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THE FEATURE FIRE STORY

A. FEATURES IN ANSWERS TO READER'S CUSTOMARY QUESTIONS

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.

| 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 ,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:

| Fire endangered the new First | |Congregational Church on Liberty street, | |erected at a cost of 0,000, 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 0,000, 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:

| 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. |

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:

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

Or:

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.

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.

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.

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. |

| 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:

| 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. |

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.

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 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:

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