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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colonel John W. Forney said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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