The Young Man and Journalism

by Chester Sanders Lord

The correspondent must know about these things if he is to write intelligently about them. He must be familiar with the business of the departments, must understand the army and the navy, should know the whereabouts of every regiment and every ship of importance. He should know the name and the politics and the post of every American diplomat, should know government finances—indeed, should know everything the government does. These things constantly are recurring in new and unexpected ways and they must be treated as important news of the day.

Not less fascinating to the young reporter is his daily contact with men of affairs whom he meets in the course of his news collecting; not less interesting his intimacy with the events of the day that pulsate and inspire. His work becomes so varied. It all is so new. His experiences are so interesting; and they become the more so as he gains in experience and is asked to do higher grade work. In his book on Newspaper Reporting Mr. John Pendleton of London says:

The reporter is the collector of news for the circulation of which the paper really exists. On his report of the Premier’s speech the editor bases his leading article. He records the splendor of the Queen’s drawing room, and the want and wretchedness of the poor. No festival is complete without him; and he turns up at every calamity. He chronicles the deeds of the hero and the crimes of the miscreant. He tells how the pulse of commerce beats in every market of the world. Science and art are beholden to his pen; and even religion itself has to thank him for some of its spread. He has become a necessity to newspaper production and no inconsiderable figure in national life.

The reporter is not sent out haphazard; he is out for a purpose and that purpose is the collection at first hand of facts and information that are supposed to interest a multitude of readers. If they are interesting to those who read them, how much the more so to the young man who, after investigation and verification to his own satisfaction, puts his conclusions on paper!

And note, if you will, how important is the work. Since the first use of printers’ type the great events of the world, the events that have moved and influenced mankind, that have made the history of the world, have been announced first of all in the newspapers. They have been proclaimed to the world not by clergymen from the pulpit, or lecturers from the platform, or orators in legislative halls, not through the medium of books or magazines or pamphlets, or by the writers of editorial articles, or by critics—but in burning type by reporters.

It seems but yesterday, that midnight hour, when a reporter burst into the working room of a morning newspaper with the exclamation: “He’s got it—we are going to have the electric light in every part of every house and over every desk in this room.” He had hurried from Edison’s first big test of the division of the electric current: had seen a hundred electric bulbs glowing in all their fascinating brightness by electricity transmitted over wires. And the people marveled at what he wrote about it.

Within the span of my own newspaper experience, reporters have given first information to the world of the discovery and development of electric lighting, heating, cooking and propulsion; of Roentgen rays; of the telephone; of the phonograph; of the automobile; the player piano; of the typesetting machine and the multiple page printing press; the shoe-making machine; of breech-loading guns, machine-made cartridges and diabolical explosives; of the airplane and the zeppelin; of wireless telegraphy; of steel construction in big buildings; of the marvels of construction in gigantic locomotives and steamships, in subways, and elevated railroads, bridges, and aqueducts; of bacillus treatment in medicine and the wonders of abdominal surgery; and hundreds of other developments of science. We have seen the declaration of a dozen wars and the signing of a dozen peace treaties; the announcement of the death of monarchs and the birth of princes, the assassination of rulers and the inauguration of their successors.

Some reporter has announced the discovery or the fact of every one of these things. He has been compelled to study the subject enough to write about it understandingly, and that study has brought him in contact with the men who have caused or invented it.

The reporter mingles constantly with the men who control the affairs of the world. This not only is fascinating, but it gives him confidence in himself, gives him personal address, ease of manner and of conversation, manliness of presence. It sharpens his wits. It takes away that paralyzing emotion so often felt by youth when in the presence of greatness. Nothing can be more stimulating to the intellect than association with intellectual men.

The reporter who writes of an important event usually is asked to continue on the case as long as it is of public interest. The man who wrote the narrative of the murder of White by Harry Thaw wrote of Thaw’s publicities for a long time afterward. The man who reports a big labor strike is called on to report the next strike. He gets interested in the subject, makes it a study, and becomes authority on the relations between labor and capital. In this way as time goes on the reporter comes to be a sort of specialist in several topics and the knowledge thus acquired is of great value to him when he comes to editorial writing, or magazine work, or authorship of any kind, or if he goes into the law or into the public service or any other business. There is not any other employment probably in which a young man may gather so extensive a general contemporaneous knowledge as in newspaper reporting in a big city.