V
THE SIMPLE FIRE STORY
The simplest news story is the story which has no feature—which has no fact in it more important than the incident which it reports—e.g., the fire at the end of the last chapter. If we recall the various elements of news value we note that any incident may be given greater news value by the presence of some unusual or interesting feature—a great loss of life, an unusual time, a strikingly large loss of property, or simply a well-known name. Such a story is called a story with a feature, because its interest depends not so much on the incident itself as upon the unusual feature within the incident. On the other hand, many news stories do not have features. Many stories are worth printing simply because of the incident which they report, without any unusual feature within them. For example, a building may burn with no loss of life, no great loss of property, and no striking occurrence in connection with the burning. Such a fire is worth reporting, but there is no fact in the story more interesting than the fact that there was a fire; the story has no feature.
The leads of these two kinds of stories are different. When a story has a feature it is customary to play up that feature in the first line of the lead. If the story has no feature, is simply the record of a commonplace event, the lead merely announces the incident and answers the reader's questions about it.
The commonest of featureless stories is the simple fire story in which nothing out of the ordinary happens, no one is killed, no striking rescues take place, and no tremendous amount of property is destroyed. This may be taken as typical of all featureless stories. The reporter, in writing a report of such a fire, merely answers in the lead the questions when, where, what, why, and perhaps how, that the reader asks concerning the fire. The most striking part of the story is that there was a fire; hence the story begins with "Fire." For example:
Fire today wrecked the top of the six-story warehouse at 393 to 395 Washington street, used by the United States army as a medical supply store-room for the Department of the East. Capt. Edwin Wolf, who is in charge of the warehouse, says the loss on tents, blankets, cots, and other bedding stored on the floors of the building was large.—New York Mail.
As one reads down through the rest of the story he finds nothing more striking than the fact that there was a fire. Therefore there is no particular feature. No one was killed; no one was injured; the loss was not extraordinary for a New York fire—nothing in the story is of greater interest than the mere fact that there was a fire. Hence the story begins with the word "Fire." Notice that it does not begin "A fire" or "The fire"—for the simple reason that the word fire does not need an article before it. The editor will also tell you that it is not considered good to begin a story with an article, for the beginning is the most important part of a story and it is foolish to waste that advantageous place on unimportant words.
The first word tells the reader that there has been a fire. He immediately asks where?—what burned?—when?—how much was lost? And the reporter proceeds to answer his questions in their order of importance. The reporter who wrote this story apparently thought that the time was of greatest importance and slipped it in at once—"today." He might just as well have left the time until the end of the sentence because it is not of very great interest. He considers the question "Where" of next importance, and answers with "the top of the six-story warehouse at 393 to 395 Washington Street." The question "what?" he answers with a clause, "used by the United States army as a medical supply store-room for the Department of the East." He does not try to answer the question "why?" because, as the rest of the story tells us, no one knew exactly what caused the fire. And as for the "How?" there is nothing extraordinary in the way that it burned beyond the fact that it burned. Thus, in one sentence, he has answered all four questions about the fire, except a little query concerning the amount of the loss. That he considers worth a separate sentence of details.
This is not a perfect lead. Many editors would consider it faulty, but it illustrates one way of writing the lead of a featureless fire story. Obviously there are faults; for instance, the time is given an undue amount of emphasis and the cause is omitted.
Suppose that we construct another lead from the same story—a lead which would be more in accordance with the logic of newspaper writing. We shall begin with the word "fire," but after it we shall slip in a little mention of the cause since to the reader not directly acquainted with the property that point is always of the greatest importance. Then we shall tell where the fire was and after that what was burned. And last of all we shall give the time since that is of least importance to the average reader. This would be the result:
Fire of unknown origin wrecked the top of the six-story warehouse at 393-395 Washington street, used by the United States army as a medical supply store-room for the Department of the East, destroying a large number of tents, blankets, cots, and other bedding, today.