“Police Headquarters.
Police Courts.
Coroner’s Office.
Supreme Courts, New York County.
New York Stock Exchange.
City Hall, including the Mayor’s Office, Aldermanic Chamber, City Clerk’s Office, and Office of the President of Manhattan Borough.
County Clerk’s office.”
Those places, says Mr. Given, which the newspapers watch carefully, but not continually, are:
“City Courts (Minor civil cases).
Court of General Sessions (Criminal cases).
Court of Special Sessions (Minor criminal cases).
District Attorney’s Office.
Doors of Grand Jury rooms when the Grand Jury is in session (For indictments and presentments).
Federal Courts.
Post Office.
United States Commissioner’s Offices, and Offices of the United States Secret Service officers.
United States Marshal’s Office.
United States District Attorney’s Office.
Ship News, where incoming and outgoing vessels are reported.
Barge Office, where immigrants land.
Surrogate’s Office, where wills are filed and testimony concerning wills in litigation is heard.
Political Headquarters during campaigns.”
Finally, “the following are visited by the reporters several times, or only once a day:
“Police Stations.
Municipal Courts.
Board of Health Headquarters.
Fire Department Headquarters.
Park Department Headquarters.
Building Department Headquarters.
Tombs Prison.
County Jail.
United States Sub-treasury.
Office of Collector of the Port.
United States Appraiser’s Office.
Public Hospitals.
Leading Hotels.
The Morgue.
County Sheriff’s Office.
City Comptroller’s Office.
City Treasurer’s Office.
Offices of the Tax Collector and Tax Assessors.”
Mr. Given’s example of the broker, John Smith, illustrates aptly the point I am making. “For ten years,” said Mr. Given,[39] “he pursues the even tenor of his way and except for his customers and his friends no one gives him a thought. To the newspapers he is as if he were not. But in the eleventh year he suffers heavy losses and, at last, his resources all gone, summons his lawyer and arranges for the making of an assignment. The lawyer posts off to the County Clerk’s office, and a clerk there makes the necessary entries in the office docket. Here in step the newspapers. While the clerk is writing Smith’s business obituary, a reporter glances over his shoulder, and a few minutes later the newspapers know Smith’s troubles and are as well informed concerning his business status as they would be had they kept a reporter at his door every day for over ten years. Had Smith dropped dead instead of merely making an assignment his name would have reached the newspapers by way of the Coroner’s office instead of the County Clerk’s office, and in fact, while Smith did not know it, the newspapers were prepared and ready for him no matter what he did. They even had representatives waiting for him at the Morgue. He was safe only when he walked the straight and narrow path and kept quiet.”
An overt act is often necessary before an event can be regarded as news.
Commenting on this aspect of the situation, Mr. Lippmann discusses this very example of the broker, John Smith, and his hypothetical bankruptcy. “That overt act,” says Mr. Lippmann,[40] “‘uncovers’ the news about Smith. Whether the news will be followed up or not is another matter. The point is that before a series of events become news they have usually to make themselves noticeable in some more or less overt act. Generally, too, in a crudely overt act. Smith’s friends may have known for years that he was taking risks, rumors may even have reached the financial editor if Smith’s friends were talkative. But apart from the fact that none of this could be published because it would be libel, there is in these rumors nothing definite on which to peg a story. Something definite must occur that has unmistakable form. It may be the act of going into bankruptcy, it may be a fire, a collision, an assault, a riot, an arrest, a denunciation, the introduction of a bill, a speech, a vote, a meeting, the expressed opinion of a well-known citizen, an editorial in a newspaper, a sale, a wage-schedule, a price change, the proposal to build a bridge.... There must be a manifestation. The course of events must assume a certain definable shape, and until it is in a phase where some aspect is an accomplished fact, news does not separate itself from the ocean of possible truth.”
From the point of view of the practical journalist, Mr. Irwin has applied this observation to the making of the news of the day. He says:[41] “I state a platitude when I say that government by the people is the essence of democracy. In theory, the people watch and know; when, in the process of social and industrial evolution, they see a new evil becoming important, they found institutions to regulate it or laws to repress it. They cannot watch without light, know without teachers. The newspaper, or some force like it, must daily inform them of things which are shocking and unpleasant in order that democracy, in its slow, wobbling motion upward, may perceive and correct. It is good for us to know that John Smith, made crazy by drink, came home and killed his wife. Startled and shocked, but interested, we may follow the case of John Smith, see that justice in his case is not delayed by his pull with Tammany. Perhaps, when there are enough cases of John Smith, we shall look into the first causes and restrain the groggeries that made him momentarily mad or the industrial oppression that made him permanently an undernourished, overnerved defective. It is good to know that John Jones, a clerk, forged a check and went to jail. For not only shall we watch justice in his case, but some day we shall watch also the fraudulent race-track gambling that tempted him to theft. If every day we read of those crimes which grow from the misery of New York’s East Side and Chicago’s Levee, some day democracy may get at the ultimate causes for overwork, underfeeding, tenement crowding.
“No other method is so forcible with the public as driving home the instance which points the moral. General description of bad conditions fails, somehow, to impress the average mind. One might have shouted to Shreveport day after day that low dives make dangerous negroes, and created no sentiment against saloons. But when a negro, drunk on bad gin which he got at such a dive, assaulted and killed Margaret Lear, a schoolgirl, Shreveport voted out the saloon.”