In order to insert the latest news without taking the time necessary to make up new forms, prepare new matrices, and cast new stereotype plates, a device called the “fudge” is employed. After the first page form of a late edition has been used to make a matrix, about six inches of type is taken out from two columns in the lower left hand corner or the upper right hand corner of the page, and a new matrix and a stereotype plate are made in which this corner is a blank. This new plate with the blank space is then put on the press in place of the regular first page plate. As fast as late news is received, it is set up on linotype lines, or “slugs,” and these lines are clamped on a small cylinder in the press. When the paper runs through the press, these linotype lines on the cylinder are printed, often in red ink, in the space on the front page left unprinted by the blank in the plate. To save more time with this device, a telegraph wire is run to the press room and a linotype machine is installed beside it, so that the latest news can be cast on linotype “slugs” and put on the “fudge” cylinder as fast as the reports are received by telegraph. Results of baseball games, races, and other sporting events can be printed to advantage by means of the “fudge.”
Recently a mailing machine has been introduced that folds, wraps, and addresses each copy separately as fast as papers are fed into it.
In no other process of manufacture that is as complicated as newspaper making, it is safe to say, has equal speed of production been attained.
Handling a Big Story. The scene in a metropolitan newspaper office following the receipt of the first news of the “Titanic” disaster, as graphically portrayed by an editor of a New York morning paper, illustrates the conditions under which important news, received late, is hurried into print.[1] The account in part is as follows:
At 1:20 a.m. Monday, April 15, [1912], the cable editor opened an envelope of the Associated Press that had stamped on its face “Bulletin.” This is what he read:
Cape Race, N. F., Sunday night, April 14.—At 10:25 o’clock tonight the White Star Line steamship “Titanic” called “C. Q. D.” to the Marconi station here, and reported having struck an iceberg. The steamer said that immediate assistance was required.
The cable editor looked at his watch. It was 1:20 and lacked just five minutes of the hour when the mail edition goes to press.
“Boy!” he called sharply.
An office boy was at his side in a moment.
“Send this upstairs; tell them the head is to come; double column, and tell the night editor to rip open two columns on the first page for a one-stick dispatch of the ‘Titanic’ striking an iceberg and sinking.”