Another rule in reporting lectures, speeches, etc., applies to the writing of all newspaper stories. Write your report at once while the speech is still fresh in your mind. Your report must preserve the logic and continuity of the speech—it must be a fair resumé. Your notes will be at best mere jottings of chance sentences here and there. Do not allow them to get cold and lose their continuity. Write the report at once.
The writing of the report of a speech, lecture, or sermon is the same whether it is taken from a printed or stenographic copy of the discourse or from notes. It is perhaps easier to write from your notes because you have the important parts of the speech picked out, ready for use, by the aid of the rest of the audience. Before you can resumé a printed copy of the speech you must go through it and pick out the important sentences which you wish to quote and decide upon the most striking statement for the lead. There is no definite rule that can be followed in this except to take the topic sentences whenever they are stated with sufficient clearness. When you have decided on the statements that you wish to quote you have really reduced the speech to a form practically identical with the notes taken from verbal utterance, and the writing in either case is the same.
The lead of the report is very much like the lead of any other news story—for the report of a speech is really a news story. As soon as the speech is mentioned, the reader unconsciously asks a number of questions about it and the reporter must answer them in the first sentence. As in any other news story the questions are: What? Who? Where? When? and perhaps How? and Why? Reduced to the case of the speech report, they amount to what did he say, who said it, where did he say it, when, and perhaps how and why did he say it. You may answer the what by giving the subject of the discourse or by giving a striking statement in it. In every report the answer to some one of the questions is of greater interest and must be placed in the first line. If the speaker is of more than ordinary prominence his name makes a good beginning. If an ordinary person makes a speech at some meeting of prominence the when or where takes precedence over his name. But in most cases the reporter will find that none of these things is of sufficient importance for the beginning. Most public utterances that he will be called upon to report will be made by ordinary men in ordinary places and at ordinary times, and the most interesting part of the story will be what was said. Sometimes it suffices to give the title of the speech, but more often a striking statement from the speech makes the best beginning. However, although the speaker, the time, the place, etc., are overshadowed in importance by the subject or content of what the speaker says, they must be included in the same sentence with the title or striking statement. That is, in short, we catch the reader's interest with a striking statement from the speech and then delay the rest of the report while we tell who said it, when, where, etc. The necessity of this is obvious.
In accordance with the foregoing there are several possible ways in which to begin the lead of the report of any speech. It would be wrong to say that any one is more common or better than the others; the choice of the beginning must rest with the reporter. And yet there are various things to be noted in connection with each of these beginnings.
1. Direct Quotation Beginning.—Sentence.—The quotation that is to have the first line must of course be the most striking or the most interesting statement in the speech. If it consists of a single sentence—and it cannot be less than a sentence—the report may begin thus:
"Participation in government is not only the privilege, but the right, of every American citizen and should be considered a duty," said the Rev. Frederick W. Hamilton, president of Tufts College, who spoke on "The Political Duties of the American Citizen" at the monthly men's neighborhood meeting in the Roxbury Neighborhood House last night.—Boston Herald.
Here the reporter has given us a sentence that is practically a summary of the speech, has told us who said it, when and where, and has completed the paragraph with the title of the speech. Sometimes the title of the speech is not of great importance and its place in the lead may be given to a little summary as in the following:
"The modern man isn't afraid of hell," was the concise explanation which W. Lathrop Meaker gave in Franklin Union Hall yesterday afternoon and evening of the fact that the churches are losing their grip on the average man.—New York Sun.
A question which embodies the content of a speech may often be quoted at the beginning; thus: