The Young Man and Journalism

by Chester Sanders Lord

To the Milwaukee correspondent he said: “Wire with all haste every word you can get about Roosevelt’s visit, what he has said and done since his arrival, every possible detail of the shooting, full description and history of the assassin, where he has lived, so we can run him down. Send every word he utters. Hire a dozen men to help. You can’t wire too much.”

To the Washington correspondent: “Wire 1500 words Roosevelt’s chief acts as President, 1000 on his personal popularity and social life. Interview everybody effect of his death on the election, get White House comment, wire 1000 general effects of the news. You can’t send too much.”

To the Chicago correspondent: “Hurry to Milwaukee. Take two or three men with you. Find our man in the Sentinel office. Hire a special train if necessary. Hire some one to get all he can out of the Chicago newspaper offices.”

Having wired a dozen or so such telegrams to other parts of the country the managing editor summoned the city editor and said to him: “Get your entire staff here, the men who are off to-day and all the emergency men. Put on three or four more copy readers. Find out where Mrs. Roosevelt is and have a man stay right by her: also the rest of the Colonel’s family. Have four or five columns of his obituary prepared. Have interviews with a lot of prominent New York men and politicians of both parties. Have a column written on the effect on the political campaign and also a column of Roosevelt’s reasons for running as an independent candidate. Send to the hotels and theaters. Don’t forget a big portrait of Roosevelt—better have pictures of the entire Roosevelt family and the Oyster Bay home. Keep everybody here until three o’clock.”

To the night editor he said: “The editorial page is full of campaign stuff. Have some one go through every line of it and cut out everything intended to influence a voter against Roosevelt—everything that could be thought unseemly. You will have to leave out two or three of the articles and some of the letters to the editor. Find another editorial or two that will do, on the standing galleys. Get the full force into the composing room. Tell the stereotype men there will be no end of editions all night long—they will want full force. Tell the press room men too; the circulation will be double. Be sure to look out for any slur on Roosevelt. You must get the mail edition off on time. We can’t afford to miss a mail to-night.”

The foregoing indicates a part—and only a small part—of the preparations made for an edition announcing Colonel Roosevelt’s death by assassination. Within fifteen minutes enough matter had been ordered to fill five or six newspaper pages. The entire news staff jumped into the work.

The machinery for that edition began to move promptly in the lines indicated. But in half an hour came this wire from Milwaukee: “Colonel Roosevelt is not dead but has been shot near the heart. Surgeons are making examination.” And through some unexplained cause not another word came from Milwaukee for an hour and a half.

With this second announcement it was necessary to change the plan of the edition to conform to the situation that the Colonel was not dead but possibly was mortally wounded. In the hour and a half of suspense thousands of words came pouring in to the copy readers all written under belief that the attack had resulted in death and all had to be edited to fit the new situation.

Then came word that the Colonel had not been seriously hurt—slightly wounded only—and that he had started for Chicago. It was now nearly midnight and a complete overhauling of the paper was necessary. A new set of instructions had to be sent to everybody. Everything had to be reëdited. What was practically a new edition must be made with very little time in which to make it. As it was, the newspapers printed from three to five pages of matter about the attempted assassination, but they killed many columns relating to the Colonel’s life, the effect of the supposed death on the campaign, appreciations by public men, and so forth. The writers and copy readers were reminded that the Colonel was still a candidate, and that a new issue had been injected into the campaign, that of martyrdom. “Better minimize the martyrdom business,” was the suggestion. The copy readers did a tremendous excess of emergency work that night that went for nothing; so did the correspondents, the reporters, the printers, the telegraph operators, the directing editors—everybody who had to do with getting out the edition.

From reporting to copy reading is a natural step in the progress of the young man in journalism. Copy reading has the advantage of fixed hours, of permanent salary, of a minimum of emergency or extra work and of permitting daily a few hours for recreation or study. It has the disadvantage of being routine work not especially interesting or inspiring, without pecuniary reward of importance (salaries are from forty to sixty-five dollars a week in big newspaper offices and as low as twenty-five dollars in small ones) and of having the attendant danger of getting a man in a rut. Every office has its veteran copy readers who for years have been content to do this work. To perform the service acceptably requires absorbing attention, unceasing vigil, a familiarity with current events, accurate judgment as to the news value of every article and a genius for detecting errors of fact, or grammar, or of any kind.