Articles designed to give practical guidance, to show readers how to do something, are particularly effective when written in the first person. If these "how-to-do-something" articles are to be most useful to readers, the conditions under which the personal experience was obtained must be fairly typical. Personal experience articles of this type are very popular in women's magazines, agricultural journals, and publications that appeal to business men.
Examples of the Personal Experience Story. The opportunities for service offered to women by small daily newspapers are set forth in the story below, by means of the personal experiences of one woman. The article was published in the Woman's Home Companion, and was illustrated by a half-tone reproduction of a wash drawing of a young woman seated at her desk in a newspaper office.
"They Call Me the 'Hen Editor'"
The Story of a Small-Town Newspaper Woman
By SADIE L. MOSSLER
"What do you stay buried in this burg for? Why, look how you drudge! and what do you get out of it? New York or some other big city is the place for you. There's where you can become famous instead of being a newspaper woman in a one-horse town."
A big city newspaper man was talking. He was in our town on an assignment, and he was idling away spare time in our office. Before I could answer, the door opened and a small girl came to my desk.
"Say," she said, "Mama told me to come in here and thank you for that piece you put in the paper about us. You ought to see the eatin's folks has brought us! Heaps an' heaps! And Ma's got a job scrubbin' three stores."
The story to which she referred was one that I had written about a family left fatherless, a mother and three small children in real poverty. I had written a plain appeal to the home people, with the usual results.
"That," I said, "is one reason that I am staying here. Maybe it isn't fame in big letters signed to an article, but it's another kind."