... But however great a gift, if news instinct as born were turned loose in any newspaper office in New York without the control of sound judgment bred by considerable experience and training, the results would be much more pleasing to the lawyers than to the editor. One of the chief difficulties in journalism now is to keep the news from running rampant over the restraints of accuracy and conscience. And if a “nose for news” is born in the cradle, does not the instinct, like other great qualities, need development by teaching, by training, by practical object-lessons illustrating the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the popular and the unpopular, the things that succeed and the things that fail, and above all the things that deserve to succeed, and the things that do not—not the things only that make circulation for to-day, but the things that make character and influence and public confidence?—From an article by Joseph Pulitzer in the North American Review.
THE WRITING OF NEWS
CHAPTER I
NEWSPAPER COPY
This is the age of the reporter—the age of news, not views. We are influencing our public through the presentation of facts; and the gathering, the assembling and the presentation of these facts is the work of the reporter. There are two ideals of news. The first is to give the news colorless, the absolute truth. The second is to take the best attitude for the perpetuation of our democracy. The first would be all right if there were such a thing as absolute truth. When jesting Pilate asked, “What is truth?” he expressed the eternal question of modern journals. The best we can do is to follow the second ideal, which is to point out the truth as seen from the broadest, the most human and the most interesting point of view.—From an address by Will Irwin at the University of Missouri.
TERMINOLOGY
All manuscript for the press is copy. Clean copy is manuscript that requires little or no editing. The various steps in the gathering and writing of news that precede printing are indicated briefly in the following explanation of newspaper terms:
Story.—Any article prepared for a newspaper. A three-line item and a three-column account of a convention are both, in the newspaper sense, stories. The term is applied also to the happening with which the story deals. Thus a reporter sent to get the facts about a fire is said to be covering a fire story. A happening of unusual importance makes a big news story. Reporters are assigned or detailed by the city editor to cover certain stories, and the task given each is his assignment. A reporter assigned to visit certain definite places which are covered regularly in the search for news (as police stations, hospitals, courts, fire headquarters, city hall, etc.) is said to have a run or a beat. A reporter scoops competing news gatherers when he gets an exclusive story. The story is called a scoop or a beat.
Stickful.—A term frequently used in defining the length of a story. A stickful is about two inches of type—the amount held by a composing stick, a metal frame used by the printer in setting type by hand.