QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE WORK
The efficient copy reader has a good working knowledge of the English language; he has a highly developed sense of news; he knows the style of his paper; he is content with nothing short of accuracy. To write headlines, he must have primarily the knack of putting the gist of a story into a few short, simple words. With all these qualifications he may yet fail if he is not able, when occasion demands, to work swiftly. It follows that he should keep in touch with current affairs and should lose no opportunity to add to his stock of knowledge of the city in which he works. The name of the Secretary of the Interior, the latest development in a famous will case, whether a thoroughfare is a street or an avenue, the initials of the county recorder—all such details can be found in the files of the newspaper or in reference books, but the copy reader can save valuable time if he has them filed away in his memory. New words are constantly coming into general use and new ideas are demanding expression. The copy reader must keep abreast of the big movements in science, in politics, in all the fields from which news stories are drawn. The right attitude toward his work was shown by a copy reader who, when ballooning first gave evidence of becoming a popular sport, went to the public library and looked in the index for “aëronautics.” He got the best book he could find on the subject and studied it. He learned the principles of ballooning and its special vocabulary and when stories of the new sport began to come to him, he was able to “blue-pencil” the copy intelligently.