"Every foot of ground is five feet deep with subjects; all you have to do is to scratch the surface for one," declared the editor of a popular magazine who is also a successful writer of special articles. This statement may be taken as literally true. Within the narrow confines of one's house and yard, for instance, are many topics. A year's experience with the family budget, a home-made device, an attempt to solve the servant problem, a method of making pin-money, a practical means of economizing in household management, are forms of personal experience that may be made interesting to newspaper and magazine readers. A garden on a city lot, a poultry house in a back yard, a novel form of garage, a new use for a gasoline engine, a labor-saving device on the farm, may afford equally good topics. One's own experience, always a rich field, may be supplemented by experiences of neighbors and friends.
A second source of subjects is the daily newspaper. Local news will give the writer clues that he can follow up by visiting the places mentioned, interviewing the persons concerned, and gathering other relevant material. When news comes from a distance, he can write to the persons most likely to have the desired information. In neither case can he be sure, until he has investigated, that an item of news will prove to contain sufficient available material for an article. Many pieces of news, however, are worth running down carefully, for the day's events are rich in possibilities.
Pieces of news as diverse as the following may suggest excellent subjects for special articles: the death of an interesting person, the sale of a building that has historic associations, the meeting of an uncommon group or organization, the approach of the anniversary of an event, the election or appointment of a person to a position, an unusual occupation, an odd accident, an auction, a proposed municipal improvement, the arrival of a well-known person, an official report, a legal decision, an epidemic, the arrest of a noted criminal, the passing of an old custom, the publication of the city directory, a railroad accident, a marked change in fashion in dress.
A third source of both subjects and material is the report of special studies in some field, the form of the report ranging from a paper read at a meeting to a treatise in several volumes. These reports of experiments, surveys, investigations, and other forms of research, are to be found in printed bulletins, monographs, proceedings of organizations, scientific periodicals, and new books. Government publications—federal, state, and local—giving results of investigative work done by bureaus, commissions, and committees, are public documents that may usually be had free of charge. Technical and scientific periodicals and printed proceedings of important organizations are generally available at public libraries.
As Mr. Waldemar Kaempffert, editor of Popular Science Monthly, has said:
There is hardly a paper read before the Royal Institution or the French Academy or our American engineering and chemical societies that cannot be made dramatically interesting from a human standpoint and that does not chronicle real news.
"If you want to publish something where it will never be read," a wit has observed, "print it in an official document." Government reports are filled with valuable information that remains quite unknown to the average reader unless newspapers and magazines unearth it and present it in popular form. The popularization of the contents of all kinds of scientific and technical publications affords great opportunities for the writer who can present such subjects effectively.
In addressing students of journalism on "Science and Journalism," Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the Independent, who was formerly a professor of chemistry, has said:
The most radical ideas of our day are not apt to be found in the popular newspaper or in queer little insurrectionary, heretical and propaganda sheets that we occasionally see, but in the technical journals and proceedings of learned societies. The real revolutions are hatched in the laboratory and study. The papers read before the annual meetings of the scientific societies, and for the most part unnoticed by the press, contain more dynamite than was ever discovered in any anarchist's shop. Political revolutions merely change the form of government or the name of the party in power. Scientific revolutions really turn the world over, and it never settles back into its former position.