The Young Man and Journalism

by Chester Sanders Lord

The respectable newspapers of America strive sincerely for accuracy of statement. Reporters are instructed constantly to be accurate. Copy readers and every one else in the place are urged to vigil in the detection of error. The news rush and the consequent confusion in the last half hour before getting to press contribute to the danger of mistake, but for the most part every newspaper article is carefully considered and repeatedly scrutinized.

A news report of importance, for instance, is written by an experienced reporter. Usually it is scanned by the city editor. It is then revised by a copy reader who is supposed to be expert in preparing manuscript. The compositor puts it in type and the proof reader searches it ostensibly for errors in typing, but always must he note any error. He is expected to call to the attention of the night editor any misstatement of fact or violation of newspaper usage or of practice.

Then, too, in almost every office is “the learned proof reader” who bothers himself not with typographical errors but who reads from revised proof sheets in searching quest of anything wrong—misused words, verbal or grammatical slips, misspelled proper names, distortion of any fact—and it is curious what a lot of errors he digs out that have passed everybody else. Likewise in many editorial rooms sits another all-wise man who in a semi-editorial capacity reads proof sheets of all matter in the same search for the undesirable. The managing editor, the night editor, and the night city editor also have proof sheets of all matter which they read devoutly for a dozen reasons. Nevertheless there appeared in one of our especially learned and correct New York newspapers a sentence written by a reporter and passed by the copy reader, the proof reader ordinaire, the learned proof reader, the editorial proof reader de luxe, the managing editor, the night editor and the night city editor—a sentence that read: “He had fractured her skull by hitting it with an empty bottle of beer.”

The same newspaper’s music constituency was moved to emotion one morning on reading that applause followed the singing of “The Soldiers’ Chorus by Faust.” Whether the writer intended to say that Faust sang the chorus, or the chorus was written by Faust, or that it was from the opera of Faust probably never will be known, but the chances are that he inadvertently wrote “by Faust” when he intended to write “from Faust.”

Truth is, that human intelligence has not yet devised a way of keeping error out of printed publications. The public does not understand the painstaking care with which news is presented by well regulated newspapers, nor are the difficulties or the unfavorable conditions under which newspapers are made at all appreciated by people who read. Men of other professions have almost unlimited time for consideration. The lawyer may devote months to the preparation of his case. The clergyman may take seven days to perfect his sermon. The physician at times is called to quick action, but usually he may ponder for hours or days over the condition of his patient.

But quick judgment and quick action are a daily necessity in the newspaper office. The biggest event of the month may explode an hour before time for going to press. The news must be prepared with frantic haste with half the staff tumbling over each other, so to speak, in the rush to be on time. In afternoon sheets all news received after one o’clock and in morning editions after midnight are subject to this acceleration of mind and movement and persons who have not participated in the spasm can little appreciate the opportunity for error.

In these hours a man’s experience, his general knowledge of the business, is of great assistance. It is then that his confidence or his distrust in the source of the information governs. Rumor is the busybody of the business and her moments of greatest activity are just before the time for going to press.

It is true, also, that first accounts of great events are likely to be exaggerated; almost always are greatly exaggerated. The cable flash announcing the blowing up of the Maine in Havana harbor said that not a man remained alive. The first brief telegram telling of the San Francisco earthquake reported that not a building remained standing. With the first report of the assassination of Colonel Roosevelt came the statement that he was dead. First reports of losses of life in great disasters, of losses in big fires, are usually double the actual loss.

It is a vital part of newspaper vigil to question all unusual or extraordinary statements and news editors by habit come to doubt every statement made. This is meant to be said of honest editors; the dishonest ones seek to exaggerate the original exaggeration.

The preparation of newspaper copy in the last hour before going to press gives supreme test to the writer’s powers of concentration, his self-possession, and his agility of mind. It happens frequently that the managing editor says to him, “You have just eight minutes in which to finish that article” and a little later the night editor may cry out: “Close everything for this edition in five minutes.” It is exceedingly disturbing to the young man who is beginning. The experienced men are unmoved. It is common enough for a man to write in an hour after midnight a column or more about a murder, a fire, a calamity, or the obituary of a distinguished person. Men who do this rapid work at the last instant may have been on duty for ten or twelve hours and the climax to the day’s labor calls for greater intensity than anything that has preceded. Physical endurance is involved as well as mental celerity.