How To Write Special Feature Articles / A Handbook for Reporters, Correspondents and Free-Lance Writers Who Desire to Contribute to Popular Magazines and Magazine Sections of Newspapers

by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

I suppose that the beginnings of everyone's business life always remain vivid memories. The first morning I reported for work at seven o'clock. Naturally, no one was in the front office, as the news department of a small-town newspaper office is sometimes called. I was embarrassed and nervous, and sat anxiously awaiting the arrival of the city editor. In five minutes he gave me sufficient instructions to last a year, but the only one I remember was, "Ask all the questions you can think of, and don't let anyone bluff you out of a story."

My first duty, and one that I performed every morning for several years, was to "make" an early morning train connecting with a large city, forty miles away. It was no easy task to approach strangers and ask their names and destination; but it was all good experience, and it taught me how to approach people and to ask personal questions without being rude.

During my service as society reporter I learned much, so much that I am convinced there is no work in the smaller towns better suited to women. Any girl who is bright and quick, who knows the ethics of being a lady, can hold this position and make better money at it than by teaching or clerking.

Each trade, they say, has its tricks, and being a society reporter is no exception. In towns of from one thousand to two thousand inhabitants, the news that Mrs. X. is going to give a party spreads rapidly by that system of wireless telegraphy that excels the Marconi—neighborhood gossip. But in the larger towns it is not so easy. In "our town," whenever there is a party the ice cream is ordered from a certain confectioner. Daily he permitted us to see his order book. If Mrs. Jones ordered a quart of ice cream we knew that she was only having a treat for the family. If it were two quarts or more, it was a party, and if it was ice cream in molds, we knew a big formal function was on foot.

Society reporting is a fertile field, and for a long time I had been thinking that society columns were too dull. My ideal of a newspaper is that every department should be edited so that everyone would read all the paper. I knew that men rarely read the social column. One day a man said to me that he always called his wife his better judgment instead of his better half. That appealed to me as printable, but where to put it in the paper? Why not in my own department? I did so. That night when the paper came out everyone clamored to know who the man was, for I had merely written, "A man in town calls his wife his better judgment instead of his better half."

Then I decided to make the society department a reflection of our daily life and sayings. In order to get these in I used the initials of my title, "S.R." I never used names, but I always managed to identify my persons.

As one might expect, I brought down a storm about my head. Many persons took the hints for themselves when they were not so intended, and there were some amusing results. For instance, when I said in the paper that "a certain man in a down-town store has perfect manners," the next day twelve men thanked me, and I received four boxes of candy as expressions of gratitude.

There were no complaints about the society column being dull after this; everyone read it and laughed at it, and it was quoted in many exchanges. Of course, I was careful to hurt no one's feelings, but I did occasionally have a little good-natured fun at the expense of people who wouldn't mind it. Little personal paragraphs of this sort must never be malicious or mean—if the paper is to keep its friends.

Of all my newspaper experience I like best to dwell on the society reporting; but if I were to advance I knew that I must take on more responsibility, so I became city editor of another paper. I was virtually managing editor, for the editor and owner was a politician and was away much of the time. It was then that I began to realize the responsibility of my position, to grapple with the problem of dealing fairly both with my employer and the public. The daily life with its varying incidents, the big civic issues, the stories to be handled, the rights of the advertisers to be considered, the adjusting of the news to the business department—all these were brought before me with a powerful clarity.

When a woman starts on a city paper she knows that there are linotypes, presses and other machinery. Often she has seen them work; but her knowledge of "how" they work is generally vague. It was on my third day as city editor that I realized my woeful ignorance of the newspaper business from the mechanical viewpoint. I had just arrived at the office when the foreman came to my desk.