“Then how do you know whether or not the thing that you cut out is suitable for the paper?” I asked.
“That’s where the instinct of your true subeditor comes in,” said he. “I put in the point of the scissors mechanically and the right thing is sure to come between the blades.”
In a few minutes he had about thirty columns of cuttings ready for the foreman printer.
I began to feel that I had never done full justice to the sub-editor or the truffle hunter.
I have said that in those old days not more than two columns of wired news ever came to any provincial paper—The Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald, and a Liverpool and Manchester organ excepted. The private wire had not yet been heard of. In the present day, however, I have seen as many as sixteen columns of telegraphic news in a very ordinary provincial paper. I myself have come into my office at ten o’clock to find a speech in “flimsy,” of four columns in length, on some burning question of the moment. I have read through all this matter, and placing it in the printers’ hands by eleven, I have written a column of comment (about one thousand eight hundred words), read a proof of this column and started for home at half-past one. I may mention that while waiting for the last slips of my proof, I also made myself aware of the contents of the Times, the Telegraph, the Standard, and the Morning Post, which had arrived by the midnight train.
I suppose there are hundreds of editors throughout the provinces to whom such a programme is habitually no more a thing to shrink from than it was to me for several years of my life. But I am sure that if any one of the sub-editors of the old days had been required to read even five columns of a political speech, and eight of parliament, he would have talked about slave-driving and a “dorg’s life” until he had fallen asleep—as he frequently did—with his arms on his desk and the “flimsies” on the floor.
Some time ago I was in London, and had written an article at my rooms, with a view of putting it on the special wire at the Fleet Street end for transmission to the newspaper on which I was then employed. It so happened, however, that I was engaged at other matters much longer than I expected to be that night, so that it was past one o’clock in the morning when I drove to the office in Fleet Street. The lower door was shut, and no response was given to my ring. I knew that the editor had gone home, but of course the telegraph operator was still in his room—I could see his light in the topmost window—and I made up my mind to rouse him, for I assumed that he was taking his usual sleep. After ringing the bell twice without result, it suddenly occurred to me that I might place myself in connection with him by some other means than the bell-wire. I drove to the Central Telegraph Office, and sent a telegram to the operator at the Irish end of the special wire, asking him to arouse the Fleet Street operator and tell him to open the street door for me.
When I returned to Fleet Street I found the operator waiting for me at the open door. In other words, I found that my easiest plan of communicating with the third floor from the street was by means of an office in Ireland.
I do not think that any of the old-time subeditors would have been likely to anticipate the arrival of a day when such an incident would be possible.