I. Feature interview beginning with a striking remark in direct quotation. From the New York World:
“It is impossible for a woman to live in comfort in New York on $3,000 a year.”
This is the statement of Mrs. Juanita La Bar, who has petitioned the Orphans’ Court of Scranton, Pa., to allow her an additional thousand dollars so she can send her eleven-year-old son to school.
The things Mrs. La Bar thinks absolutely necessary for a modest menage are:
One servant.
To dress not handsomely but neatly.
A healthful apartment.
The best the market affords for the table.
A vacation to the seashore, country or mountains every summer.
“I can’t get along on $3,000,” said Mrs. La Bar to a reporter for the World last night at her apartment at No. 210 West Twenty-first street, “and I’m not extravagant, either, because I don’t owe a cent.”
The apartment was modest and comfortable, and Mrs. La Bar was dressed quietly, but in well cut and well made garments.
“Ten years ago, when my husband was alive, we lived well at a hotel and went to the seashore every year. We had a maid to look after the boy, but we didn’t keep house ...”
(The rest of the story consists of direct quotation.)
(The method of presenting the interview here is simple and effective—first a paragraph in direct quotation that contains the meat of the story, then identification of the speaker and a third-person statement of her views, and finally the interview itself, running about half a column.)
II. A more formal and conservative method is shown in the following:
NEW YORK, Dec. 2.—B. F. Yoakum, chairman of the board of directors of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad Company, arrived here to-day. He had returned from an inspection trip over the Frisco lines with B. L. Winchell, president of the principal roads of the system; A. J. Earling, head of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, and Percy C. Rockefeller.
Mr. Yoakum declined to make a statement about his inspection trip so far as it may result in a traffic agreement between the Frisco and St. Paul systems.
“There seems to be but little stock ticker prosperity in New York, but there is a good deal of real prosperity in the Southwest,” he said. “After crossing the Mississippi River one rarely hears the New York stock market referred to. Trading in securities is not the business of the West, and securities listed on the stock exchange are not the collateral required or generally used by bankers in the West....”
(Three paragraphs of quoted matter follow.)
III. Interview in which direct quotation is varied with indirect. From the Chicago Evening Post:
“The Panama Canal will be completed at least a year sooner than the time set for the official opening, Jan. 1, 1915,” said Ray L. Smith, employment agent of the Isthmian Canal Commission, to-day.
Mr. Smith is in Chicago attempting to enlist boiler-makers to take the places of the hundred men who resigned after being refused an increase in wage.
“I attribute the reduction in time to the efficiency which has been attained by the men,” he continued. “When the work began laborers were imported from the West Indian Islands and from Italy and Spain. The European laborers accomplished nearly three times as much a man as the West Indians at first, and they were paid twice as much.
“Now the efficiency of the West Indian has been so increased that the European is only twice as effective.”
According to Mr. Smith, the personnel of the workers on the canal includes representatives from nearly every country in the world. There are 45,000 employés of the commission in Panama. Of them, 5,000 are Americans. The remaining 40,000 represent perhaps more tongues than were gathered around the Tower of Babel. The bulk of the laborers are negroes from the Barbados, from Trinidad and from Jamaica. Besides the negroes from these islands there are Spaniards from most of the islands except Cuba.
“The death rate in the canal zone is only 4.05 a thousand persons,” said Mr. Smith. “This is lower than in any American city. The low rate is the result of the careful supervision exercised by the government. For example, there is a hospital at Culebra, the headquarters of the commission, which has 2,200 beds. All the houses are screened against mosquitoes, and in other ways the greatest attention is paid to sanitation....”
(The rest of the interview is in direct quotation.)
(Note that the writer drops direct quotation in the fifth paragraph. Making it clear that the speaker is his authority, he puts his information in the third person. This may be done with a plain statement of facts and figures in which there is no expression of opinion. Nothing would be gained by putting in the speaker’s words the statistical matter here given. On the other hand the reporter should be careful to quote anything of a controversial nature.)
IV. The following paragraphs from a feature story in the New York Mail show the questions-and-answers method in the interview. The extract is from a signed story, the only kind in which the reporter is permitted to write in the first person:
“Evidently,” I said, “you are an admirer of the new woman, the woman who earns her living.”
“Well,” he said, “you can’t blame me. It’s always better to get business advice from a woman who knows something about business, than from one who knows nothing about it. For women are bound to meddle with their husbands’ affairs, whether they are acquainted with them or not.”
“And how about politics?” I ventured. “Should women take an active part in this field, too?”
“Decidedly not,” he returned, etc.