1. Speaker Beginning.—The very purpose behind interviewing makes the so-called speaker beginning most common. It is almost an invariable rule that the report of an interview must begin with the man's name unless what he says is of greater importance than his name—which is seldom.
The simplest form of the speaker beginning is the one in which the speaker's name is followed directly by a summary of what he said, as:
Dr. David Starr Jordan, president of Leland Stanford Junior University, said yesterday at the Holland House that in the development of American universities educators must separate the lower two classes from the upper two, the present freshman and sophomore classes to be absorbed by small colleges or supplemental high schools, making the junior year the first in the university training. He said the universities should receive only men, not boys.—New York Tribune.
Another kind of speaker beginning may devote most of the lead to the explanation of the reason for the interview, giving the briefest possible summary of what was said: Thus:
Director Lang of the department of public safety is going to place a ban on the playing of tennis on Sunday. He doesn't know just yet how he is going to accomplish this, but yesterday he declared that he would find some law applicable to the case.—Pittsburgh Gazette-Times.
One step further brings us to the entire exclusion of the result of the interview from the lead. In this case the reason for the interview occupies the entire lead and we must read part of the second paragraph to find what the man said; thus:
Charles F. Washburn, Richmond Hill's wizard of finance, promises to appear at his broker's office in Newark, N. J., this morning with a fresh bank roll, accumulated since the close of the market on Saturday.
(The second paragraph tells what it is all about and the third quotes his words.)—New York World.
It is to be noted that in each of the above leads the speaker's name is always accompanied by a word or two telling who he is and why he was interviewed. Furthermore the reporter himself has no more place in the lead than if he were reporting a speech—his existence and the part he played in getting the interview are strictly ignored.
2. Summary Beginning.—There are two common ways of beginning an interview story with a summary. First, the lead may begin with a that-clause which embodies the gist of the interview; this is like the that-clause beginning of the report of a speech; thus: