Take John A. Smith another way and suppose him to have been in good work up to a few months ago and to have lost his savings through wild speculation in United States Steel Common; then will follow Wall Street and the Harpy Brokers, who stoop to take the Earnings of the Poor. Or, again, Smith may have lost his savings in one of the recent Trust Company failures and then we have a criticism of the Unstable Foundations of Credit. Or, he may have been sick and gone mad with the heat, which will yield an attack on High Prices and the Wickedness of the Ice Trust. Or, his family and he may have been starving, owing to the increased prices of food and the Machinations of the Beef Trust. All these are openings for news, where the further investigation of facts may elicit, it is not to be assumed that they will, confirmatory items of superior importance. On all serious questions the American public can be appealed to ten times more strongly through emotional sympathy than by reasoned discussion, and that is a reason, usually forgotten, why we should be slow in condemning a sensational tendency in their journalism.
The next question arises: What are the sources, whence the news, which interests the public, is drawn? These may be classified into three: official news, business items and general matter. What we may call official news covers all public announcements, government and municipal publications, police bulletins and matters of record from public registers. This class of news comes into the newspaper office automatically or very nearly so; sometimes a messenger has to call to fetch books and papers or a reporter is ordered to run his eye down the public registers; but very little trouble is necessary to collect this material, because everywhere all kinds of authorities and semi-authorities are accustomed to consult their own interests by keeping newspapers informed of official transactions. When anything unusual occurs in this field there will always be some one at the police office or in the city hall to telephone to the chief papers and warn them not to miss an opportunity.
Business items of serious importance are of all news the most valuable that a paper can get. But except for an occasional accident there is almost no way of getting any, save by way of favour. Anything interesting of this kind has always a value for some one so long as it can be kept secret and the only way in which a newspaper can counteract this tendency is to keep in touch or be introduced to other parties, who may be interested in disclosure. The ordinary published items of business news, failures, amalgamations, flotations, etc., are on the same footing as official news and come into the newspaper office of themselves.
General news sometimes comes in by routine methods, such as reports of trials, political speeches and all items of literary, artistic or dramatic material, which offer themselves generally only too profusely and eagerly for publication. The most interesting and most valuable matter under this head is the unexpected; accidents, crimes, disasters and mere freakish occurrences having a humorous aspect. All these must be collected by the professional organizations because, curiously enough, the public, who is the ultimate judge of what is interesting after it is printed, is not a good judge of it at first hand. A crowd is immensely affected by a small accident but may equally probably be unobservant of or callous to a great one. In criminal matters the police court is fuller than the final court of appeal. Those items of news which are brought in by private individuals, and a good deal of this is done by amateurs, are generally valueless or improperly observed. The observation, description and sifting has to be the systematic work of trained men. The American system is to assume that every small accident, catastrophe, crime or intrigue is potentially a great one. As a matter of professional competition this method is forced upon them. No newspaper can allow another to gain an important start on a question, which may become the sensation of the hour. Consequently the wearisome task of turning over every sordid detail of misfortune, weakness, disaster and corruption has to be undertaken simultaneously by the members of every staff in competition with every other paper. Except in the case of co-operative news agencies, to be described later, it is very rare that news investigation is undertaken in combination, and, when that happens in New York or any big city, it is generally done by private understanding between the reporters themselves, when the ground to be covered is extensive and there seems to be little opportunity for exceptional features to be developed.
We come then to our last three questions: Who gets the news? Who writes it? and Who determines what and how much is to be published? and we may well answer them together for this is tantamount to describing the organization for collecting news on any great paper. It is in this department, that the American newspaper has carried sureness of grasp and differentiation of function further than the press in any other country and we may take their system as our model. If any important news “story” slips through the meshes of their net for news more than once or twice a year on any individual paper, probably the shutters will have to be put up in that office and certainly all the editors and reporters will have been sent flying to other cities to look for jobs. The struggle for mere existence in this crucial respect is pushed to the extreme. The aim and object of this struggle in the American press is the presentation of a “story,” that is to say all the facts about and as many aspects as possible of some event, disastrous, humorous, pathetic or merely arresting, in such a way that the “story” should have more features or more human interest than the description of the same fact or event, which may appear in another paper. Almost everything in an American paper amounts to that in one way or another and very brilliant talents and quite astounding energy and resourcefulness are brought to bear to realize an ideal, which at first sight does not seem very impressive. It is, however, much more difficult to realize than appears on the surface and above all it is what their public wants.
The material for the ordinary newspaper “story” is more often than not taken from the unfortunate or shady side of life, because in that class of facts the masses of the public take an unfailing and untiring interest. It is not a question about which it is worth while moralizing, because, now that the supply of such matter has been made available from one or two sources, all others have to follow. The history of journalism has only one continuous lesson for editors and proprietors. It is not possible to dictate to your public and the only choice open to any one who is obstinate on questions of taste is to appeal to a narrow public of a better class against the more common preferences of the multitude. In America the papers, which have found such a better-class public to maintain them in moderate prosperity, may be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The regular sources of sensational news, which are watched as a matter of course by the professional corps of reporters, comprise some fifty localities in a big city. Mr. Given mentions some ten, where there is a constant attendance, such as the stock exchange, the City Hall and its courts and offices, police headquarters, the police courts and higher courts. Others, such as the police stations, municipal courts, fire stations, the jails, hospitals, the morgue and administrative offices of various kinds are patrolled at frequent intervals, while some twenty more places are visited every day. This duty falls on a special class of men called “watchers,” who are far from being ordinary reporters, as very often they have not been promoted to the dignity of writing a line, but they must know what news is and their function is to telephone to the head office any bulletins, which are promising, or any definite items, which need to be investigated and worked up, and in fact to be the eyes and ears of the newspaper. But they are eyes and ears which have to be open all the time. If they stopped to follow up any news item for themselves, they might miss a much more important one the next minute. This is the kind of news in brief which they send to headquarters.
9th Precinct 7 a.m. March 15.
6.30 a.m. Jessie Hawkins, 87, Cortlandt Street, attic above warehouse, badly burnt, feared dead; age 7 years, flannelette; no one present; sent St. A. hospital.—P.B.
6th Precinct 10.30 a.m.