“Excluding exceptional cases, I am of the opinion that safeguarding the health of the young child is the more important consideration, and that any home worthy of the name should be able to furnish all the simple instruction and direction of the play instinct the child requires.”

SUGGESTIONS

  1. Get advance copies of speeches, statements, and reports when it is possible.
  2. Give direct, verbatim quotations whenever they are effective.
  3. Don’t misrepresent a speaker by “playing up” a quotation that, taken from its context, is misleading.
  4. Combine excerpts into a coherent, unified story.
  5. Select the form of beginning best suited to the subject matter.
  6. Set off as a paragraph a direct quotation of more than one sentence at the beginning of a story.
  7. Avoid too many or too involved “that” clauses in the lead.
  8. Put strong direct or indirect quotations at beginnings of paragraphs.
  9. Don’t place unemphatic phrases at the beginning of a paragraph, such as, “The speaker then said that,” etc.
  10. Avoid as far as possible combinations of direct and indirect quotations in the same paragraph.
  11. Avoid “I believe,” “I think,” etc., at the beginning of sentences of direct quotation.
  12. Make separate paragraphs of introductory statements like “He said in part,” and end them with a colon.
  13. Give in the lead of each day’s story of a trial, the essential explanatory details concerning the case.
  14. Vary explanatory phrases; don’t use repeatedly in the same story “he said,” “the report continues,” etc.
  15. Don’t fail to enclose in quotation marks every direct quotation.
  16. Use single quotation marks for quotations within other quotations.
  17. Use quotation marks only at the beginning of each paragraph of a continuous quotation of several paragraphs and at the end of the last paragraph.
  18. Quote important testimony verbatim.
  19. Keep yourself out of your interviews.

PRACTICE WORK

1. Write a news story of 500 words on the following address by Senator William E. Borah of Idaho on “Why We Need an Income Tax,” which you may say was delivered before a large audience at the Auditorium last night under the auspices of the Progressive Republican Club:

One of the many unfortunate things imposed from first to last upon this country by reason of the existence of slavery was the compromise in the constitution of the United States providing that direct taxes should be imposed in accordance with population.

To levy taxes according to population upon any kind of property is impracticable and cumbersome even when the tax is confined to the kind of property contemplated by the framers of the constitution. It is not too much to say that the clause with reference to imposing a direct tax would never have found its way into the constitution but through the fear which arose out of the belief that the North might impose an arbitrary and unjust tax upon slaves.

The discussion first arose over the protection of the slaves, and to guard against this the Southern delegates insisted upon an equal representation in Congress with the North. Gouverneur Morris and others declared they would never consent to counting a slave equal to his master. The discussion finally took a wider range owing to the existence of large tracts of land in the South of less value per acre than the land in the North; hence it was believed that these lands might be taxed unfairly.

At last, therefore, it was provided that direct taxes should be imposed according to population, and direct taxes, in my opinion,[Pg 157] referred alone to slaves and lands and the improvements on lands.

The Supreme Court in the Pollock case extended and broadened the terms of this somewhat unfortunate compromise so that it now not only covers lands but income from land, personal property, and income from personal property. This decision was made possible by invoking a mere technicality, that is, that a tax upon the rents of land is a tax upon the land.