A journalist requires no equipment but a quick perception of men and matters, a desire for information, and a belief that what interests her may interest someone else. A journalist is obliged to look ahead:
Someone is reported very ill—collect facts for an obituary notice.
A picture promises to become successful—have an account of the artist and his work ready for press.
An actor is producing a new play—try to learn something about the play, and any little incident of its production.
One used to write of things that had been; but since all this Yankee journalism has come in, one has to anticipate things that are to be. Weddings are described to-day before the marriage ceremony even takes place.
MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE’S WRITING TABLE
It is a bad sign of the times, but that is modern journalism. A journalist’s is a hard and anxious life and often ill-paid; but here, at least, men and women can earn equal wages, and have equal chances. Nearly all the papers except The Times now have women on their staff.
Just as an actor adopts various disguises, so it is amusing to remember how many pseudonyms have been the different masks which have helped me, as other journalists, to attract the attention of the public. The public loves variety. It would never, never pay to appear always as the same old stager.
Journalists must turn their hand to anything, at any time, and in any way. Sometimes I wrote as a man, sometimes as an old lady, comparing the past with the present. For instance, the “Elderly Scribe” became “A Girl at the Drawing-room,” under which heading a long article once appeared in a leading paper, describing my imaginary thrills as an American débutante at the first Court of King Edward VII.