Fred Smith, a young man about 18 or 19 years old, who formerly resided in this neighborhood but more recently at Jonesburg, had been boozing at the saloon all day and in the evening walked out of that burg on the railroad track. He evidently fell with his head down on one side of the dump and one foot over the rail. The 7 o’clock passenger struck him and mashed the foot. He was picked up by the train crew and brought to town and received medical attention.
(It is seldom in good taste, nor is it safe, to accuse a person of drunkenness. Bear in mind the injunction: Tell the facts and let the reader draw his own conclusions.)
CHAPTER V
NEWS VALUES
The newspaper man is compelled, as the price of success in his calling, and often through severe experience, to learn that only that which is true is “news.” There is a popular impression that all is grist that comes to the newspaper mill, and that everything brought into the office is published. The fact is that the hardest task of newspaper work is to sift the truth out of the masses of falsehood offered daily.... Daily newspaper workers have neither time nor need to fabricate falsehoods for public deception. Their time and their energies are too fully engaged in trying to winnow out the truth from the ignorant or willful distortions of it with which they have to deal daily. Often the falsehoods are unintentional, and arise from the fact that few people are gifted with ability to tell the exact truth, and nothing else, about what they have seen or heard. But they have also to deal with masses of downright lies, inspired by interest or malice.—From an editorial in the Chicago Inter-Ocean.
The foregoing chapters have dealt with news writing in its general aspects. This and succeeding chapters will be devoted to the more technical phases of the subject.
It is not the purpose here to discuss in detail methods of gathering news, but to tell how to write news. The reporter, when he sits down to his story, is assumed to be in possession of the facts. The problem then is how to put those facts together most effectively. But since news writing presupposes news gathering, a general knowledge of the reporter’s work and of what is implied by the term “news” is essential to a clear understanding of the technical side of the story.
THE REPORTER
What the eyes are to the body the reporter is to his paper and to the public that reads it. His work is the foundation of modern newspaper making. Editorial comment illuminates the news, make-up and headlines aid in its attractive presentation but after all the story is the main thing. It is for the story that all other features of the newspaper exist.
No matter what branch of newspaper work one may eventually enter, training gained as a reporter will be invaluable. The men who reach executive positions in a newspaper office without having served a reporter’s apprenticeship are rare exceptions. Practically all who have attained high rank in journalism began work as gatherers of news. They learned first to see news and to estimate its values.