According to the survivors, Capt. Gilbert and the first and second officers were standing on the bridge when the collision occurred. There was no opportunity to give alarm to those below.
7. What are the objections to the first paragraph as the beginning of the following story, and how can you improve it in rewriting?
About 5 o’clock yesterday morning a wagon load of thieves arrived in front of the tenement house at 841 Holton Place. Leaving one of their number to hold the horse, the others went to the roof of the house and thence to the loft building at 837 Holton Place, on the top floor of which are the store and show rooms of the International Jewelry Company, of which Henry Hertel is President. The thieves cut a big hole through the roof of that building and then with the aid of a rope ladder let themselves down into the show room, where they packed a dozen suitcases belonging to traveling salesmen with loot, the value of which Mr. Hertel last night estimated to be about $5,000.
The International Jewelry Company is wired everywhere with burglar alarms, but the directing mind of yesterday’s theft evidently knew where all the wires were, for the hole was cut in one of the few places in the ceiling which had not been wired. After packing the suitcases the thieves retraced their steps over the roofs of 839 to 841 Holton Place, and then proceeding down the stairways of the tenement house, deposited the suitcases in the wagon and drove away.
The theft was discovered when the place was opened for business yesterday morning. An investigation was started, and tenants in 841 Holton Place told of seeing the wagon in front of that house at about 5 A.M. Detectives from the Reynolds Street Station are working on the case. So far they have reported no progress.
CHAPTER VI
SPEECHES, INTERVIEWS, AND TRIALS
Various Forms of Utterances. As news stories of speeches, sermons, lectures, official reports, and interviews, as well as of testimony, decisions, and arguments in trials and investigations, are concerned largely with direct or indirect quotation of written or spoken expression, the writing of them involves several elements that do not enter into the composition of the typical news story. In the types of news thus far considered, such as fires, accidents, and crime, the story was a narrative of what had happened. Although the facts were gleaned largely from observation and interviews, usually no person’s ideas or opinions were quoted. News stories of addresses, reports, or similar documents, interviews and court trials, on the other hand, have only a small incidental narrative-descriptive element to present the circumstances under which the utterance was made. The large and important part of such stories consists of a reproduction in complete or condensed form of the original expression.
Verbatim Quotation. Direct verbatim quotations of all utterances are generally preferred for news stories, because they are exact reproductions of the originals. Whenever a copy of any of these forms of expression can be obtained, it is desirable for the reporter to get one either before or after the utterance is made, because of the accuracy of the quotation which a copy makes possible. Frequently copies of addresses, lectures, sermons, reports, decisions, and testimony can be had, and exactness of reproduction is thus secured. When a copy cannot be obtained, the reporter is dependent upon himself to get the equivalent of it by taking down as nearly as possible a verbatim reproduction of such parts of the utterance as he desires.