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REPORTS OF SPEECHES
Every profession has its disagreeable tasks; journalism has perhaps more disagreeable tasks than any other profession. All of a reporter's work is not concerned with running down thrilling stories and writing them up in a whirl of breathless interest. Our readers demand other kinds of news, and it is the reporter's task to satisfy them faithfully. There is probably no phase of the work that is quite so irksome as the reporting of speeches, lectures, sermons, etc., and there is probably no phase of the work about which most reporters have fewer definite rules or ideas. Read the reports of the same speech in two different papers and note the difference. They seldom contain the same things and more seldom do they tell what the speaker said, in the way and the spirit in which he said it. It is irksome work and difficult work to condense an hour's talk into three stickfuls, and few reporters know exactly how to go about it.
The report of a speech or a sermon or a lecture may come to a newspaper office in one of two ways. A copy of it may be sent to the paper or the reporter may have to go to hear the address and take notes on it. Very often the speaker kindly sends a printed or typewritten copy of his speech to the editor a few days in advance with the permission to release it—or print it—on a certain date, after the speech has been delivered in public. If the speech is to be printed in full, the task is a mere matter of editing and does not trouble the reporter. Very few speeches receive so much space. The others must be condensed and put in shape for printing.
After all, the usual way to get a speech is to go to the public delivery of the speech and bring back a report of it. At first sight this is a difficult task and green reporters come back with a very poor resumé. However, a word or two of advice from the editor or some bitter experience eases the way. Some advice may be given here to prepare the would-be reporter beforehand.
Some reporters who know shorthand prefer to make a stenographic report of the entire speech and rearrange and condense it in the office. This method is advisable only in the case of speeches of the greatest importance; it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since the account includes at most only a part of the speech. The best way, doubtless, to get a speech is to take notes on it. And yet this must be done properly or there is a danger of misinterpretation of statements or of undue emphasis upon any single part of the speech. The report of a speech should be as well balanced and logical as the speech itself, differing from the original only in length and the omission of details. The speech report must be accurate and truthful or the speaker may appear at the office in a day or two with blood in his eye. A few rules may be suggested as an aid to accuracy and truthfulness.
In the first place, do not try to get all the speech; do not try to get more than a small part of it—the important part. There are two ways of doing this. If the speech is well arranged and orderly it is easy to tell when the speaker has finished one sub-division and is beginning another. Each division and subdivision will naturally contain a topic sentence. Watch for the topic sentences and get them down with the briefest necessary explanation to make them clear. Political speeches or impromptu talks are, on the other hand, not always so logically arranged. Sometimes it is possible to get the topic sentences, but more often it is not. Then watch for the interesting or striking statements. You will be aided in this by the audience about you. Whenever the speaker says anything unusually striking or of more than ordinary interest the audience will show it by signs of assent or dissent. Watch for these signs, even for applause—and take down the statement that was the cause. If the statement interested the original audience it will interest your readers. Naturally, mere oratorical trivialities must not be mistaken for striking statements.
When you get back to the office to write up the report of the speech you will feel the need of direct quotations—in fact, the length of your report will be determined by the number of direct quotations that you have to use in it—as well as by editorial dictum. It would be entirely wrong to quote any expressions of your own because they are somewhat like the speaker's statements, and it is impossible to quote anything less than a complete sentence in the report of a speech. Hence you will need complete sentences taken down verbatim in the exact words of the speaker. Make it a point to get complete sentences as you listen to the speech. Whenever a striking statement or an interesting part of the speech seems worth putting in your story get it down completely. You will find yourself writing most of the time because, while you are writing down one important sentence, the speaker will be uttering several more in explanation and may say something else of interest before you have finished writing down his first statement. Strict attention, a quick pencil, and a good memory are needed for this kind of work, but the reporting of speeches will lose its terrors after you have had a very small amount of practice.
Just as any news story begins with a lead and plays up its most striking fact in the first line, the report of a speech usually begins with the speaker's most striking or most important statement. As you are listening to his words watch for something striking for the lead—something that will catch the reader's eye and interest him. But you must exercise great care in selecting the statement for the lead. Theoretically and practically it must be something in strict accordance with the entire content of the speech and, if possible, it should be the one statement that sums up the whole speech in the most concise way. Somewhere in the discourse, at the beginning, at the end, or in some emphatic place, the speaker will usually sum up his complete ideas on the subject in a striking, concise way. Watch for this summary and get it down for the lead. However, there may be times when this summary, though concise, will be of little interest to the average reader and you will be forced to use some other striking statement. Then it is perfectly permissible to take any striking statement in the speech and use it for the lead, provided that the statement is directly connected with the rest of the discourse. But be fair to the speaker. Do not play up some chance remark as illustrative of the entire utterance; don't bring in an aside as the most interesting thing in his speech. If a preacher forgets himself to the extent of expressing a chance political opinion, it would obviously be unfair to him for you to play up that remark as the summary of his sermon. Your readers would get a false impression and the preacher would be angry. If he considers the chance remark of real importance in his sermon he will back it up with other statements that will give you an excuse for using it. In brief, watch for the most interesting and most striking statement in the entire speech, and in selecting this statement be fair and just and try to avoid giving a false impression of the speaker or of the speech. If you follow this rule you will never be in any danger of getting your paper into difficulties.