: The Young Man and Journalism by Lord Chester Sanders - Journalism; Newspapers

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THE YOUNG MAN AND JOURNALISM

BEGINNING IN NEWSPAPER WORK--THE REPORTER'S FIRST EXPERIENCES--UNPLEASANT TASKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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