Read Ebook: Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature: An Anthology by Halper B Translator

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INDEX 339

NEWSPAPER REPORTING AND CORRESPONDENCE

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.

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.

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.

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 d?bris 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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:

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 0 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.

There is nothing particularly striking about the story. We are sorry for Mr. Jones, but many houses worth ,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:

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.

THE FEATURE FIRE STORY

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