SUGGESTIONS FOR HOME OR CLASS-ROOM STUDY
I. Concisely told story of a fire. From the Chicago Evening Post:
Lives of firemen were imperiled and a loss estimated at $35,000 was caused early to-day by fire which swept through the three top floors of a five-story brick building at 2427–31 West Fourteenth street. These upper floors were occupied by the Platt-Maschek Company, novelties, of which C. C. Maschek is president.
The two lower floors are occupied by C. A. Hiles & Co., Inc., tool manufacturers. This concern escaped with a slight loss.
Starting supposedly from crossed electric wires on the fifth floor, the fire broke through the roof and had spread to the fourth and third floors when it was discovered by Policeman Thomas Feeney, who was passing. Flames and smoke rolled out of the fifth floor windows. Feeney pounded on the front doors of the building and attracted the attention of Edward Claus, a watchman, who was on the first floor and unaware that the building was burning.
The two attempted to ascend a stairway to the third floor, believing that there was another watchman in the novelty concern, but flames and smoke burst through a door and they were compelled to retire. Glass in the door was broken by the heat and Feeney was cut about the face and hands.
A general alarm was sounded and Marshal Horan arrived in his automobile. He sent in five special calls and took charge of the many companies of firemen. The heat was intense and firemen who had mounted the roofs of adjoining structures frequently were compelled to climb down.
While firemen were still at work on the flames about twenty-five girls reported for work. It was said they would be thrown out of work by the fire.
(Notice how the two leading facts in the story are combined in the opening sentence, the fact that firemen were in peril coming first, then the property loss. The writer manifestly has taken pains to get the firm names correct.)
II. Brief news dispatch telling of a death by fire:
NEW YORK, Dec. 12.—Mrs. F. A. Hilliard, 76 years old, a wealthy widow of Milwaukee, was burned to death early to-day in her room in the Hotel Bristol. She set fire to her clothing in attempting to light a candle. Mrs. Hilliard registered at the hotel Nov. 6. She attracted attention by her eccentricities. She refused to use either electric light or gas, and insisted on burning candles in her room.
(All the salient facts are told here in less than seventy-five words—the who, when, what, where and why of the story. This is the compressed form in which the story was carried in the news dispatches. As a local story—that is, published in the city in which it originated—its human-interest element would justify the giving of more details—but nothing of a horrible nature. News, unless it is national in interest, shrinks in importance in proportion to the distance from the scene of the happening. This rule, of course, would not apply in this case to Milwaukee, where the story would be local in significance because of the residence of the woman in that city.)
III. Fire story summarizing the main facts in a few lines, as carried in the report of a press association:
JOPLIN, MO., Nov. 16.—Fire of unknown origin this morning destroyed the entire business section of Duenweg, a mining town six miles east of here. Seventeen buildings were burned, the damage being estimated at $75,000.
(It is significant, in studying relative news values, that this story, dealing with property loss, gets only half as much space as that telling of a woman’s death. Both appeared in the same newspaper.)
[IV.] Death story which covers all the important points. From the Baltimore Sun:
ATLANTA, Nov. 13.—United States Senator Alexander Stephens Clay, of Georgia, died of heart disease at the Robertson Sanatorium to-day after an extended illness.
His death was as peaceful as it was sudden. He was talking to his son Herbert when he suddenly ceased speaking and fell back dead.
During the morning and early afternoon the Senator appeared in better spirits than usual. The attending physicians said that he was apparently recovering from the slight relapse of Saturday.
Mrs. Clay came to Atlanta from Marietta in the morning, but when she found the Senator so much improved she returned home. The only member of the family present at the deathbed was the Senator’s son Herbert, who is mayor of Marietta.
According to the physicians Senator Clay’s death resulted from dilatation of the heart, superinduced by arterial sclerosis. The Senator had been ill for nearly a year and went to the sanatorium on November 1 to take the rest cure. He appeared to be improving until Saturday, when he suffered a relapse which his weakened condition was unable to withstand.
The body was removed to the Clay home at Marietta, where the funeral services will be held Tuesday. Senator Clay was 57 years old, and is survived by a widow, five sons and a daughter, besides his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Clay, of Cobb county.
(An account of Senator Clay’s political life, in 350 words, follows.)
V. Death story in which the cause is of special interest:
CHICAGO, Dec. 5.—Prof. Charles Otis Whitman, head of the Department of Zoölogy and director of the Zoölogical Museum at the University of Chicago, died of pneumonia to-day. His death was due to exposure a week ago, when, late at night, he left his room to look after a flock of pigeons which he had been studying. Friends say that Prof. Whitman feared the pigeons would be frozen.
Prof. Whitman, who was 68 years old, was widely known as a zoölogist. He was born at Woodstock, Me., and was educated at Bowdoin College, Leipzig University, in Germany, and Johns Hopkins University.
Surviving Prof. Whitman are his widow and two sons, Frank and Carroll. Arrangements for the funeral have not been completed.
VI. Graphically told story of the death of a famous “man-bird”:
LOS ANGELES, CAL., Dec. 31.—The winds, whose treacheries Arch Hoxsey so often defied and conquered, killed the noted aviator to-day. As if jealous of his intrepidity, they seized him and his fragile flying machine, flung them down out of the sky and crushed out his life.
He fell dead in the field from which he had risen but a short time before with a laughing promise to thousands of cheering spectators to pierce the zenith of the heavens, surpass his own phenomenal altitude record and soar higher than any other man dared go.
Cross currents, whirled off from a vagrant storm that floated in from the sea, caught his biplane and shot him downward 563 feet to earth.
His body lay broken and twisted almost out of all semblance to a human form. All of the spectators in the grand stand witnessed the tragedy, as it occurred directly in front of them on the opposite side of the course.
They sat in awe-stricken silence until the announcer gave out the words through the megaphone:
“Hoxsey has been killed.”
Then from every part of the great stand came sobbing of women, who but a short time before had clapped their hands to the daring aviator as he arose from the field for his fatal flight.
“Of course the success of this attempt is contingent upon the kind of weather I find up there,” said Hoxsey just before he left the ground. “Some of the temperatures one encounters in the higher altitudes are simply beyond human endurance. But, if I can stand it and my motor works as well as it has been working, I’ll come down with a record of 12,000 feet or more.”
Even at that moment the wind attained a velocity that kept more cautious aviators on the ground. After he had ascended it gained rapidly in violence. Moreover, it created a “Swiss cheese” atmosphere, the most treacherous meteorological condition that man-birds have to contend with.
There is nothing by which it may be known why Hoxsey did not go higher than 7,742 feet, which his barograph showed he had attained, but he had apparently encountered at that altitude the same conflicting air currents that finally overcame him. Notwithstanding this, and with the same reckless daring he had displayed during the last week, he descended by a series of spiral glides, and was performing one of his thrilling rolling dips, when his biplane suddenly capsized and shot to earth.
Over and over the aëroplane turned as it fell, with a speed so swift that of all the thousands who saw the tragedy not one could tell what effort the aviator made to save himself. When the wreckage had been cleared sufficiently so that his body could be reached, he was found planted firmly in his seat, his arms around the levers. The fall telescoped the biplane.
The steel sprocket which drove the propellers lay across Hoxsey’s face, the motor resting upon the right side of his body. Every one of the ribs on that side was shattered into fragments. An iron upright, broken by the force of the crash, held the aviator’s body impaled upon its jagged point.
The stop watches of the judges in the stand registered the exact second of 2:12 o’clock when Hoxsey’s machine turned over and plunged in its fatal fall. The news of the tragedy was telegraphed over wires leading out of the press stand before the machine struck the ground.
(Enough of the published story, which filled more than three columns, is given here to indicate the detailed method of treatment. The death of Arch Hoxsey in itself was a big news story, of nation-wide interest. Its importance as news was enhanced by the fact that another noted aviator, only a few hours before, had met death in a similar tragic manner on another aviation field.)
[VII.] Story of a suicide printed because of the unusual means employed. (Names and addresses given here are fictitious.) From the New York World:
James Wilson, aged seventy, a photographer, committed suicide by drowning himself yesterday afternoon in a tank in his studio at No. 17 Blank street.
Wilson lived at No. 616 R street and was in the photograph business with his son. The studio is on the third floor and consists of three rooms.
Water leaking through his ceiling about 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon attracted the attention of Henry Smith, who has a printing shop on the floor underneath the studio. He sent a workman to investigate and when the man returned and said that Wilson’s door was locked Smith notified the police.
Patrolmen Stephens and Jones of the Blank Street Station broke open the Wilson studio door and in the rear room found water running over the sides of a tank used in developing pictures. This tank is zinc lined, is 2½ feet wide, 2 feet deep and 4 feet long, and stands 5 feet up from the floor, the upper edge being only 2 feet from the ceiling. Inside this tank was Wilson’s body.
Wilson was 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 200 pounds. To reach the top of the tank he evidently stood on a sink beside it, but how he managed to crawl inside has puzzled the police. First, thinking that Wilson might have been trying to repair the tank, the police made a search for repairing tools, but found nothing of the kind. Wilson was dressed in his underclothing, and his outer garments were found hanging on hooks.
The tank had to be chopped down before the body could be removed and taken to the Morgue.
Mrs. Wilson said last night that her husband had acted queerly yesterday and seemed to be brooding because a man whom he had had in his employ for a number of years was to leave him at the end of the week. She said one of their sons committed suicide about seven years ago.
(Observe that the writer gives concrete details. Instead of saying, vaguely, that Wilson, a large man, drowned himself in a small tank, he gives Wilson’s height and weight and the exact dimensions of the tank.)
VIII. The following leads show how stories have been brought up to date:
1. ST. LOUIS, Dec. 9.—Colonel Abe Slupsky wears modestly to-day the metaphorical wreath of hops that goes with the championship in beer drinking.
When he drank a bottle of beer in the café at Hotel Jefferson last night it marked the completion of a task begun thirty days ago. Every day since then, Sundays included, nineteen bottles of beer preceded the good-night one. Etc.
2. Search in a snowstorm failed to-day to find the three robbers who held up three men and stole nearly $20,000 in cash and checks on the Egremont trolley extension yesterday. The amount taken was given out as $10,000, but the Woronoco Construction Company stated to-day that yesterday’s full pay roll was $20,000, and only a few men had been paid off when the hold-up occurred. Of this amount nearly half was in checks. Etc.
3. BELFAST, Dec. 10.—Political excitement is at fever heat to-day, following last night’s riots that resulted from several Orangemen voting for the Irish Nationalist candidates. Those so voting are being called traitors and their houses are under guard to-day to prevent violence being done them. Etc.
4. Several hundred college boys from the University of Blank crawled from the sheets this morning with dry throats, big heads and a universal tendency toward “never again.” For last night was “football night” and the college boys “did things up brown.” Etc.
5. John K. Smith, millionaire broker, following his fourth arrest in a month because of his strange antics with automobiles, is in the observation ward of the City Hospital pending an expert investigation as to his mental condition. Smith was arrested yesterday, etc.
6. PROVIDENCE, KY., Nov. 26.—It is believed to-day that the ten men entombed in Mine No. 3 of the Providence Coal Company by an explosion are dead.... A windy shot in the mine yesterday caused a terrific explosion, etc.
IX. Write a local fire story from the following notes, assuming it is to be printed in an evening paper in a town of about 20,000:
Home of A. B. Smith, 600 Converse avenue. Fire discovered at 1 A. M. by neighbors returning from theater. One of them broke in front door with a stick of cord wood and aroused the family, who were asleep on the second floor. Fire had started in the attic from crossed electric wires, and had burned down into the closet in the room occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Opening the closet to get some clothing, Smith was driven back by flames. His wife fainted and he carried her out. His hands and face were slightly burned. Two children, girls, 8 and 5, were carried out by neighbors. The house, two-story frame, burned rapidly. Only a part of the furniture on first floor was saved. Loss about $10,000, covered by insurance. Whole building was ablaze when the firemen arrived. Smith is cashier of the Second National Bank. Man who broke in door, A. L. Jones, a grocer, 604 Converse avenue.
X. Assuming that the death of Senator Clay (see [No. IV]) was first published in the morning papers, rewrite the story in 150 words for an evening paper.
XI. Condense the story of Wilson’s suicide (see [No. VII]) into a telegraph dispatch of 150 words.
CHAPTER XI
THE CORRESPONDENT
Too often the complaint against the newspaper is that it is sensation-seeking and has a predilection for scandal and unsavory gossip. Men and women, including some of eminent rank in their own professions, although having only a slight knowledge of the making of a newspaper, have a habit of saying in their ignorance that newspapers give preference to crime, divorce and scandal. It is even added that it is impossible to get wholesome news into a newspaper.
This opinion is wrong. It not only does injustice to most newspapers, but, in a measure, it offers insult to the readers of those newspapers. As a general thing newspapers give preference to only one thing—news. But news is news only when it relates to something of present interest in an interesting way.—From an editorial in the Washington (D. C.) Times.
In addition to getting the service of one of the big news gathering organizations, such as the Associated Press, and maintaining correspondents in the leading cities of the country, the metropolitan newspaper receives a vast amount of material from special correspondents in the cities and towns in its immediate territory. By immediate territory is meant those states in which the mail edition of the paper has its greatest circulation. Chicago papers, for example, circulate not only in Illinois, but reach into Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan and parts of Missouri, Ohio and Minnesota. St. Louis and Kansas City papers have a broad field in the Southwest. The newspaper’s function is to give all the important news of the nation and the world, and to give besides the special news of that section of the country which it serves. It is to the end that news within this territory may be covered, or covered more fully than it would be by a national news gathering organization, that the paper maintains a corps of special correspondents.
A special correspondent is in effect an out-of-town reporter for the paper he represents, working under the direction of the telegraph editor just as the local reporter works under the city editor. The only difference is that he is not in as close touch with his chief as the local man. Though now and then he may get a definite assignment by wire, he works largely on his own initiative. This is added reason why he should cultivate a “nose for news” and the art of writing news. A mistake made by wire is usually harder to correct than a mistake made in the office. Time is lost and unnecessary expense incurred if the correspondent sends in a slipshod story about which the office has to ask questions. The correspondent is as much an agent of the paper as the local reporter. He is responsible for all the news in a given territory, and if wide-awake and efficient he can do much toward increasing the prestige of his paper in his community.