10.10 a.m. Fire, 916, Franklin Street; tenement house; occupants mostly gone to work; 3 children crushed on stairs; Leczinski, laundryman, recent immigrant; damage $700, owner Belmont.—L.A.
2nd Precinct 8.15 a.m.
7.20 a.m. Body unknown man found off Pier 1, East River; about 40 years, 5 feet 10 inches; light complexion, lace shoes, blue shirt, black coat and trousers; some valuable papers in pocket but no money.—J.W.
To solve these problems another group of men is needed, the reporters proper, called, when they are on this service, “general workers.” As the original brief messages come in to the city editor, he details one or another of his young men to the spot, who sets to work to ransack every fragment of fact or probability, which throws light on the case. If a general worker has to think only of a morning newspaper and the matter is important, he will try to treat it exhaustively and not return to the office, until he has his story complete and ready for the press. But more often he has no time for this. He may very likely have one job treading on the heels of another, especially if he has evening paper editions coming out successively behind him. It is therefore more usual for the general worker to treat his work in fragments, either telephoning his account through to the office or, if he has time to be more careful, sending his notes by hand or taking them back himself. He will then continue to study the same story for more facts or pass on to some other task.
In any case the matter passes into a third stage and comes into the hands of the “rewriters” or “telephone rewriters.” These two groups of people handle this half-prepared matter and give it more or less literary form. It has now become a “story,” complete for the moment but liable to be changed, supplemented, or suppressed according to later information. But for the present it passes on its road to the press into the hands of a fourth body, the “copy-readers,” whose duties in America correspond partially to part of the work fulfilled in this country by “sub-editors,” who do not enjoy however so much positive responsibility, as we should allow them here. The functions of a copy-reader are unpleasantly negative. The real power of judging the news and criticizing it lies above with the city-editor and the managing editor, officials only dimly shadowed in England. The copy-reader’s duty is to suppress hopelessly incompetent stuff, to revise the results of carelessness, to add headlines and to correct all blunders. In addition he is the policeman of the office, cutting out the list of forbidden words, correcting spelling and removing contradictions and obvious absurdities. There are no thanks coming to him either from above or below and endless possibilities of reproof and disaster.
We have now the “newspaper story” complete in its final form for a morning paper and subject to addition and revision in the evening paper. It has to run the danger of fading away under the eye of the city-editor and may even, if it be very important, attract the unfavourable notice of the managing editor or the editor-in-chief. But, as these great men belong essentially to the central framework of the staff, we must invert our investigations for a moment and look at our American newspaper from the upper side downwards. The first difference between the two countries that strikes one here is the rather larger number of men and the much larger number of titles, as compared with the staff on an English paper. As the net output of most American dailies is not much larger than some of our own, we are led to suppose that what is once done in England, is done two or three times over in America, because over there the pace of output is tremendous. And that I believe to be the explanation of the difference between the two systems. While in England we have usually a single editor, or man in charge for the night, with but three grades of workers under him, the literary staff, the sub-editors and reporters, supplemented by outside men on special subjects; in America the situation is more complicated. To begin with, the proprietor very often takes a hand in it himself, eclipsing the great editor and laying down his views, often criticizing the “make-up” of the paper, while it is still in the press. But usually we have the editor-in-chief with a dual organization under him for pure news and for what one might call fancy news, such as the plays, art, finance, etc., of the day. In fact he has three separable organizations under him and every member of any one of them is called an editor. There is the staff for fancy news, including the editors of finance, sport, society, fashions, real estate, art, drama, music, literature and others. Then he has the routine staff for dealing with outside news, the foreign editor, the telegraph editor, who handles provincial news, and the exchange editor, who follows all the other papers and tries to get free “copy” from them if he can. Lastly he has the news organization proper, consisting of the managing editor, who usually has an assistant, the city editor, who looks after news up to six p.m. and the night city editor, who takes over this duty after that hour. Beneath these are all the reporters or general workers and others.
The duties of managing editor and city editor cover much the same ground; that is to say, it is the duty of the managing editor to revise and do over again the work of the city editor, while at the same time he has a certain control over the decorative news, except as a rule finance, and in this respect he rather trenches on the sphere of the editor-in-chief without however having any right to influence what may be the policy of the paper in politics or social matters. The distinctively American system centres on the city editors, who have the primary responsibility for the news and the newspaper “stories.”
The city editor on duty for the time being combines in himself functions, which in England are usually divided between the head reporter and one of the sub-editors, whose duty it is to revise home news. For instance he has to make the assignments for the early morning to his corps of reporters; but whereas the English head reporter, having distributed tasks, would probably himself take the most important engagement, work beside his own staff and leave the “copy,” as it comes in, to pass to the sub-editors’ room, this is not the case with the American city editor. He remains at the desk all day with the telephone at his ear, waiting for messages from the scattered “watchers,” ready to make fresh assignments for anything unexpected that may turn up. That is his pre-occupation and imminent anxiety. With all his men already out, something startling and of infinite importance may arise at any minute and he may have no one to deal with it. For that reason it is the custom for all “general workers,” except those engaged on some prolonged investigation to report themselves at regular intervals to headquarters. Suppose news came of an explosion or fatal accident to one of the huge ferry-boats plying from Manhattan Island to Jersey City or Hoboken. All ordinary “stories” would be dropped at once. Even “murders” would be postponed. Every available man, as he reported himself, would be hurried to the quays to get tales from officials or survivors and to try to build up a theory about the disaster.
On the return of these “stories” to the office the second half of a city editor’s duty begins. The stories have been to some extent prepared for him by the “copy-readers,” but he has to judge of each individual “story” by itself and to exercise a certain choice between them. Having declared certain preferences he issues fresh orders to the reporters for fresh facts to lengthen them, while at the same time he curtails or drops entirely the “stories” of lesser interest. In the end he sends up to his superior, the managing editor, a mass of digested and to some extent coordinated “copy,” enough to occupy from a fifth to a sixth as much space over and above what the paper will hold. Such a margin of superabundance of “copy” leaves some room for the superior magnate to exercise a choice of his own in going over all the mass a second time. But here it is not a question of amending or extending; rejection at this last stage is the only resource. If the managing editor has fault to find about preparation or selection, he gives his views to the city editor next day with more or less vehemence, as the occasion requires. For the moment the whole body of news has to go to press, more or less as it stands.
There is another higher function remaining to the managing editor. He has to keep the balance between the predominating bulk of home news coming from the city editor and reporters and the body of less important news coming from the foreign, telegraph and exchange editors; to estimate the quantity of financial news, which is generally inelastic and practically outside of his control; and to allow space as well for the decorative parts of the paper drawn from art, literature, the drama and society. This is not the end of his responsibilities. A certain quantity of editorial matter descends to him from above, coming from the pen of his chief and the special political writers, always at the last moment. The amount of this and its habitual fluctuations are merely a question of judgment or guessing, because it cannot be altered and everything else has to give way to it. The managing editor’s only resource is to mark certain of the other items sent to the composing-room, as optional matter, liable to rejection at the last moment, even after it has been set up in type.