; this is
usually done by some one of the editors. In like manner, the finished
aspect of the paper is called the _make-up_.

Some stories are said to be _big stories_ because of unusual news value.
When any news comes unexpectedly it is said to _break_; and when any
story comes in beforehand and must be held over, it is said to be
_released_ on the day on which it may be printed. The first paragraph of
any story is called the _lead_ (pronounced "leed"); the word _lead_ is
also used to designate several introductory paragraphs that are tacked
on at the beginning of a long story, which may be of the nature of a
_running story_ (as the running story of a football game), or may be
made up of several parts, written by one or more reporters. In general,
that part of a story which presents the gist or summary of the entire
story at the beginning is called the _lead_. The most interesting thing
in the story, the part that gives it news value, is called the
_feature_, and _playing up the feature_ consists in telling the most
interesting thing in the first line of the lead or in the headline. An
entire story is said to be _played up_ if it is given a prominent place
in the paper. A _feature story_ is either a story that is thus played
up or a story that is written for some other reason than news value,
such as human interest. When a story is rewritten to give a new interest
to old facts it is called a _rewrite story_; when it is rewritten to
include new facts or developments, it is called a _follow-up_,
_second-day_, or _follow story_.

Because of the close relation between the editorial room and the
printing office many printing terms are commonly heard about the
editorial room. All copy is measured by the _column_ and by the
_stickful_. A column is usually a little less than 1,500 words and a
stickful is the amount of type that can be set in a compositor's
_stick_, the metal frame used in setting type by hand--about two inches
or 100 words. A bit of copy that is set up with a border or a row of
stars about it is said to be _boxed_. Whenever copy is set with extra
space between the lines it is said to be _leaded_ (pronounced
"leded")--the name is taken from the piece of lead that is placed
between the lines of type. The reporter must gradually learn the names
of the various kinds of type and the various proofreader's signs that
are used to indicate the way in which the type is to be set, for the
whole work of writing the news is governed and limited by the mechanical
possibilities of the printing office. The commonest signs used by the
proofreader or the copyreader, together with instructions for preparing
copy, are given in the Style Book at the end of this volume. (A complete
list of proofreader's signs can be found in the back of any large
dictionary.) _Style_ is a word which editors use to cover a multitude of
rules, arbitrary or otherwise, concerning capitalization, punctuation,
abbreviation, etc. A paper that uses many capital letters is said to
follow an _up_ style, and a paper that uses small letters instead of
capitals whenever there is a choice is said to follow a _down_ style.
Every newspaper has its own style and usually prints its rules in a
Style Book; the Style Book given in this volume has been compiled from
many representative newspaper style books. It sets forth an average
style and the beginner is advised to follow it closely in his practice
writing--for, as editors say, "uniformity is better than a strict
following of style."




IV

THE NEWS STORY FORM


When we come to the writing of the news we find that there are many
sorts of stories that must be written. In the newspaper office they are
called simply stories without distinction. For the purpose of study they
may be classified to some extent, but this classification must not be
taken as hard and fast. The commonest kind of story is the simple news
story. Practically all newspaper reports are news stories, but as
distinguished from other kinds of reports the simple news story is the
report of some late event or occurrence. It is usually concerned with
unexpected news, and is the commonest kind of story in any newspaper. It
is to be distinguished from reports of speeches, interview stories,
court reports, social news, dramatic news, sporting news, human-interest
stories, and all the rest. The distinction is largely one of form and
does not exist to any great extent in a newspaper office where all
stories are simply "stories."

The simple news story is probably the most variable part of a newspaper.
Given the same facts, each individual reporter will write the story in
his individual way and each editor will change it to suit his individual
taste. No two newspapers have exactly the same ideal form of news story
and no newspaper is able to live up to its individual ideal in each
story.

But there are general tendencies. Certain things are true of all news
stories; whether the story be the baldest recital of facts or the most
sensational featuring of an imaginary thrill in a commonplace happening,
certain characteristics are always present. And these characteristics
can always be traced to one cause--the effort to catch and hold the
reader's interest. When a busy American glances over his newspaper while
he sips his breakfast coffee or while he clings to a strap on the way to
his office, he reads only the stories that catch his interest--and he
reads down the column in any one story only so long as his interest is
maintained. Hence the ideal news story is one which will catch the
reader's attention by its beginning and hold his interest to the very
end. This is the principle of all newspaper writing.

The interest depends, in a large measure, on the way the facts are
presented. True, certain facts are in themselves more interesting to a
casual reader than others, but just as truly other less interesting
facts may be made as interesting through the reporter's skill. The most
interesting of stories may lose its interest if poorly presented, and
facts of the most commonplace nature may be made attractive enough to
hold the reader to the last word. The aim of every reporter and of every
editor is to make every story so attractive and interesting that the
most casual reader cannot resist reading it.

In the old days news stories were written in the logical order of events
just like any other narrative, but constant change has brought about a
new form, as different and individual as any other form of expression.
Unlike any other imaginable piece of writing, the news story discloses
its most interesting facts first. It does not lead the reader up to a
startling bit of news by a tantalizing suspense in an effort to build up
a surprise for him; it tells its most thrilling content first and trusts
to his interest to lead him on through the details that should logically
precede the real news. Therefore every editor admonishes his reporters
"to give the gist of the news first and the details later."

There are other reasons for this peculiar reversal of the logical order
of narrative. Few readers have time to read the whole of every story,
and yet they want to get the news--in the shortest possible time.
Therefore the newspaper very kindly tells the important part of each
story at the beginning. Then if the reader cares to hear the details he
can read the rest of the story; but he gets the news, anyway. Again, if
the exigencies of making up the stories into a paper of mechanically
limited space require that a story be cut down, the editor may slash off
a paragraph or two at the end without depriving the story of its
interest. Imagine the difficulty of cutting down a story that is told in
its logical order! If the real news of the story were in the last
paragraph it would go in the slashing, and what would be left? Whereas,
if the gist of the story comes first the editor may run any number of
paragraphs or even the first paragraph alone and still have a complete
story.

The arrangement of news stories in American newspapers is thus a very
natural one, resulting from the exigencies of the business. Just how to
fit every story to this arrangement is a difficult task. However, there
are certain rules that the reporter may apply to each story, and these
are very simple.

In the first place, almost every story has a feature--there is some one
thing in it that is out of the ordinary, something that gives it
interest and news value beyond the interest in the incident behind it.
No two stories have the same interesting features; if they had, only
one of them would be worth printing and that would be the first. This
extraordinary feature the reporter must see at once. If a building burns
he must see quickly what incident in the occurrence will be of interest
to readers who are reading of many fires every day. If John Smith falls
off a street car the reporter must discover some interesting fact in
connection with Mr. Smith's misfortune that will be new and attractive
to readers who do not know John and are bored with accounts of other
Smiths' accidents. The accident itself may be interesting, but the part
of the accident that is out of the ordinary--the thing that gives the
accident news value--is the feature of the story, and the reporter must
tell it first.

Thoroughly determined to tell the most interesting part, the gist, of
his story in the first paragraph, the reporter must remember that there
are certain other things about the incident that the reader wants to
know just as quickly. There are certain questions which arise in the
reader's mind when the occurrence is suggested, and these questions must
be answered as quickly as they are asked. The questions usually take the
form of _when?_ _where?_ _what?_ _who?_ _how?_ _why?_ If a man falls off
the street car we are eager to know at once who he was, although we
probably do not know him, anyway; where it happened; when it happened;
how he fell; and why he fell. If there is a fire we immediately ask what
burned; where it was; when it burned; how it burned; and what caused it
to burn. And the reporter must answer these questions with the same
breath that tells us that a man fell off the car or that there was any
fire at all.

The effort to answer these questions at once has led to the peculiar
form of introduction characteristic of every newspaper story. Newspaper
people call it the lead. It is really nothing but the statement of the
briefest possible answers to all these questions in one sentence or one
short paragraph. It tells the whole story in its baldest aspects and
aims to satisfy the reader who wants only the gist of the story and does
not care for the details. When all his questions have been answered in
one breath he is ready to read the details one at a time, but he won't
be satisfied if he must read all about how the fire was discovered
before he is told what building burned, when it burned, etc. For
example:

             |  Fire of unknown origin caused the     |
             |practical destruction of the famous old |
             |"Crow's Nest," at Tenth and Cedar       |
             |streets, perhaps the best known and     |
             |oldest landmark in the Second ward,     |
             |yesterday afternoon.--_Milwaukee Free   |
             |Press._                                 |

This is the lead of an ordinary news story--a newspaper report of a
fire. The lead begins with "Fire" because the story has no unusual
feature--no element in it that is more interesting than the fact that
there was a fire. The reporter considers "Fire" the most important part
of his story and begins with it. As soon as we read the word "Fire" we
ask, "When?"--"Where?"--"What?"--"Why?"--"How?" The reporter answers us
in the same sentence with his announcement, "yesterday afternoon"--"at
Tenth and Cedar Streets"--"the famous old 'Crow's Nest,' perhaps the
best known and oldest landmark in the Second ward"--"unknown origin."
_How_ is not worth answering, in this case, beyond the statement that
the destruction was practically complete. Thus the reporter has told us
his bit of news and answered our most obvious questions about it at the
very beginning of his story--in one sentence. According to newspaper
rules this is a good lead. The order of the answers will be considered
later. For the present we are concerned only with the facts that the
lead must contain.




V

THE SIMPLE FIRE STORY


The simplest news story is the story which has no feature--which has no
fact in it more important than the incident which it reports--e.g., the
fire at the end of the last chapter. If we recall the various elements
of news value we note that any incident may be given greater news value
by the presence of some unusual or interesting feature--a great loss of
life, an unusual time, a strikingly large loss of property, or simply a
well-known name. Such a story is called a story with a feature, because
its interest depends not so much on the incident itself as upon the
unusual feature within the incident. On the other hand, many news
stories do not have features. Many stories are worth printing simply
because of the incident which they report, without any unusual feature
within them. For example, a building may burn with no loss of life, no
great loss of property, and no striking occurrence in connection with
the burning. Such a fire is worth reporting, but there is no fact in
the story more interesting than the fact that there was a fire; the
story has no feature.

The leads of these two kinds of stories are different. When a story has
a feature it is customary to play up that feature in the first line of
the lead. If the story has no feature, is simply the record of a
commonplace event, the lead merely announces the incident and answers
the reader's questions about it.

The commonest of featureless stories is the simple fire story in which
nothing out of the ordinary happens, no one is killed, no striking
rescues take place, and no tremendous amount of property is destroyed.
This may be taken as typical of all featureless stories. The reporter,
in writing a report of such a fire, merely answers in the lead the
questions _when_, _where_, _what_, _why_, and perhaps _how_, that the
reader asks concerning the fire. The most striking part of the story is
that there was a fire; hence the story begins with "Fire." For example:

             |  Fire today wrecked the top of the       |
             |six-story warehouse at 393 to 395         |
             |Washington street, used by the United     |
             |States army as a medical supply           |
             |store-room for the Department of the      |
             |East. Capt. Edwin Wolf, who is in charge  |
             |of the warehouse, says the loss on tents, |
             |blankets, cots, and other bedding stored  |
             |on the floors of the building was         |
             |large.--_New York Mail._                  |

As one reads down through the rest of the story he finds nothing more
striking than the fact that there was a fire. Therefore there is no
particular feature. No one was killed; no one was injured; the loss was
not extraordinary for a New York fire--nothing in the story is of
greater interest than the mere fact that there was a fire. Hence the
story begins with the word "Fire." Notice that it does not begin "A
fire" or "The fire"--for the simple reason that the word _fire_ does not
need an article before it. The editor will also tell you that it is not
considered good to begin a story with an article, for the beginning is
the most important part of a story and it is foolish to waste that
advantageous place on unimportant words.

The first word tells the reader that there has been a fire. He
immediately asks where?--what burned?--when?--how much was lost? And the
reporter proceeds to answer his questions in their order of importance.
The reporter who wrote this story apparently thought that the time was
of greatest importance and slipped it in at once--"today." He might just
as well have left the time until the end of the sentence because it is
not of very great interest. He considers the question "_Where_" of next
importance, and answers with "the top of the six-story warehouse at 393
to 395 Washington Street." The question "what?" he answers with a
clause, "used by the United States army as a medical supply store-room
for the Department of the East." He does not try to answer the question
"_why_?" because, as the rest of the story tells us, no one knew exactly
what caused the fire. And as for the "_How_?" there is nothing
extraordinary in the way that it burned beyond the fact that it burned.
Thus, in one sentence, he has answered all four questions about the
fire, except a little query concerning the amount of the loss. That he
considers worth a separate sentence of details.

This is not a perfect lead. Many editors would consider it faulty, but
it illustrates one way of writing the lead of a featureless fire story.
Obviously there are faults; for instance, the time is given an undue
amount of emphasis and the cause is omitted.

Suppose that we construct another lead from the same story--a lead which
would be more in accordance with the logic of newspaper writing. We
shall begin with the word "fire," but after it we shall slip in a little
mention of the cause since to the reader not directly acquainted with
the property that point is always of the greatest importance. Then we
shall tell where the fire was and after that what was burned. And last
of all we shall give the time since that is of least importance to the
average reader. This would be the result:

             |  Fire of unknown origin wrecked the top  |
             |of the six-story warehouse at 393-395     |
             |Washington street, used by the United     |
             |States army as a medical supply           |
             |store-room for the Department of the      |
             |East, destroying a large number of tents, |
             |blankets, cots, and other bedding, today. |

We might as well have put the _what_ before the _where_ or altered the
lead in any other way. But we would always begin with the word "fire"
and answer all the questions that the reader might ask--in one short
simple sentence. This constitutes our lead. We have told the casual
reader what he wants to know about the fire. We give him more details
about the fire if he wants to read them, but after we have stated the
case clearly in the lead we no longer reckon his time so carefully and
allow ourselves some latitude in the telling. After the lead we begin
the story from the beginning and tell it in its logical order from start
to finish, always bearing in mind that the editor may chop off a
paragraph or two at the end.

Hence the second paragraph of the story as it appeared in _The Mail_
begins:

             |  John Smith, a man employed in the      |
             |stock-room on the sixth floor, saw smoke |
             |rolling out of one corner and notified   |
             |other employees in the building, while   |
             |Patrolman Hogan turned in an alarm.      |

We are back at the beginning now and telling things as they came. The
next paragraph of the story tells us how they fought the fire, and the
third tells us how they finally brought it under control. The last
paragraph of the story reads:

             |  There are three such warehouses in the  |
             |country, one at St. Louis, another at San |
             |Francisco, but the one in this city is by |
             |far the largest. In it are kept supplies  |
             |for the Departments of the East, Gulf,    |
             |Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines.    |

The editor of _The Mail_ had plenty of space that day and saw fit to run
this last paragraph, but we should not have lost much had he chopped it
off. Perhaps the reporter's copy contained still another paragraph
telling about Captain Wolf, but that did not pass the editorial pencil.
Even more of the story might have been slashed without depriving us of
much of the interesting news.

Judging from the above story a newspaper account is divided into two
separate and independent parts: the lead and the detailed account. The
lead is written for the casual reader and contains all the necessary
facts about the fire; it may stand alone and constitute a story in
itself. The detailed account is written for the reader who wants to hear
more about the incident, and is written in the logical order of
events--with an eye to the danger of the editor's pencil threatening the
last paragraphs. In other words, the reporter tells his story briefly in
one paragraph and then goes back and tells it all over again in a more
detailed way. If the story is of sufficient importance the second
telling may not be sufficient and he may go back a third time to the
beginning and tell it again with still greater detail--but that is
another matter. For the present we shall consider only the lead and the
first detailed account.

There are certain other points to be noticed in the report of a
featureless fire. Under no condition should it begin with the time. Why?
Because, unless the time is of extreme interest, no one cares
particularly when the fire occurred. And if the time is of great
interest--as, for instance, if a church should burn while the
congregation is in it--then the time becomes a feature to be played up
and the story is no longer a featureless story. We are now considering
stories in which nothing is of greater interest than the mere fact that
there was a fire.

The same is true of the location. Who cares what street the fire was on
until he knows more about the fire? If the location were of such
significant importance as to be played up, the story would no longer be
a featureless story.

The paragraphing is also important. Since the lead is in itself a
separate part of the story it should always be paragraphed separately.
Do not let the beginning of the detailed account lap over into the lead,
and do not introduce into the first paragraph any facts which are not
absolutely a part of the lead--that is, facts that are absolutely
essential to a general knowledge of the fire. When once you begin to
tell the story in detail tell it logically and paragraph it logically.
Do not tell us that John Smith discovered the fire and that the loss is
$500 in the same paragraph. Take up each point separately and treat it
fully before you leave it--then begin a new paragraph for the next item.

                  *       *       *       *       *

To take a hypothetical case, suppose that misfortune visits the home of
John H. Jones, who lives at 79 Liberty Street. A defective flue sets his
house on fire and it burns to the ground. By inquiry we find that the
house is worth about $4,000 and is fully insured.

There is nothing particularly striking about the story. We are sorry for
Mr. Jones, but many houses worth $4,000 are set on fire by poor
chimneys and many more houses burn down. No one was hurt, no one was
killed; the most striking part of it all is that there was a fire. We
would begin with the word "Fire." Perhaps our readers would be most
interested in the cause of the fire and we shall tell them that first.
Then we shall tell them what burned, when it burned, and where it stood.
There is nothing else that a casual reader would want to know and the
lead would read:

             |  Fire starting in a defective chimney    |
             |destroyed the residence of John H. Jones, |
             |79 Liberty street, at midnight last       |
             |night, causing a loss of $4,000, covered  |
             |by insurance.                             |

Our casual reader is satisfied. For the reader who wishes to know more
about the fire we add a paragraph or two of detail. First, we may tell
him who discovered the fire; then how the Jones family managed to
escape; and after that how the fire was extinguished, and we might slip
in a paragraph explaining just what trouble in the chimney made a fire
possible. The editor may chop off any number of paragraphs or cut the
story down to the lead, and yet our readers will get the facts and know
just exactly what was the reason for the fire bell and the red sky at
midnight last night.




VI

THE FEATURE FIRE STORY


A fire story without a feature begins with "Fire" because there is
nothing in the story more interesting than the fact that there has been
a fire. Such was the case in the burning of John Jones's house in the
last chapter. But just as soon as any part of the story becomes more
interesting than the fact that there was a fire, the story is no longer
featureless--it is a fire story with a feature, or, for the purposes of
our study, _a feature fire story_. This feature may be related to the
story in one of two ways. In the first place, the answer to some one of
the reader's questions may be the feature--e.g., the answer to _when_,
_where_, _what_, _how_, _why_, _who_. On the other hand, the feature may
be in some unexpected attendant circumstance that the reader would not
think of; for instance, loss of life, an interesting rescue, or
something of that sort. Such a distinction is entirely arbitrary and
would not be considered in a newspaper office, but it will make the
matter simpler for the purposes of study.


A. FEATURES IN ANSWERS TO READER'S CUSTOMARY QUESTIONS

(_When_, _Where_, _What_, _How_, _Why_, _Who_).

Suppose that John Jones's house did not burn in the usual way--suppose
that there is some striking incident in the story that makes it
different from other fire stories. The story has a feature. Perhaps the
answer to some one of the reader's customary questions is more
interesting than the answers to the others--so much more interesting
that it supersedes even the fact that there was a fire. Then it would be
foolish to begin with the mere word "fire" when we have something more
interesting to tell. The fire takes a second place and we begin with the
interesting fact that supersedes it. For the present we shall consider
that this interesting fact is the answer to one of the questions that
the reader always asks; for instance, why the house burned or when it
burned.


=1. Why.=--Perhaps Mr. Jones's house was set on fire in a very unusual
way. There was a little party in session at the Jones's and some one
decided to take a flash-light picture. The flash-light set fire to a
lace curtain and before any one could stop it the house was afire. Few
fires begin in that way, and our readers would be very interested in
hearing about it. The story has a feature in the answer to the reader's
_Why?_ And so we would begin our lead in this way:

             |  A flashlight setting fire to a lace    |
             |curtain started a fire which destroyed   |
             |the residence of John H. Jones, 79       |
             |Liberty street, at 11 o'clock last night |
             |and caused a loss of $4,000.             |

In this way the feature is played up at the beginning of the sentence,
and yet the rest of the reader's questions are answered in the same
sentence and he knows a great deal about the fire. Or, leaving Mr. Jones
to his fate, we may give another example of an unusual cause taken from
a newspaper. This was a big fire, and yet the unusual cause was of
greater interest than the fire itself or the amount of property
destroyed:

             |  A tiny "joss stick," the lighted end of|
             |which was no larger than a pinhead, is   |
             |thought to have been responsible for a   |
             |fire that destroyed the White City       |
             |Amusement Park at Broad Ripple last      |
             |night. The loss to the amusement company |
             |is $161,000.--_Indianapolis News._       |


=2. Where.=--To return to Mr. Jones, there may have been some other
incident in the burning of his house aside from the cause that was of
exceptional interest. Let us say that his house stood in a part of the
town where a fire was to be feared. Perhaps it stood within twenty feet
of the new First Congregational Church. The burning of Jones's house
would then be insignificant in comparison to the danger to the costly
edifice beside it, and our readers would be more interested in an item
concerning their church. The answer to _Where?_ is more interesting than
the fire itself. Hence we would bury, so to speak, Mr. Jones's
misfortune behind the greater danger, and the story would read:

             |  Fire endangered the new First          |
             |Congregational Church on Liberty street, |
             |erected at a cost of $100,000, when the  |
             |home of J. H. Jones, in the rear of the  |
             |church, was destroyed at midnight last   |
             |night.                                   |

Or:

             |  The First Congregational Church,       |
             |recently built at a cost of $100,000, was|
             |seriously threatened by a fire which     |
             |destroyed the residence of John H. Jones,|
             |78 Liberty street, within twenty feet of |
             |the church, at midnight last night.      |


Turning again to the daily papers, we can find many fire stories in
which the location of the burned structure is important enough to take
the first line of the lead. Here is one:

             |  The Plaza Hotel had a few uncomfortable|
             |moments last night when flames from a    |
             |building adjoining at 22 West Fifty-ninth|
             |street were shooting up as high as the   |
             |tenth story of the hotel and the fire    |
             |apparatus which responded to the delayed |
             |alarm was looking for the blaze several  |
             |blocks away.--_New York Sun._            |


=3. When.=--Sometimes the time of the fire is very interesting. John H.
Jones's house may have caught fire from a very insignificant thing and
its location may have been unimportant, but the fire may have come at an
unusual time. Perhaps Mr. Jones's daughter was being married at a quiet
home wedding in her father's house and in the midst of the ceremony the
roof of the house burst into flames. The unusual time would be
interesting; the answer to _When?_ would be the feature. We might write
the lead thus:

             |  During the wedding of Miss Mary Jones  |
             |at the home of her father, John H. Jones,|
             |78 Liberty street, last night, the house |
             |suddenly burst into flames and the bridal|
             |party was compelled to flee into the     |
             |street.                                  |

Or:

             |  Fire interrupted the wedding of Miss   |
             |Mary Jones at her father's home, 78      |
             |Liberty street, last night, when the     |
             |house caught fire from a defective       |
             |chimney during the ceremony.             |

The daily papers furnish many illustrations of fires at unusual
times--here is one:

             |When the snowstorm was at its height     |
             |early this morning, a three-story brick  |
             |building at Nos. 4410-18 Third Avenue,   |
             |Brooklyn, caught fire, and the flames    |
             |spread rapidly to an adjoining tenement, |
             |sending a small crowd of shivering       |
             |tenants into the icy street.--_New York  |
             |Post._                                   |


=4. What.=--(_a_) _The Burned Building._--Many fire stories have their
feature in the answer to the reader's _What?_ Not infrequently the
building itself is of great importance. Naturally "The residence of John
H. Jones" would not make a good beginning, if John Jones is not well
known, because people would be more interested in reading about a mere
fire than in reading about the residence of John H. Jones, whom they do
not know. For it must be remembered that it is the first line that
catches the reader's eye and the interest or lack of interest in the
first line determines whether or not the story is to be read. Now,
suppose that a building that is very well known burns--the City Hall,
the Albany State House, the Herald Square Theater--the mere mention of
the building will attract the reader's attention. Therefore the reporter
begins with the answer to _What?_ the name of the building, as in the
following cases:

             |  GLENS FALLS, N. Y., Aug. 17.--The      |
             |Kaatskill House, for many years a popular|
             |Lake George resort, was completely       |
             |destroyed by fire this forenoon.--_New   |
             |York Times._                             |

             |  The First M. E. Church of Chelsea,     |
             |familiarly known as the Cary avenue      |
             |church, was damaged last night to the    |
             |amount of $7,000 by fire.--_Boston       |
             |Herald._                                 |


(_b_) _The Amount of Property Destroyed._--The answer to _What burned?_
is not necessarily a building, for the building itself may not be worth
featuring. The contents of the building may be more interesting,
especially if the amount of property destroyed can be put in striking
terms, such as $2,000,000 worth of property, or two thousand chickens,
or fifty-three automobiles, or 7,000 gallons of whisky. These figures
printed at the beginning of the first paragraph catch the reader's eye,
thus:

             |  Five automobiles, valued at $5,800, and|
             |property amounting to $6,200 were        |
             |destroyed last evening when fire broke in|
             |the repair shop of the G. W. Browne Motor|
             |company, 228-232 Wisconsin street, near  |
             |the North-Western station.--_Milwaukee   |
             |Sentinel._                               |


=5. How.=--Very rarely the manner in which a fire burns is quite unique
and deserves featuring. It is inconceivable that John Jones's house
could burn in any very unusual way--"with many explosions," "with a
glare of flames that aroused the whole city," "with vast clouds of oily
smoke"--but some fires do burn in some such a way and are interesting
only for the way they burned. The following story begins with the answer
to _How?_ although the manner might be described more explicitly:

             |  Stubborn fires have been fought in the |
             |past, but one of the hardest blazes to   |
             |conquer that the local department ever   |
             |contended with gutted the plant of N.    |
             |Drucker & Co., manufacturers of trunks   |
             |and valises, at the northwest corner of  |
             |Ninth and Broadway, last                 |
             |night.--_Cincinnati Commercial Tribune._ |


=6. Who.=--Just as it would be foolish to begin with "the residence of
John Jones," since the building is not well known, it would not be
advisable to begin with John Jones's name, no matter what part he
played. John Jones is not well known and so to the newspaper he is just
a man and is treated impersonally regardless of what he does or what
happens to him. Our interest in him is entirely impersonal, and all we
want to know about him is what he has done or what has happened to him.
Therefore few reporters would begin a story with John Jones's name.
However, let some man who is well known do or suffer the slightest thing
and his name immediately lends interest to the story--and therefore
commands first place in the introduction. If John D. Rockefeller should
even witness a fire, or if President Taft should be in the slightest way
connected with a fire, the mere fire story would shrink into
significance behind the name. And so, very often it is advisable to
begin a fire story with a name, if the name is of sufficient prominence.
It is not necessary that the well-known man's property be destroyed or
even endangered for his name to have the first place in the first
sentence of the lead; if the well-known man has anything whatever to do
with the fire his name should be featured because to the average reader
the interest in his name overshadows any interest in the fire. In this
example, the name overshadows a striking loss of property and the story
begins with the answer to _Who?_

             |  NEW YORK, Nov. 6.--While Clendenin J.  |
             |Ryan, son of Thomas F. Ryan, the traction|
             |magnate, and a band of volunteer fire    |
             |fighters--many of them                   |
             |millionaires--fought a blaze which       |
             |started in the garage of young Ryan's    |
             |country estate near Suffern, N. Y., early|
             |in the morning, three valuable           |
             |automobiles, seven thoroughbred horses   |
             |and several outbuildings were totally    |
             |destroyed.--_Milwaukee Sentinel._        |

It will be seen that in each of the above feature fire stories some
incident in the fire, or connected with the fire, overshadows the mere
fact that there was a fire and makes it advisable to begin the story of
the fire with the fact or incident of unusual interest. Furthermore, in
each of these stories the unusual feature in the story is a direct
answer to one of the reader's questions--_when?_ _where?_ _how?_ _what?_
_why?_ _who?_ In other words, the reporter in answering these questions,
as he must in the lead of every story, finds the answer to one question
so much more interesting than the answer to any of the other questions
that he puts it first. In every fire story, however, the feature is not
so easily discovered.


B. FEATURES IN UNEXPECTED ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES

There are other things in the day's fire stories, besides the answers to
the reader's questions, that may overshadow the rest of the story and
deserve to be featured. Very often there are unexpected attendant
circumstances occurring simultaneously with the fire or resulting from
the fire to command our interest. Perhaps a number of people are killed
or injured; then we want to know about them first, and the reporter
neglects to answer our questions for the moment while he tells us the
startling attendant circumstances that we had not expected. Even so,
while giving first place to the feature, he does not forget our
questions but answers them in the same sentence. Hence the introduction
of a fire story with significant attendant circumstances begins with the
startling fact resulting from the fire and then goes on to answer the
reader's questions--in the same sentence.

This is not so difficult as it may sound. Suppose that when John Jones's
house burns there is a stiff breeze blowing and the chances are that all
the other houses in the block will go with it. All of his neighbors
become frightened and work with feverish haste to move their household
goods out into the street. In the end the fire department succeeds in
confining the fire to Mr. Jones's house and his neighbors promptly carry
their chattels back indoors thanking the god of good luck. Now the mere
fact that John Jones's house burned down is rather insignificant beside
the fact that a dozen families were driven from their homes by the fire.
Therefore the reporter would begin thus:

             |  Twelve families were driven from their |
             |homes by a fire which destroyed the      |
             |residence of John H. Jones, 78 Liberty   |
             |street, at 11 o'clock last night. The    |
             |fire was at length kept from spreading   |
             |and the neighboring residences were      |
             |reoccupied.                              |

Or to take an incident from the daily press in which the neighbors were
not so fortunate; although they might have entirely lost their homes:

             |  Twenty-two families in the six-story   |
             |tenement at 147 Orchard street were      |
             |routed out of the house twice early today|
             |by fires which caused a great deal of    |
             |smoke, but little real damage.--_New York|
             |Mail._                                   |


=1. Death.=--(a) _Number of Dead._--The most usual attendant
circumstances that will come to our notice is death in the fire. Let us
say that Mr. Jones's three children were alone in the house and burned
to death. Their death would be of more interest to us than the burning
of their father's house--and our story would necessarily begin in this
way:

             |  Three children were burned to death in |
             |a fire which destroyed the home of their |
             |father, John H. Jones, 78 Liberty street,|
             |last night.                              |

So common is death in connection with fire that almost every day's paper
contains one or more stories beginning "Ten persons were cremated----"
or "Four firemen were killed----" And in every case the loss of human
life is considered of greater importance than any other incident in the
story, and the number of dead always takes precedence over many another
startling feature. Here are a few examples:

             |  JOHNSTOWN, Pa., Jan. 18.--Seven men    |
             |were cremated in a fire that burned to   |
             |the ground three double houses near      |
             |Berlin, Somerset County, early this      |
             |morning.--_New York Sun._                |

             |  Three children of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard |
             |Lindberg, 3328 Nineteenth avenue south,  |
             |were cremated in a fire which destroyed  |
             |their home shortly after 12 o'clock      |
             |yesterday. The children had been left    |
             |alone in the house, shut up in their     |
             |bedroom, etc.--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._ |

             |  One fireman was killed, another fireman|
             |and a woman were injured and eight people|
             |escaped death by a narrow margin Saturday|
             |night in a fire which destroyed the,     |
             |etc.--_Milwaukee Sentinel._              |

             |  NEW YORK, March 27.--One hundred and   |
             |forty-one persons are dead as a result   |
             |of the fire which on Saturday afternoon  |
             |swept the three upper floors of the      |
             |factory loft building at the northwest   |
             |corner of Washington place and Greene    |
             |street. More than three-quarters of this |
             |number are women and girls, who were     |
             |employed in the Triangle Shirt Waist     |
             |factory, where the fire                  |
             |originated.--_Boston Transcript._        |

(b) _List of Dead._--When the number of dead or injured reaches any very
significant figure it is customary to make a table of dead and injured.
This table is usually set into the story close after the lead, but very
often the list is put in a "box" and slipped in above the story. In
writing the story, however, the reporter disregards the table and begins
his lead as if there were no table: e.g., "Twelve firemen were killed
and fourteen injured in a fire----" The list usually gives the name,
address (or some other identification), and the nature of the injury,
thus:

             |            =Injured Firemen:=           |
             |                                         |
             |Capt. Frank Makal, Engine Co. No. 4,     |
             |cut by glass.                            |
             |                                         |
             |Acting Captain W. E. Brown, fire boat    |
             |No. 23, cut by glass.                    |
             |                                         |
             |Peter Ryan, No. 15, flying               |
             |glass.--_Milwaukee Free Press._          |

Or:

             |              =The Dead:=                |
             |                                         |
             |Mrs. Charles Smith, 14 W. Gorham         |
             |street.                                  |
             |                                         |
             |John Johnson, 1193 Chatham street.       |
             |                                         |
             |            =The Injured:=               |
             |                                         |
             |Thomas Green, 1111 Grand street; face    |
             |cut by flying glass.                     |
             |                                         |
             |James Brown, 176 Orchard avenue;         |
             |internal injuries; may die.              |

(c) _Manner of Death._--A number of fatalities at the beginning always
attracts attention. Not infrequently the manner or the cause, especially
in the case of a single death, is worth the first place in the lead--not
as "One man killed----" but as "Crushed beneath a falling wall, a man
was killed." If a man burns to death in a very unusual way, or for an
unusual reason, we are more interested in the way he was burned, or the
reason that he burned, than in the mere fact that he was burned to
death. The first line then tells us how or why he was burned. Thus:

             |  To save his money, which he hoped would|
             |some day raise him from the rank of a    |
             |laborer to that of a prosperous merchant,|
             |Hing Lee, a Chinese laundryman, ran back |
             |into his burning laundry at 3031 Nicollet|
             |avenue today, after he was once safe from|
             |the flames, and was so badly burned that |
             |physicians say he cannot                 |
             |live.--_Minneapolis Journal._            |


=2. Injuries.=--Very often no one is killed in a fire but some one is
injured. For example, five firemen are overcome by ammonia fumes or two
men are seriously injured by a falling wall. This then becomes the
feature. Injuries to human beings, if serious or in any considerable
number, take precedence over other features, just as loss of human life
does. Here is an example from the press in which all the injuries are
gathered together at the beginning:

             |  Six firemen and two laborers were      |
             |overcome by smoke, while three other     |
             |firemen received minor injuries by flying|
             |glass in a fire which broke out yesterday|
             |morning at 10:30 o'clock in the          |
             |Wellauer-Hoffman building, at,           |
             |etc.--_Milwaukee Free Press._            |


=3. Rescues.=--(a) _Number of People Rescued._--When people are rescued
from great danger in a fire their escape makes a very good feature. If
many of them are rescued or escape very narrowly, the mere number of
people saved deserves the first place, as:

             |  More than 150 men and women were saved |
             |from death today in a fire at 213-217    |
             |Grand street by toboganning from the roof|
             |of the burning structure on a board chute|
             |to the roof of an adjoining five-story   |
             |building.--_New York Mail._              |

(b) _Manner of Rescue._--But more often the manner of their escape
interests us most. If a man slides down a rope for four stories to
escape death by fire we are more interested in how he saved himself than
in the fact that he didn't burn, and so we tell how he escaped, in the
first line. In the same way, if unusual means are used to save one or
more persons, the means of rescue is usually worth featuring. For
example:

             |  Overcoats used as life nets saved the  |
             |lives of a dozen women and children in a |
             |fire of incendiary origin in the         |
             |three-story frame tenement house at 137  |
             |Havemeyer avenue, Brooklyn, to-day,      |
             |etc.--_New York Mail._                   |


=4. Property Threatened.=--Death and injury are the commonest unexpected
circumstances in fire stories, but they are not the only ones that may
be worth featuring. There is an inconceivable number of things that may
happen at a fire and overshadow all interest in the fire itself. A good
feature may be found in the property that is threatened. Often the fire
in itself is insignificant, but because of a high wind or other
circumstances it threatens to spread to neighboring buildings or to
devastate a large area. In such a case the amount of property threatened
or endangered deserves a place in the very first line, especially if it
exceeds the amount of property actually destroyed and if it can be put
in a striking way; _i. e._, the entire waterfront district, or
twenty-five dwelling houses, or $5,000,000 worth of property. When
contrasted with the small amount of damage actually done, the amount
that is threatened becomes more important. Thus:

             |  Fire that for a time threatened        |
             |$2,000,000 worth of property destroyed   |
             |$15,000 worth of lumber owned by the     |
             |Milwaukee Lumber Company, 725 Clinton    |
             |street, yesterday....                    |
             |                                         |
             |The territory between Mitchell street    |
             |and the Kinnickinnic river and Reed      |
             |street, to the lake, containing          |
             |manufactories, dwellings and stores, was |
             |menaced.--_Milwaukee News._              |


=5. Fire Fighting.=--Not unusually a serious fire results from the fact
that it was not checked for some reason or other during its earlier
stages. Perhaps the whole thing might have been avoided, or, on the
contrary, a big fire may be extinguished with unexpected ease or unusual
skill. In rare cases this matter of very efficient or very inefficient
fire fighting is of sufficient importance to take the first place in the
lead. For example:

             |  Almost total lack of water pressure is |
             |blamed for the big loss in a fire started|
             |by a firebug to-day in the five-story    |
             |factory building of Lamchick Brothers,   |
             |manufacturing company, 400-402 South     |
             |Second street, Williamsburg.--_New York  |
             |Mail._                                   |
             |                                         |
             |  Rotten hose, which burst as fast as it |
             |was put in use, imperiled the lives of   |
             |more than a score of firemen to-day at a |
             |blaze which swept the three-story frame  |
             |flat house at Third avenue and           |
             |Sixty-seventh street, Brooklyn, from     |
             |cellar to roof, etc.--_New York Mail._   |


=6. Crowd.=--Not uncommonly in the city a tremendous crowd gathers to
watch a fire and blocks traffic for hours. In the absence of other
significant incidents--death, great loss, etc.--the reporter may begin
his story with an account of the crowd present or the blockade of
traffic. Such a beginning should always be used only as a last resort
when a fire has no other interesting phase, for crowds always gather at
fires and only a very serious blocking of traffic is worth reporting.
Thus:

             |  Fully 15,000 persons were attracted to |
             |the scene of the fire in the portion of  |
             |the plant of the Greenwald Packing       |
             |Company, Claremont Stock Yards, which was|
             |discovered at 4:56 yesterday             |
             |afternoon.--_Baltimore American._        |
             |                                         |
             |  Twenty-five thousand people jammed     |
             |Broadway between Bleecker and Bond       |
             |streets yesterday noon and had the       |
             |excitement of watching 250 girls escape  |
             |from a twelve-story loft building which  |
             |was afire.--_New York Sun._              |


=7. Miscellaneous.=--There is an infinite number of things that may
happen at a fire and overshadow the mere fire interest. These are the
things that make one fire different from another, and whenever they are
of sufficient importance they become the feature to be played up in the
first line of the introduction. It would be impossible to enumerate all
the unexpected things that might happen during a fire. It is this
element of unexpected possibilities that makes the reporting of fires
interesting, and an alert reporter is ever on the lookout for a new and
unusual development in the fire to be used as the feature of his story.
Here are the leads of a few fire stories clipped from the daily
newspapers:

             |  With her home on fire and the smoke    |
             |swirling around her head, Mrs. B. B.     |
             |Blank, a well-known leader of the        |
             |social set of Roland Park, bravely       |
             |stood by her telephone and called upon   |
             |the Roland Park Fire Company for aid     |
             |shortly after 8 o'clock this             |
             |morning.--_Baltimore Star._              |
             |                                         |
             |  Four charming young women attired in   |
             |masculine apparel were the unexpected    |
             |and embarrassed hosts of four companies  |
             |of fire department "laddies" last night, |
             |when fire broke out, etc.--_Milwaukee    |
             |Free Press._                             |
             |                                         |
             |  For the first time since its           |
             |installation the high-pressure water     |
             |power system was relied upon solely last |
             |night to fight a Broadway fire, and      |
             |Chief Croker said that he was well       |
             |satisfied with its work. The fire began  |
             |on the third floor of the six-story,     |
             |etc.--_New York Times._                  |


C. FIRE STORIES WITH MORE THAN ONE FEATURE

It would appear from the foregoing examples that almost every fire story
has a feature. And so it usually has. The great majority of fires that
are worth reporting at all have some unusual incident connected with
them that overshadows the mere fire itself. Sometimes the features are
not of great significance, but it is only as a last resort that a
reporter begins his story with "Fire"--only when the most ordinary of
fires is to be covered.

Unusual features are so common in connection with fires that very often
a single fire has more than one unusual feature. Perhaps the cause of
the fire is exceptionally striking and at the same time the amount of
property destroyed is of great news value in itself. Or the time and
some unexpected attendant circumstance are both worth the first place.
In that case the reporter has to choose between the two features and
begin with the one that seems to him to be the more striking. The other
feature or features may often be arranged in the order of importance
immediately after the most striking fact at the beginning, provided that
this does not make the lead unduly complicated.

For instance, a cold storage warehouse burns and four firemen are
overcome by the fumes from the ammonia pipes. Next door is a hospital
and the flames frighten the patients almost into a panic. Either one of
these incidents is worth the first line of the story. But which one is
of the greater importance? Naturally the element of danger to human life
must be considered first and the actual disabling of four firemen is of
greater significance than a possible panic in the hospital. Following
that line of logic our story would begin:

             |  Four firemen were overcome by ammonia  |
             |fumes and a panic in the St. Charles     |
             |Hospital was narrowly averted, as a      |
             |result of a fire which destroyed the cold|
             |storage warehouse of, etc.               |

Such a lead would not be too complicated for practical purposes. But
suppose that around the corner from the cold storage warehouse is a
livery in which fifty horses are stabled. The flames frighten the horses
and they break loose and stampede in the streets. The story now has
three features of striking interest. It would be possible to combine
them all in the lead and to begin in this way:

             |  Four firemen were overcome by ammonia  |
             |fumes, a panic was narrowly averted in   |
             |the St. Charles Hospital, and fifty      |
             |frightened horses stampeded in the       |
             |streets as a result of a fire, etc.      |

But see how far from the beginning the fire, the actual cause of it all,
is placed. The fire is buried behind a mass of details and the reader is
confused. The lead is not a happy one. The only thing to do is to break
up the mass of details and put part of them immediately after the lead.
The arrangement is a matter that must be left to the judgment of the
reporter.

This, however, is an extreme case because the various features are so
disconnected and separate. The reporter would have little trouble if the
several features were more alike. For instance, if one of the walls of
the building had fallen and killed three firemen the case would have
been simpler. The death of these men so far overshadows the other
unusual incidents that it drives them out of the lead altogether. For we
do not care about horses and frightened patients when men are crushed
beneath falling walls. All that we are concerned with in our lead now is
the dead and injured--with a feature like this we can trust our readers
to go into the story far enough to pick up the other interesting
features; we would begin in this way:

             |  Three firemen were killed by falling   |
             |walls and four others were overcome by   |
             |ammonia fumes in a fire which destroyed  |
             |the cold storage, etc.                   |

The combination of dead and injured makes a good beginning, and it is
always advisable to begin with such an enumeration whenever it is
possible. Where the features are not so significant as death and
injuries the matter of arranging more than one striking detail at the
beginning of the lead becomes a greater problem. It must be left to
one's own judgment and common sense. The lead must not be too long or
complicated, and one must hesitate before burying the really important
facts of the story behind several lines of more or less unusual details.
Just as soon as the lead becomes at all confusing take out the details
and put them into the story later.




VII

FAULTS IN NEWS STORIES


Before we go on to the consideration of other kinds of news stories it
will be well to consider in greater detail the facts we have learned
from writing up fires. Our fire stories should have taught us a number
of things about the form of the news story. Let us sum them up.

=Paragraph Length.=--We have seen that newspaper writing has a
characteristic style of its own. In the first place notice the length of
a newspaper paragraph. Count the number of words in an average paragraph
and compare it with the number of words in a literary paragraph. We find
that the newspaper paragraph is much shorter. There is a reason for
this. Imagine a 150-word literary paragraph set up in a newspaper. There
are about seven words to the line in a newspaper column and one hundred
and fifty words would make something over twenty lines. Try to picture a
newspaper made up of twenty-line paragraphs; it would be extremely
difficult to read. We glance over a newspaper hastily and our haste
requires many breaks to help us in gathering the facts. Hence the
paragraphs must be short; the very narrowness of the newspaper column
causes them to be shortened. The average lead, you will find, contains
less than fifty words and the paragraphs following it are not much
longer.

=Sentence Length.=--Notice sentence lengths as compared with literary
sentences. You will find that newspaper sentences usually fall into two
classes: the sentences in the lead and the sentences in the body of the
story. The first sentence is usually rather long--thirty to sixty words.
But the sentences in the body of the story are much shorter than most
literary sentences. Why is this? It results from exactly the same thing
that makes the newspaper paragraphs short--the need of many breaks.
Thus, after we finish a lead, we must fall into short sentences. They
need not be choppy sentences, but they must be simple and easy to read.


THE LEAD AND THE BODY OF THE STORY

Our study of the fire story has shown that newspaper stories always have
two separate and distinct parts: the lead and the body of the story. In
writing the story a reporter must consider each part separately,
although the reader does not distinguish between the two parts. Before
writing a word the reporter must decide exactly what facts and details
he is to put in the lead and exactly what fact he is going to play up in
the first line, taking care to begin with the most interesting part of
the story. After the lead is finished he writes the main body of the
story in accordance with the rules of ordinary English composition. Each
part must be separate and independent of the other.

=The Lead.=--The lead itself is always paragraphed separately. Usually
it consists of a single sentence, although it is much better to break it
into two than to make the sentence too long and complicated. As we have
said before, the lead must not only tell the most interesting fact or
incident in the story, but it must answer the natural questions that the
reader immediately asks about this matter; i.e., when, where, what, why,
who, and how. These questions must be answered briefly and concisely in
their order of importance, and the most unusual answer or the most
striking part of the story must precede all the rest. Beyond the answers
to these questions there is no space for details in the lead. Every word
must have a purpose and a necessary purpose or it must be cut out and
relegated to the body of the story. No space should be given to
explanations of minor importance. State the content of the news story
as completely, accurately, and concisely as possible so that the reader
may know just what happened, when it happened, where, to whom, and
perhaps how and why it happened. Then begin a new paragraph and start
the body of the story.

Many editors require that the lead consist of one long sentence and yet
it must be grammatical. Many reporters forget all about English grammar
in their attempt to crowd everything they know into one sentence. But
mere quantity does not make the lead good; it must be grammatical and
easy to read. The verb must have a grammatical subject and, if it is an
_active_ verb, it must have a grammatical predicate. Clauses and
modifiers must be attached in a way that cannot be overlooked. Dangling
participles and absolute constructions should be shunned. All of the
modifying clauses must be gathered together either before or after the
principal clause. Everything must be compact and logical. Many papers
disregard this matter, as will be seen in some of the extracts quoted in
this book, but the best papers do not.

Every lead should be so constructed that it may stand alone and be
self-sufficient. Never should a reporter trust to headlines to enlighten
his readers upon the meaning of the lead--the exact reverse of this
must be true. The story is written first and the headlines are written
from the facts contained in the lead--and usually by another man. In
writing the lead disregard the existence of headlines, for many readers
do not read them at all. This is but an amplification of the old rule of
composition that any piece of writing should be independent of its
title. The title may be lost, but the essay must be clear without it.

There are many ways of beginning a lead in order to embody the feature
in the first line. At first glance the operation of putting the emphasis
of a sentence at the beginning, rather than at the end, may seem
difficult, but with a clear idea of the rules of dependence in English
grammar a reporter may transpose any clause to the beginning and thus
play up the content of the clause. For instance, in this lead,

             |  Fire, starting in a moving picture     |
             |theatre, 4418 Third avenue, drove the    |
             |tenants of the building out into the icy |
             |street while the snowstorm was at its    |
             |height shortly before 12 o'clock last    |
             |night.                                   |

the striking feature of the story is buried--we do not get the unusual
picture of a little group of people shivering in the street during a
blinding snowstorm while they watch their homes burn. A simple
transposition of the _while_-clause puts the feature in the first line.
Thus:

             |  While the snowstorm was at its height  |
             |shortly before 12 o'clock last night,    |
             |fire, starting in a moving picture       |
             |theatre, 4418 Third avenue, drove the    |
             |tenants of the building out into the icy |
             |street.                                  |

The lead is not perfect now; it might be greatly improved, but it is
better than before.

A few of the possible beginnings for a lead are:

1. _Noun._--The simplest beginning of a lead is of course the use of a
noun as subject of the principal verb. For example, "Fire destroyed the
residence of----" or "A flashlight setting fire to a lace curtain
started a fire----" or "The Plaza Hotel had a few uncomfortable moments
last night----" etc. The subject of the verb may of course have its
modifiers--adjectives and phrases--but it should not be separated too
widely from its verb. One point is to be noted in the use of a simple
noun at the beginning; an article should not precede the noun if it can
be avoided, for the very simple reason that an article is not worth the
important space that it takes at the beginning of the lead. In the case
of fire no article is necessary. In other cases it is usually possible
to put in an adjective or some other word that will take the article's
place. However, never begin a story like this: "Supreme Court of the
United States decided----" or "Young man in evening dress was arrested
last night----" or "House of John Smith was destroyed yesterday----".
Obviously something is lacking and, if no other word will supply the
lack, use the article, _the_ or _a_. When the _noun_-beginning is used
the reporter must never forget that two or more nouns, however
different, if subject of the same verb, require a plural verb. The verb
may be active or passive, whichever is more convenient, but rarely is
the object of an active verb put first--simply because English cannot
bear this transposition of subject and predicate.

2. _Infinitive._--Other parts of speech aside from nouns may be subjects
of verbs and so other parts of speech as subjects of the principal verb
of the lead may be placed at the beginning of the lead. An infinitive
with its object and modifier may occupy the first line as subject of the
main verb; e.g.:

             |  To rescue his own son during the       |
             |burning of his own house was a part of   |
             |yesterday's work for Fireman Michael     |
             |Casey, who, etc.                         |

Here the infinitive "to rescue" and its object are the subject of the
verb "was," and the construction is perfectly grammatical.
Unfortunately the English language has another infinitive which very
much resembles a present participle--the infinitive ending in _-ing_;
e.g., _rescuing_. Without an article this part of speech must, of
course, be used only as an adjective, but with an article it becomes an
infinitive, to be treated as a noun; e.g., _the rescuing of_. It would
be perfectly grammatical to begin the above lead in this way: "The
rescuing of his own son ... was the work, etc." But it would be
ungrammatical to begin it thus: "Rescuing his own son was the work,
etc." For in the second case the word "rescuing," if used with an
object, is not an infinitive but a participle, and must be used only as
an adjective, thus: "Rescuing his own son, Fireman Casey performed his
duty, etc.," or "In rescuing his own son, Fireman Casey performed his
duty." The two uses should never be confused.

3. _Clause._--Another expression that may be used as subject of the
lead's principal verb is a clause--usually a _that_-clause. For
instance, "That the entire wholesale district was not destroyed by fire
last night is due to, etc." Here the _that_-clause is subject of the
verb is and the expression is entirely grammatical as well as very
useful as a beginning.

4. _Prepositional Phrase._--When the feature of a story is an action
rather than a thing, a noun can hardly be used to express it. Very
often this lead may be handled by means of a prepositional phrase at the
beginning. For example, one of the stories in the last chapter begins:
"With her home on fire and with smoke swirling around her head, Mrs.
John, etc." In this case the prepositional phrase modifies the subject
and should not be far from it. Another variation of this is the
prepositional phrase of time, modifying the verb; e.g., "During the
wedding of Miss Mary Jones, last night, the house suddenly caught fire,
etc." This beginning is effective if it is not overworked, but the
reader should never be held back from the real facts of the story by a
string of complicated phrases, intended to build up suspense.

5. _Participial Phrase._--Very much like the prepositional phrase
beginning is the participial beginning. "Sliding down an eighty-foot
extension ladder with a woman in his arms, Fireman John Casey rescued,
etc." It must be borne in mind that the participial phrase must modify a
noun and there should be no doubt in the reader's mind as to the noun
that it modifies. It would of course be absurd to say "Sliding down an
eighty-foot extension ladder, fire seriously burned John Casey----," but
such things are often said. Never should this participial phrase be used
as the subject of a verb, as "Returning home and finding her house in
ashes was the unusual experience of Mrs. James, etc." The phrase must
always modify a noun just like an adjective.

6. _Temporal Clause._--A feature may often be brought to the beginning
of the lead by a simple transposition of clauses. Should the time be
important a subordinate _when_ or _while_ clause may precede the
principal clause of the sentence; i.e., "When the snowstorm was at its
height early this morning, a three-story brick building burned, etc.,"
or "While 15,000 people watched from the street below, 250 girls escaped
from the burning building at, etc."

7. _Causal Clause._--Should the cause of an action or an occurrence be
attractive enough for the first line, a _for_ or a _because_ clause may
begin the lead. "Because a tinsmith upset a pot of molten solder on the
roof of pier No. 19, two steamers were burned, etc."

                  *       *       *       *       *

This does not exhaust the list of possible beginnings. There are a dozen
possible constructions for the beginning of any story; these are merely
the commonest ones. Anything unusual or of doubtful grammar should be
avoided because of the many possible alternatives that present
themselves. And in every lead correct grammar should be considered
above all else. If a lead is ungrammatical no clever arrangement of
details can make it effective or other than ludicrous. For instance,
this lead, taken from a newspaper, illustrates an unfortunate attempt to
crowd too many details into a short lead:

             |  Bitten by a rattlesnake, Myrtle Olson's|
             |leg was slashed with a table knife,      |
             |washed the wound with kerosene, then     |
             |covered the incision with salt by her    |
             |mother. Myrtle still lives.              |

Another paper tried to arrange it more happily, thus:

             |  Bitten by a rattlesnake, Myrtle Olson's|
             |mother slashed her daughter's leg with a |
             |table knife, washed the wound with       |
             |kerosene, then covered the incision with |
             |salt. Myrtle still lives.                |

There is evidently something wrong in this. It would be a good exercise
to try to express the idea grammatically.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Before we go on to the consideration of the body of this story a few
_Don'ts_ in regard to writing leads may be in order.

Don't begin a lead with a person's name unless the person is well known.
We are always interested in anything unusual that a man may do or
anything unusual that he may suffer, but unless we know the man we are
not at all interested in his name. Suppose that a man performs some
thrilling act or suffers some unusual misfortune in a city of 100,000
people. Probably not more than one hundred people know him, and of that
number only one or two will read the story. Then why begin with his name
when his action is of greater interest to all but a few of our readers?
And yet every reader wants to know whether the victim is one of his
friends. Therefore the man's name must be mentioned in the lead,
although it should not come at the beginning. On the other hand, if the
man is prominent in the nation or the community and well known to all
our readers, his name adds interest to the story and we begin with the
name. There is a growing tendency among American newspapers to begin all
of their stories with a name. The tendency appears to be the result of
an attempt to break away from the conventional lead and to begin in a
more natural way--also an easier way. But the name beginning is after
all illogical, and any reporter is safe in following the logical course
in the matter. If the name is not important begin with something that is
important.

Don't waste the main verb of the sentence on a minor action while
expressing the principal action in a subordinate clause. This is a
violation of emphasis. For example, "Fatally burned by an explosion in
his laundry, Hing Lee was taken to the hospital." Naturally he would be
taken to the hospital, but why put the emphasis of the whole sentence on
that point?

Don't resort to the expression "was the unusual experience of----" "was
the fate of----" or any like them. Every word in the lead must count,
and here are five words that say nothing at all. Use their place to tell
what the unusual experience was. For instance, don't say "To stand in a
driving snowstorm and watch their homes burn to the ground was the
unusual experience of two families, living at, etc."; say instead,
"Standing in a driving snowstorm two families watched their homes burn
to the ground." The latter says the same thing more effectively in less
space. The use of this expression--"was the unusual experience of"--is
always the mark of a green reporter.

Don't overwork the expression "Fire broke out." All fires "break out,"
but usually we are more interested in the result of the fire than in its
"breaking out." Try to use some expression that will give more definite
information.

Don't be wordy. Editors are always calling for shorter and more concise
leads. If you can say a thing in two words don't use half a dozen. For
example, "Four members of the local fire department were rendered
unconscious by the deadly fumes from bursting ammonia pipes." This takes
three times as much space as "Four firemen were overcome by ammonia
fumes," and it does not express the idea any more effectively.

Don't introduce minor details into the lead. If the reader wants the
details he may read the rest of the story. Take the following lead as an
example:

             |  Rushing back into his burning laundry, |
             |a one-story brick building, to rescue    |
             |from the flames his savings, amounting to|
             |$437, with which he hoped to raise       |
             |himself from the rank of laborer to that |
             |of a prosperous merchant, and which was  |
             |hidden under the mattress of his bed in  |
             |the back room of the laundry, Hing Lee, a|
             |Chinaman, who lives at 79 Nicollett      |
             |avenue and has been in this country but  |
             |three months, was overcome by smoke and  |
             |so seriously burned that he had to be    |
             |removed to the St. Mary Hospital and may |
             |not live, when his establishment was     |
             |destroyed by a fire which, starting from |
             |the explosion of the tank of the gasolene|
             |stove on which he was cooking his dinner,|
             |gutted his laundry, entailing a loss of  |
             |$1,000, shortly before noon to-day.      |

It is entirely grammatical, but if the reader succeeds in wading through
it there is nothing left to tell about the fire. Why not begin the
story in this way and leave something for the rest of the story?

             |  Because he rushed back into his burning|
             |laundry to rescue his savings, Hing Lee, |
             |a Chinese laundryman, 79 Nicollett       |
             |avenue, was seriously burned to-day.     |

Don't waste the first line of the lead on meaningless generalities. Get
down to the facts at once. For instance, "The presence of mind and
bravery of Fireman David Mullen saved Mrs. Daniel Looker from being
burned to death in her flat, etc." We are willing to grant his bravery
and presence of mind, but we want to know at once what he did: "By
sliding down an eighty-foot extension ladder through flames and smoke
with an unconscious woman in his arms, Fireman David Mullen rescued Mrs.
Daniel, etc." Equally useless is the beginning, "A daring rescue of an
unconscious woman from the fourth story of a blazing flat building was
made by Fireman David Mullen to-day, etc." Tell what the daring rescue
was and let the reader manufacture a fitting eulogy.

Don't exaggerate the facts to make a feature. When a few persons are
frightened don't turn it into a dreadful panic. Every little fire is not
a holocaust and the burning of a small barn does not endanger the
entire city, unless your imagination is strong enough to guess what
might have happened had there been a high wind and no fire engines. A
narrow escape from death does not always excuse the beginning, "Scores
killed and injured would have been the result, _if_----" All beginnings
of this kind give a false impression and do not tell the truth. If a
story has no striking feature be satisfied to tell the truth about it
without trying to make a world-wide disaster out of it for the sake of a
place on the front page. Exaggeration for a feature is one of the bad
elements of sensational journalism. For example, seven lives were lost
in this fire, but this is the way the story was written, for the sake of
a three-column scare-head:

             |  That 500 sleeping babes and 100 more   |
             |who were kneeling in prayer in St.       |