Helen in the Editor's Chair

by Ruthe S. Wheeler

“Starting in bright and early, aren’t you?”

“Have to,” smiled Helen, “for Tom and I have only half days in which to put out the paper and do the job work.”

“I know, I know,” mused the old postmaster, “but you’re chips off the old block. You’ll make good.”

“Thanks, Mr. Hughes,” said Helen. “Your believing in us is going to help.”

She hastened on the few steps to the office and opened the doors and windows for the rooms were close and stuffy after being closed overnight. The young editor of the Herald paused to look around the composing room. Tom had certainly done a good job cleaning up the day before. The four steel forms which would hold the type for the week’s edition were in place, ready for the news she would write and the ads which it would be Tom’s work to solicit. The Linotype seemed to be watching her in a very superior but friendly manner and even the old press was polished and cleaned as never before.

Helen returned to the editorial office, rolled a sheet of copypaper into her typewriter, and sat down to write the story of the storm. She might have to change certain parts of the story about the condition of the injured later in the week but she could get the main part of it written while it was still fresh in her memory.

Hugh Blair had always made a point of writing his news stories in simple English and he had drilled Helen and Tom in his belief that the simpler a story is written the more widely it will be read. He had no time for the multitudes of adjectives which many country editors insist upon using, although he felt that strong, colorful words had their place in news stories.

With her father’s beliefs on news writing almost second nature, Helen started her story. It was simple and dramatic, as dramatic as the sudden descent of the storm on the valley. Her fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard and the story seemed to write itself. She finished one page and rolled another into the machine, hardly pausing in her rapid typing.

Page after page she wrote until she finally leaned back in her swivel chair, tired from the strain of her steady work.

She picked up the half dozen pages of typed copy. This was her first big story and she wanted it to read well, to be something of which her father would be proud when he read the copy of the paper they would send him. She went over the story carefully, changing a word here, another there. Occasionally she operated on some of her sentences, paring down the longer ones and speeding up the tempo of the story. It was nine-thirty before she was satisfied that she had done the best she could and she stuck the story on the copy spindle, ready for Tom when he wanted to translate it into type on the Linotype.