SUGGESTIONS FOR HOME OR CLASS-ROOM STUDY
I. Straightforward, simple news lead of an Associated Press dispatch, broken up into three terse sentences:
WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 19.—Four men were killed to-day by the premature explosion of a five-inch gun at the Indian Head Proving Grounds of the navy. The breech block of the gun, which was being tested, blew backward into the gun crew. Lieutenant Arthur G. Caffee was one of the men killed.
The dead in addition to Lieutenant Caffee are:
(List of the dead follows, then a detailed story half a column in length.)
(Note that all the essential questions are answered in this lead: Who? “Four men,” giving names. What? “Killed.” When? “To-day.” Where? “At the Indian Head Proving Grounds.” The cause of the explosion was not determined, but the writer tells succinctly how the men were killed.)
II. Contrast the foregoing method with that of the following lead from the Kansas City Star, in which a dramatic situation is emphasized by holding the interest suspended. (The names are fictitious):
“Fore!”
The word rang distinctly in the clear air yesterday afternoon. A party of golf players watched a ball which went whizzing through the air from No. 4 to No. 5 hole on the golf links at Swope Park. Almost in their line of vision a puff of smoke went into the air. The faint sound of a shot reached them. They saw a man fall.
John Smith, formerly a clerk for the Blank Brothers Coal Company, had shot and mortally wounded himself. Scores of golfers and other persons walking about the park rushed to the spot where Smith had fallen. The first to reach him was Mrs. J. W. Jones of 10 A street, who had been strolling about the park with her four children. She heard the revolver shot and saw Smith fall. The bullet had entered his head near the right temple and passed through.
(The story continues to the extent of a column.)
(This story illustrates what has been said of the tendency, as regards news of secondary importance, to work toward, rather than from, the climax. A news lead of the type in I would have contained the fact of the suicide in the first sentence. Note the effect of the short sentences.)
III. The lead of another suicide story from the same newspaper in which the method is more conventional:
After suffering from acute rheumatism that had rendered him helpless three years, confining him to his home and necessitating his retirement from active business, John W. Williams, 50 years old, ended his life at 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon in his apartments at 20 West street by a revolver shot.
(All the essential facts about the story are here told in a nutshell. The lead could have stood as a complete story had space requirements demanded that the succeeding paragraphs be “killed.”)
IV. Opening of a fire story from the Chicago Record-Herald in which the human-interest feature is “played up”:
Seven families were driven to the streets and two sleeping infants rescued and carried from their cribs by their terrified mothers in a fire which last night attacked the Catalpa Apartments, 1727–29 Humboldt boulevard, causing a loss of $30,000.
The fire, which spread rapidly throughout the three-story brick apartment building, was caused by a faulty boiler in the basement. The flames rushed up the air shaft, thus attacking the three floors at practically the same time.
The fire occurred early in the evening, before any of the families had retired, and this fact alone prevented probable fatalities.
(Note how the writer has jumped right into the middle of things without waste of words. While the human-interest element is made prominent, other features of the story are not neglected.)
V. Lead showing that good news style does not demand that all the salient facts be crowded into one sentence:
LONDON, Nov. 18.—An army of 350 militant suffragettes tried to storm Parliament Friday. Charging with Amazonian fury against the double line of police about the building, they made half a dozen attempts to break through the cordon. Six women were arrested.
VI. Lead from the New York Sun which begins with a direct quotation:
“If hell stood in need of a king or queen there are people on earth to-day who could take the job and hold it down,” said Bishop Quayle of the Methodist Church, in a sermon he preached yesterday morning in the Washington Heights Church. Bishop Quayle, a product of Kansas City, is considered “a typical man of the West,” one who not only ventures to slap another man on the back, but whom another Westerner would dare slap on the back.
(Here the news writer has called attention to his story by picking out and “featuring” a striking sentiment from the speaker’s remarks. The second sentence skillfully characterizes the speaker and conveys the idea that here is no stereotyped report of a sermon, as the reader might have feared, but a pleasant, informal summary of its most interesting points.)
VII. In which the story is summarized in a short opening quotation:
LAREDO, TEX., Nov. 19.—“Mexico to-night faces the most serious crisis in recent years.”
The foregoing statement made to-night by United States Consul Garrett at Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the border, summarizes the situation as it exists now along the frontier.
VIII. Illustrating the use of direct quotation in the lead to give the “atmosphere” of an interview:
NEW YORK, Nov. 18.—“This is the age of woman, the domestic pet. Also it is the age of gold, which is necessary to the proper coddling of domestic pets.”
This is one of the ideas which Miss Margaret McMillan has come to America to lecture about. Miss McMillan is not “another of those English suffragists.” She was born in Westchester, N. Y., and is an authority in England on the education and needs of children.
IX. Lead in which the feature is put in indirect quotation:
BALTIMORE, Nov. 12.—Drinking and cigarette smoking are not on the increase among the women of America, according to Lillian M. N. Stevens, president of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Addressing the annual convention of the organization here to-day, she said in part:
(Direct quotation follows.)
X. The chronological method of telling a story which is so short that a summary of the facts in a formal lead would be useless:
NYACK, N. Y., Oct. 27.—Joseph de Bonti, an 8-year-old boy of Haverstraw, before starting for school put a revolver cartridge in his mouth and began biting on it.
The cartridge exploded and the boy fell to the floor dead, the bullet having gone upward through the brain.
XI. Example of the use that is sometimes made of an apt quotation to precede a feature story. From the Kansas City Star:
Matilda wash the dishes; Lucinda fetch the broom;
And Sookey set the chairs nice all around the room.
—Old Song
HUTCHINSON, KAN., Nov. 18.—Because Stubbs won in Kansas, Ernest Switzer, an employé of the Bell Telephone Company, must play the part of an unwilling Cinderella while the hired girl spends the evening taking in the canned drama at the motion picture shows.
XII. Where the time is the feature of the story:
An hour before the funeral of his father was held yesterday, William Brown, 30 years old, was called from his home, 113 Z street, and arrested. The arrest was made at the request of the police of Chicago, etc.
XIII. Where the place is the feature of the story:
GUTHRIE, OK., Nov. 17.—In rooms numbered 62, 47 and 32 at the Royal Hotel there is sweeping and dusting to-night. Governor Haskell has notified the landlord of the hotel that he will return to Guthrie early Saturday morning to resume his official residence, which he abandoned the night of June 11 to go to Oklahoma City.
XIV. Showing how the same story was epitomized by two different writers:
1. From the Chicago Record-Herald:
DENVER, Nov. 17.—Ralph Johnstone, the Wright brothers’ most daring aviator and the holder of the world’s record for altitude flights, fell 500 feet at Overland Park to-day, and broke every bone in his body. In attempting a “spiral glide” to the earth he forgot for a moment that the atmosphere here has not the carrying power of that to which he was accustomed, and death was his penalty.
Many thousands of spectators were on the field when Johnstone fell, but only a few hundred of them actually saw the accident, for the attention of the great crowd was centered upon Johnstone’s partner, Hoxsey, then in air.
2. From the Kansas City Star:
DENVER, Nov. 17.—With one wing tip of his machine bent and broken, Ralph Johnstone, the aviator who held the world’s altitude record, fell from a height of five hundred feet into the inclosure at Overland Park aviation field late this afternoon and was killed. When the spectators crowded about the inclosure reached him, his body lay beneath the engine of the biplane with the white planes that had failed him wrapped about it like a shroud. Nearly every bone in his body was broken.
XV. The following leads illustrate various faults. Criticize from the point of view of style and re-write:
1. Alleging a systematic police third degree by means of which she insists special officers of the Blank Street District have persecuted her 19-year-old son, John, Mrs. Mary Smith of 1010 C street appeared before Judge William Brown in chambers, Friday noon, and succeeded in laying before the judge evidence of such a character that the court held in abeyance its revocation of the young man’s parole. If the contention of the mother proves correct, Chief of Police Jones will likely take a hand and the Board of Police Commissioners may be given the matter.
2. The three-story brick building at 140–158 D avenue was completely destroyed by fire early to-day, the blaze being extinguished only after three alarms had been sounded. The damage is estimated at $50,000. The building was occupied by the Blank Bag Company and was situated in the center of a factory section. The three hundred employés, men and women, are thrown out of work.
3. At the meeting of the Blank Improvement Association at Smith Hall, Broadway and Wilson street, yesterday afternoon, a fight was proposed against the City Railways Company and a complaint will probably be filed in Police Court in a few days if the Eighth street car line is not extended to the city limits. They also want more cars during the rush hours over the present line. William Howard, manager of the City Railways, has refused to put on more cars to accommodate the traffic, it is said.
CHAPTER VII
THE STORY PROPER
There are numbers of people whose ideal paper is one in which the editorials shall be written by an Addison, a Lamb, or a Swift; the art criticism by a Ruskin; while the financial editor shall be an Adam Smith. It is a fairly safe guess that a newspaper with such a staff would have a life about as long as the ministry of all the talents. Imagine Mrs. Battle’s views on whist ... written in an hour at midnight. Good writing really consists of clearness of expression mingled with true literary form. And these are qualities not unobtainable even in a daily paper, as Mr. Strachey (editor of the London Spectator) himself admitted.—From an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor, Boston.
I have always cared much for style and have endeavored to improve my own by reading a great deal of the best English and French prose. In writing, as in music, much of the perfection of style is a question of ear, but much also depends on the ideal the writer sets before himself. He ought, I think, to aim at the greatest possible simplicity and accuracy of expression, at vividness and force, at condensation. The last two heads will usually be found to blend; for condensation, when it is not attained at the sacrifice of clearness, is the great secret of force. I should say, from my own experience, that most improvements of style are of the nature either of condensation or of increased accuracy and delicacy of distinction.—From the Memoirs of W. E. H. Lecky.
Most news stories, as already pointed out, work backward from effect to cause. In the story of a fire, for example, the writer first sets forth the most important results of the fire. If there were no features of obvious news interest, such as the loss of life or heavy property loss, he may cast about for picturesque details that will enable him to give a novel turn to his story. In either event he begins with the effect. The lead written, containing perhaps a suggestion of the cause, he proceeds to tell the story in detail. Usually the facts are put down in the order of their importance, unessential details being reserved for the last paragraph.
This method may be departed from, of course, if the most striking fact about the fire was not the result but the manner of its starting. If the fire, in itself unimportant, was one of a series started by an incendiary, the feature of the story manifestly is found in the cause and not in the effect. The lead in that case would be built on the cause, which is the reason for printing the story.