CHAPTER II
NEWSCOLLECTING AND REPORTING
Of the duties and functions of any newspaper the first in point of time and of importance is the collection and dissemination of news. The necessity of giving to the news, which is collected, some sort of literary form in its presentation leads at once to the possibility of reinforcing it, of distorting it and sometimes, by suppression of essential points, of even inverting its meaning. The propagation of opinion is thus inseparably allied with the dissemination of news and no effort of organization can entirely separate the two departments. In all daily papers, however, and in most weekly papers, which attempt to give the news, the editorial system is a duplicate one having under the control of the supreme chief two staffs, kept more or less separate, one for giving the news of the day in the briefest form and the other for commenting on such news in accordance with the habits of the paper. The status and quality of every newspaper is chiefly determined by the relative importance allowed by the editor and his proprietors to giving the mere news as compared with the pains taken to elucidate it. The more popular and cheaper papers concentrate their chief energies on giving the largest number of items of ordinary news, which it is their aim to transform as far as possible into matters of exceptional interest, while the old-established organs of social and political weight are content to state their news impartially, if not boldly, and rely on their powers of interesting the reader by able discussions on political, artistic or literary topics, as they present new features day by day. Every one can call to mind two or three instances in either the United Kingdom or America of papers, which show these opposite tendencies in extreme form.
Taking the two branches of Anglo-Saxon journalism together as one whole, there is a very distinct tendency in America to attach greater prominence to the news-collecting side of journalism. Comment, criticism, propagandism are not excluded from American papers but the papers themselves live and flourish or die quickly according to the value which their public attaches to their news columns. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, and especially in London, the purveying of news is accurately and competently done, but more or less in a perfunctory manner, while the energies, which competition calls forth, are devoted to the writing of special articles, the expert criticism of the arts or the drama or else in the creation of what are generally called the “features of a paper,” that is to say, news, of which the presentation is individual, while the matter is more or less common to every one. It must not be supposed, however, that on this side of the water, including London, there is no keen competition in some quarters in the procuring and even in the manufacture of news. Certain papers strongly specialize in that direction and in many respects have imported American methods. But the predominant type of newspaper in the two countries is very different. British and Irish newspapers are content to share much more news in common than is the case in America, which inclines the Transatlantic reader to consider them extremely slow and unenterprising. On the other hand the purely editorial columns in an American newspaper are often curtailed to minute dimensions, while the standard of indulgence generally extended to carelessness and ignorance in matters relating to culture would not pass muster in British papers, even of the second rank.
This comparison is made with obvious reluctance for a certain definite purpose, because the distinction between the two types, is a sure guide to the relative superiority of each system in its own way, the one aiming chiefly at efficiency in collecting news and the other at the perfection of editorial presentation. The American system of collecting news is necessarily superior to that of most English newspapers, because in America news is the all-important thing and nothing else counts in promoting the prosperity of a newspaper. It follows also that not only do individual American newspapers employ larger staffs and spend greater sums for news than is the case with us, but also, in spite of the competition and partly because of it, the whole business of newsgetting is professionalized to an extent, which no English journalist would be led to imagine from his own experience. The divisions between one grade and another within the ranks of editors and reporters are more finely distinguished; there is a much freer circulation of able men from one paper to another and much more prompt dismissal of incompetents from the whole group than our slower habits would tolerate. With us there is a certain amateurishness permitted in all ranks of a newspaper because when the system is too perfect the individual is cramped in his free play and the results aimed at in British journalism are less mechanical than the first-class newspaper “story,” which it is the aim of the “star” reporter in New York and Chicago to turn out. In America so great is the keenness of competition on one straight set of rails that individualism is practically stamped out by the ruthless perfection of the professional machine. Recent changes in their habits point all in this direction. The individual “I” has been long suppressed; the editorial “we” is considered to date back to the time of the war; what is more, every word tending to introduce an element of personal opinion is struck out of any ordinary description of an event. An American reporter is not allowed to say that a meeting was successful or that the statesman was eloquent or that the confusion around the railway wreck baffled description. His professional duties require that he should report only, what the statesman said and what his audience thought of him, and if his powers of description are to be baffled by a railway accident he will soon be out of a job. The present tendency on this side of the Atlantic is all the other way. The public seems to wish to know what great cricketers think about cricket, golfers about golf, statesmen about politics. A British editor’s task is largely a matter of keeping up communications with a large circle of experts on hundreds of subjects, who can be appealed to from day to day about any event or topic of immediate importance. The shortest way of putting it is to say that the ordinary American paper from cover to cover is almost wholly written by professionals, while perhaps one-third of our papers is the product of an outside sporadic ring of contributors, who are practically half-employed amateurs, and the remainder, which is the more perfunctory but sometimes the least sensational portion of the paper, is the work of the home staff.
I am sorry to labour, what seems to be perhaps an invidious critical comparison, but it is necessary to explain that any one who attempts to present the best side of two national journalisms, between whom I may say parenthetically the want of sympathetic comprehension is rather marked, can only do so by recognizing and making clear the difference in the strong points of each. Of an admirable system of news collection the American paper unquestionably offers the best example; it is, however, a difficult one, especially for a foreigner, to describe. But as an organ of opinion, the newspaper is on the whole much more comprehensively and effectively organized in the United Kingdom than in any other country; its standard of general culture is higher than that of the press of any other country except perhaps that of France and even in the case of this latter comparison it may be considered decisively superior, when the breadth of its scope and range is taken into account.
Let us examine in detail the organization of the most expert newsgathering machine in the world—an American daily paper with perhaps an evening paper attached to it.[2] Of this double system the former part is of the greater importance, because the morning paper has greater wealth and a wider geographical distribution but the latter presents some points of superiority owing to the more difficult task and the continued strain of producing edition after edition. To understand a news-collecting system is to be able to answer the five following questions: What is news?—From what sources is it drawn?—Who gets it?—Who writes it?—Who determines what and how much is to be published? The answers to these questions largely overlap one another, but together they cover the whole subject. The first two questions are mainly a concern of the public; what they are interested in collectively and what personal and public incidents they and their affairs will supply, which will be of interest to others. The last three are the concern of the organization of a newspaper.
[2] Although I have been connected with the American press for some years in more than one capacity, it would have been wholly impossible for me to attempt the detailed description of their news-collecting organization without the inside view of their professional life rendered in Mr. Given’s book called “The Making of a Newspaper.” Mr. Given, formerly of the New York Sun, often called “the newspaper man’s newspaper,” has written to my mind the only valuable professional account of the newspaper world.
What is news? Americans give a more comprehensive answer to that question than any other people. In that country small things overshadow the great. Perhaps it would be truer to say that the important things to them are matters of detail. Foreign politics are to them outlandish matters. Their public life is itself a matter of small things; detailed changes in the tariff; detailed changes in the personnel of federal, state and city governments; details about railway concessions or amalgamations or prosecutions, which affect stocks and shares. As a consequence an importance is attached to the details of personal life, private happiness, social standing, success and failure of individuals, which in Europe is quite beyond comprehension. Everything is news; almost anything may become big news, if it can be shown to be in any way connected with the interests of the vast, curious, highly intelligent but not deeply cultivated public.
Take the case of the suicide of a poor man. To a trained reporter this may be just a paragraph of three lines, or it may cover material for a week’s agitation and a national movement, so that his experience prompts him to examine its details untiringly for some underlying fact which will lift it out of the common run. Suppose the paragraph runs:—Early this morning (Monday) John A. Smith hanged himself at 31, W. 249th Street. He leaves no family and no light can be thrown on his motive. His habits were reported to be irregular.—Such a suicide, especially on Monday morning, would be unfortunately so common an occurrence after a possible Sunday’s intemperance, that not much beyond a few enquiries would be prosecuted. Let us put the paragraph in another way:—In an unoccupied room on the fifth floor of the tenement house at 31, W. 249th Street the body of an emaciated man was found hanging early this morning. He had apparently been dead some time. Enquiry elicits the fact that he was called John Alexis Smith, who lived with a wife and four children at 917, Ninth Avenue where he had no difficulty in finding work, but very little chance of keeping it long. His former employers describe him, as semi-imbecile, with various degenerate traits. Apparently he had been in the country only seven months. How he passed the negligent inspection officers at Ellis Island is a matter, which demands rigid scrutiny!—and so we go on to the Immigration Laws, Corrupt Federal Administration, Pauper Labour of Europe, etc.