Although the purely informative type of story is the usual one for weather, the subject may be treated in a lighter vein. There is often a chance for life and color whether the treatment be informative or more or less humorous.
FIRST WINTER WEATHER
Boston Transcript
Start up the furnace fire and begin the inroads on that well-stocked coal bin (if it is well stocked), for winter has come. The Old Man of the North put in appearance this morning, long enough to register officially at the Weather Bureau with a few flakes of snow. There was a welcome rainstorm during the night, and the snowflakes were just a tail-end contribution from the storm, a few raindrops turned into frozen particles when struck with the chill wind that blew in from the northwest.
The forecast says: “Fair, continued cold tonight and Wednesday; freezing tonight.” The forecaster’s official verdict will be believed readily enough by all those who have been out during the day. When the temperature reading is only 41° in the middle of the day, as was the case today, it is a sure enough sign that winter is approaching, especially when a strong northwest wind is doing its best to find all the cracks and crevices in the buildings of the community, so that it will know where to locate them later in the year without wasting time in the search.
It was colder at eleven o’clock this morning, by thirteen degrees, than it was at midnight, while the lowest temperature reading of the morning was between eight and nine o’clock, 39. That is not the lowest of the season, however, for nearly a month ago, Sept. 29 to be exact, there was a reading of 34°. Forecaster Smith thinks that mark will be passed tonight; in fact, he would not be at all surprised if the minimum between now and tomorrow morning were around 28 to 30°. After tomorrow there will be a shift back to weather warmer than normal, or at least it looks so now.
Today’s brand of weather is much nearer the normal than what the month of October has previously brought forth. Up to today there has been an accumulated excess of 156 degrees in heat, or an average of about six degrees a day.
SNOW STORM
Springfield Republican
Boisterous storms which broke over the whole eastern and southern quarters of the United States yesterday prepared the first “white Easter” this land has experienced in years. The snowy tumult swept in across the Atlantic from the south and east late Friday night and all day yesterday, bringing a considerable quantity of wet ocean with it, which was distributed high above tide levels along the whole sea coast from Maine to Florida, drowning out business in some cities and driving street car and automobile patrons to boats. Coastal shipping was paralyzed, rail traffic in many salt water districts was halted and wire lines were prostrated throughout the southern coast states. Louisiana and Texas saw the first scums of ice that have ever been frozen in those states in April. Hardy New England refused to be daunted by the large rough patches of “weather” flung down here. Rails and wires stood up well under the strain of blustery winds and snow ranging in depth from six inches to more than a foot. But the storm was no fun.
All Western Massachusetts and Connecticut gasped and floundered yesterday afternoon and last night. The wind and flurries of snow presaging trouble were here before noon, but the real snowfall did not start until about 1 o’clock. Then a continuous fall with swirling gusts whisked through city streets and over country hills, drifting always where drifts were not desirable. Around Springfield the snow was about eight inches deep on the level and heavy drifts formed all over town. The railroads out of this city managed to keep within half an hour of schedule time, however.
The snow was hardly soggy enough to put a serious crimp into traffic, and trains contrived to do their own drift-bucking, though the old reliable snowplows stood ready in the yards with dabs of axle grease on their snouts ready for quick calls to battle. Trolly lines about the city were open all afternoon and night, thanks to eight plows and a couple of sanders, with cars running as near schedule as possible. The Feeding Hills line was tied up two hours early in the evening when snow-choked switches refused to slide, and two cars were bounced off on the ground.
All over town the going was treacherous enough to send many a smoothshod pedestrian to sudden and sometimes ignominious downfall. On one Main-street corner a perfectly respectable old gentleman went the “zip-bang!” route, as the sporting writers would have it, and startled passers-by with dark blue language when he spied his shiny Easter hat whiff hastily across the street and cave in against an adamant store front. On a busy corner at the evening rush hour, a swarthy, well-dressed young man went to the pavement all spraddled out, and tripped a woman with a potted lily in her arms. The lily pot collapsed with the well-known dull thud. The woman was outraged when the young man hopped up, looked frightened and dived into a nearby lunch-room, without a word. The manager of the lunch-room, who has to be an interpreter in order to hold his job, said that the swarthy, who was his assistant chef, had not tarried to apologize because he didn’t know how to do it in English.
When the snow began to fall in the afternoon, the street department made a few desultory attempts with sweepers to keep it confined to the gutters, but the storm became too persistent for that. Drifts filled the crossings in spite of gangs of shovelers and traffic of all sorts was enfeebled though not halted. Traffic officers and drivers were blinded by the fine flurries at times and the police consider the day a lucky one because only one slight crash occurred. Harry Edwards, driving N. L. Byron’s undertaking car, failed to see the warning palm of the officer at the corner of Main and State streets soon enough, and with wheels locked his machine skidded into a broadside collision with a Fiberloid company’s truck. The Byron car came off with a crushed fender and a few scratches.
Easter week business in hats and Sunday trumpery was badly handicapped. The storm yesterday did all the crimping left undone by the trolly strike, which kept folks at home Wednesday and Thursday; so that practically all of the downtown store owners admitted last night that their week’s business was ruined. The Forbes & Wallace, the Steiger, the Kinsman-Campbell and a few other of the larger store managements were irked at the sight of their sales staffs standing around idle last night, and closed a half-hour early. The flower stores, too, were badly hit by the storm, some of them having perishable stocks left on their hands last night, which will have to spoil for want of a market.
The weather conditions yesterday caused a big rush of business for the telephone company, extra girls being called in and kept going at top speed all day. During the rush hours the service was especially heavy, being about double that of an ordinary day, and the exchange boards were a blaze of lights. In spite of the demand the company responded well, giving fine service. Ordinarily about 110,000 local calls are handled each day, but the number went far in excess of that figure yesterday. But in spite of all there were large feelings of thankfulness in many bosoms yesterday when the street cars were observed going about their regular business. Had the trollymen’s strike not been called off Thursday evening, the city would have been utterly paralyzed. The strike occurred on two days when the weather was fine. Apparently the gods did a little charitable figuring before the week’s program was arranged.
However much people may have been surprised by April snow, yesterday’s fall was not unprecedented. Springfield has been almost snowed under several times during the month of April, light falls having been seen here frequently. A few of the heaviest snows recorded were as follows:—
April 19, 1821, two feet.
April 6, 1852, tremendous storm. Snow a foot deep on the level.
April 17, 1854, heavy storm, with two-foot drifts and good sleighing.
April 3, 1861, deep drifts, traffic suspended.
April 2, 1862, over a foot of snow.
April 7, 1868, seven inches of snow.
April 1, 1872, a six-inch fall.
April 25 and 26, 1874, severe storm with 18-inches of snow.
April 5, 1876, heaviest snowstorm of the winter, two feet on the level.
April 8 and 9, 1907, about seven inches on the level.
FIRST DAYS OF SPRING
New York Herald
Central Park was filled yesterday with throngs of visitors out to enjoy the balmy air of a spring day. Automobiles, victorias and other smart equipages passed in continuous procession along the drives. Fifth avenue stages unloaded hundreds who streamed through the park and joined the throng already there. The new life of springtime was manifest on every side.
In mid-afternoon, under the warming influence of the sun, couples seated on the benches began boldly to hold hands. The Mall was peopled by thousands who walked or travelled on cars from all parts of the city. There were long rows of family parties. At every avenue of approach were venders of balloons and whirligigs displaying their wares to children.
The space on the walks not covered by pedestrians was taken up by perambulators and go-carts. Even the squirrels seemed to be surprised by the outpouring of visitors and the increase in the peanut supply.
Boats splashed in the lakes and streams bearing happy couples and shouting, happy faced youngsters. Along the railings overlooking the bridle paths stood thousands watching the smartly dressed equestrians gallop by.
The menagerie was the magnet that drew and held the largest crowds; fully fifty thousand viewed the animals. For the first time many of them saw the new members of the zoological family that arrived during the winter. James Conway, the veteran shepherd of the park flocks, had twenty brand new lambs to show, and it was with a great sense of pride that he displayed them upon the hillside. In addition to a new staff he had at his side the beautiful collie Jack, recently presented to him by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan.
Warmed by a soft breeze from the south, Coney Island had a spring festival. Fifty thousand persons, responding to the invitation of the vernal equinox, spent the afternoon at the resort by the sea. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company had to put on extra trains. Automobiles were out in great number.
Coney Island has awakened from its winter sleep earlier than usual this season. The roller coaster railways and many merry-go-rounds already open were augmented yesterday by the opening of the “loop the loop.” The horse race feature of Steeplechase Park will open next Sunday, and the whole park will begin its season on the following Sunday.
Dreamland Park will open on May 14. Work of getting the park in shape will begin this week. Luna Park will open, as usual, about the first week of May. It was reported yesterday that a well known Manhattan restaurateur will open an establishment next month adjoining the New Brighton Theatre.
Isaac Stein, a merchant in Surf avenue, Coney Island, asserts that he is the first man to don a straw hat for the 1910 season. He put one on yesterday and sat for two hours on his porch.
COLD SUMMER WEATHER
New York Evening Post
June has carried off the year’s honors in weather record-breaking, with the cold winds of last night and to-day. At six o’clock this morning the Weather Bureau’s thermometer registered 48 degrees. Since 1871, when the tabulations of the Weather Bureau began, no such temperature has been noted after June 9. There have been one or two days of chillier weather in past Junes, with 45 degrees as the record for low temperature, but none of these have come so late in the month.
New Yorkers who woke up in the cold June dawn and went groping into bottoms of trunks for the blankets of January may take some malicious pleasure in the fact that it was colder in some places in the State. The most uncomfortable community in New York appears to have been Camden, in the north, near the St. Lawrence, where the mercury slid down to 36 degrees. Rochester was in little better condition, with a frigid summer morning’s air at 40 degrees, and Syracuse shivered over its cereal and cream in a hardly more cheerful atmosphere at 42 degrees. A prevailing, if not popular, temperature in many places was 44 degrees, which chilled Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, and Scranton, Pa. Over the line in Vermont, Northfield was delighting in a temperature of 40 degrees.
The explanation of all these rare days in June for those who are not content with knowing that it is too cold for comfort at this time of year, is that there has been an area of high barometric pressure hovering around the Canadian Northwest recently, and that it has been moving eastward and down over a part of the United States on its way out to sea. Everywhere it has been accompanied by drops in temperature of from 14 to 20 degrees, so that New York is no worse off than any other State. Yesterday this area was over northern Minnesota, and last night it was over Lake Huron. It is still with us in New York, and is likely to be with us to-night, the weather experts say, so that housewives may as well keep their blankets on the beds, now that they are out. Just how far the thermometer may drop to-night cannot be predicted. The weather man thinks there may be frost in the country districts to-night.
A serious side to the prospect of frost is the danger of damage to fruit trees and gardens. Last night, fortunately, frosts were prevented by the rain which fell early in the night and which left the trees and crops safe as the sky cleared later. Tonight, however, different conditions are to be faced and farmers will have to protect their produce as far as they can. There were damaging frosts on one or two of the cold nights of last week.
So far there has been an interesting weather contest between months this year. May furnished the hottest weather on its 26th and 27th that had been recorded for that month in 34 years, with temperatures of 89 and 91 degrees. June has outclassed May and made it impossible for any other month to better her record, by outdoing all known feats. With to-morrow, June 21, the summer solstice and the longest day of the year, the official beginning of the supposedly hot season is expected to usher in a period of normally settled weather.
HIGH WIND
New York Times
Wind, which seemed never to be of remarkable velocity, but which blew in gusts that whipped a fine rain into stinging particles, blinding to pedestrians and to drivers of vehicles, caused the death of two men yesterday and injury to many others, and did damage to property in Manhattan and Brooklyn that threatened many other lives. One of the victims of the storm was run down by an automobile; the other was blown into the bay and drowned.
A derrick was blown from a six-story building and fell into the roof of a moving-picture house adjoining, four stories below. In Brooklyn, the front wall, 100 feet long, of a grain elevator crashed into the street, and the spire of St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church was partly blown to pieces.
It was in Columbia Street, between Pacific and Amity Streets, Brooklyn, that the greatest damage was done. There are the buildings of the Dow Stores and Grain Elevator Company. One of the buildings, more than 80 feet in height, runs for 100 feet along Columbia Street. Its front wall was of brick, windowless and blank above the street floor. Behind it ran wooden bins, in which grain was stored, and between it and the bins were no cross-beams or supports. It was this that fell.
Tons of brick crashed into the street just after 8 o’clock, carrying down the trolley poles and lines of the crosstown line of surface cars and smashing against the walls opposite. Like the wrecked building, however, these were storehouses and factories, and little damage was done to them.
The roar of the falling wall sounded like an explosion, and Policeman Guthrie of the Amity Street Station and the crowd which rushed to Columbia Street thought a bomb had been exploded. The whole wall, 100 feet long, had fallen into the street from the roof to a point twenty feet above the sidewalk.
John Snackenberg, an Inspector in the Building Department, said that grain stored in the building might have exploded by spontaneous combustion or the accumulation of years which had dropped between the bins and the outer wall might have swollen and forced the brick wall out. He would not say that either of these things had happened, however, and it was generally believed that the wind had started the wall swaying until it had toppled over.
John Callahan and his three-year-old son, John, Jr., were on their way home to 81 Congress Street when the wall fell, and they were cut and bruised by bricks. John Sullivan of 100 Baltic Street was hurt in the same way, and all were treated by Dr. Lee of the Long Island College Hospital.
The crowds returning to their homes from the place were warned away from the corner of Court and Congress Street. There a big piece of copper about fifty feet long was swaying from the tip of St. Paul’s spire. The church, which is the oldest Catholic Church in Brooklyn, since the renovation of St. James’s Pro-Cathedral, in Jay Street, has a spire covered with slate and protected along the edges with strips of copper.
The wind detached one of these, twenty-five feet long, and blew it across the street to the roof of a tenement at 196 Court Street, where it smashed through the skylight and put the tenants in a panic, though none was hurt. The second strip, only partly detached, blew to and fro like the pendulum of a huge clock, occasionally knocking pieces of slate into the street as it banged against the spire. The police blocked off the corner with red lanterns and prevented pedestrians or vehicles from passing.
In Manhattan the wind blew a 300-pound derrick from the roof of a six-story building at 801 Third Avenue, near Fiftieth Street. It fell on the roof of the two-story building adjoining, and the crash startled the 200 occupants of a moving picture house on the floor beneath. They hustled for the doors, and women’s dresses were torn in the struggle. None was hurt, however.
James Costello, a retired policeman and special watchman in a bank in Williams Street, and Charles Smith, employed on a barge moored to the end of Long Dock, in Erie Basin, were the storm’s victims. Costello was run down by an automobile in front of 7,210 Fourteenth Avenue, Brooklyn, when he tried to cross the street, his vision shielded by an umbrella, which the wind forced him to hold over his face.
Smith, with Edward Jurgeson, was crossing on a plank between the end of the pier and his barge when a gust of wind blew him off. Jurgeson stretched out a hand and caught Smith’s arm. He could not hold him and was pulled into the water. Other bargemen, hearing them yell, threw ropes, and Jurgeson caught one. He was hauled into the barge, but Smith was lost. His body was recovered.
Three fourteen-year-old boys were hurt in Paterson, N. J., when the wind blew down a barn at 80 Plum Street, in which they had taken refuge from the rain. They were Louis Krager of 6, Frank Carman of 71, and Louis Rose of 34 Plum Street.
The boys were buried in the wreckage of the building until firemen dug them out. Then it was found that Krager had his right arm and left leg broken and both the others probably had fractured skulls. Young Krager was caught beneath several heavy beams and could not be moved until firemen had rigged a block and falls and lifted the beams. The youngsters were taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital.
According to the weather forecast, the wind, which blew from the northeast yesterday, will haul to the northwest to-day, and may blow even more heavily.
Note—In the next two stories the facts about the same eclipse are given in different ways.
ECLIPSE OF SUN
(1)
Washington Herald
That feeling of awe inspired by the shutting off of the sun’s light was prevalent in Washington yesterday morning for about three hours.
All over the city groups of men, women, and children were formed to view the phenomenon through smoked glasses. Those who had not been informed of the eclipse, or who had neglected to ascertain the time of the sun’s darkening, mistook the appearance of things as foreboding rain.
The darkness was not like the darkness of night. It was a gloomy blackness, and seemed to carry a chill with it as it passed over the earth.
At the Naval Observatory, on Georgetown Heights, a corps of five astronomers were making observations of the spectacle, and photographs were taken by a forty-foot photo-heliograph.
Under the direction of Prof. W. S. Eichelberger, the observers recorded the first contact of the sun and moon at thirty-five minutes and twenty-eight seconds after 9 o’clock, just ten seconds before the predicted time. The sun was in partial eclipse until forty-nine minutes and two seconds after 12 o’clock.
Photographs were taken at different intervals of the moon’s transit by Prof. George H. Peters. Those who assisted in making the observations were Profs. F. B. Littell and G. A. Hill, assistant astronomers, Mat Frederickson and C. W. Frederick.
According to the astronomers, only about 75 per cent of the sun’s face was darkened, but the eclipse was total in Florida and Mexico.
This was the second eclipse of the year, the other having occurred on January 3. As the sun yesterday was not completely hidden, the phenomenon of the “corona” was not visible. The shadow was visible, however, over the whole of North America, the northern portion of South America, the southwestern part of Europe, the northwest corner of Africa, and the Northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The spectacle was regarded by astronomers at the observatory as highly instructive, many crescent images being seen.
Last evening, immediately after sunset, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Neptune, and Venus were noticeable, grouped together in the West. These stars, according to astronomers, will not be seen again in such proximity for several hundred years.
In other days, the combination of two such phenomena, the grouping of large planets, and an eclipse of the sun, would start all sorts of forebodings, but with the general spread of astronomical knowledge, events like these are accepted as part of the workings of the great law that rules the universe, and have ceased to strike terror.
(2)
Washington Post
Sooty nose tips were quite the fashion in the National Capital yesterday forenoon. People got them by squinting through bits of smoked glass at the sun and moon. Our Lady of the Night, instead of being decently abed with her star children in the celestial nursery, was up and abroad in the full glare of the June morning, and had the astronomical rudeness to cast a shadow on Sabbath newspapers by passing between their readers and the light.
It took her 3 hours, 13 minutes, and 34 seconds, to a dot, to march across the sun, and all Washington flocked into the front yard to gaze on the lady’s transit. They bore gingerly in their fingers small pieces of glass darkened by wick smoke, and such as in their innocence yielded to the promptings of mischief-minded folk to “Hold it closer, dear, closer, so you can see,” reaped the reward of the unsophisticated in smudged noses and gay shouts of ribaldry at their cost.
It was 35 minutes and 28 seconds past 9 o’clock, standard time, when the partial eclipse began. At that instant occurred what astronomers call the first contact, when the windward edge of the roistering moon impinged on the sun’s periphery. Get it? Periphery—circumference—rim. (Representing the difference between the Naval Observatory, Connecticut avenue and South Washington. All the same, but seconds different.)
It was 1 hour 36 minutes and 47 seconds later, or 11:12:15 a. m., when the Pale Orb of Night (phrase borrowed) reached the half-way point in her morning stroll across the perpendicular path of the light dispenser, and achieved the casting of a shadow on the world that, if it didn’t send the birds to roost, at least fooled some lazy folk into turning over with a happy sigh of surprise for a longer snooze.
It was 29 minutes and 2 seconds past the hour of high noon when her ladyship blew off to bed, scandalous jade, and the smoked-glass gazers went to lunch.
At the Naval Observatory, on Wisconsin avenue Heights, during the eclipse Prof. W. S. Eichelberger and his full staff were as busy as 97 eggs in an incubator at hatching time.
“The eclipse,” added the professor, “arrived ten seconds ahead of the predicted time and lasted thirteen seconds less than the predicted period. Five observers noted the times of contact—Prof. F. B. Littell, U. S. N., Assistant Astronomers G. A. Hill, J. C. Hammond, Matt Frederickson, C. W. Frederick, and myself—who directed the observations. A photograph of the maximum eclipse was taken by Assistant George H. Peters, and a print was obtained through the courtesy of Capt. W. J. Barnett, U. S. N., superintendent of the observatory.
“The photograph was taken with the 40-foot photoheliograph installed at the observatory. All other official observations were made by equatorial telescopes. The day was fine for observations. The image of the sun was very steady at the first contact, but somewhat less steady at the last.”
The photoheliograph is a photographic camera, forty feet long, mounted horizontally. Within two feet of the front end of the forty-foot tube (or bellows, to borrow a photographical term) is the telescope lens. Two feet in front of it is a wedge-shaped piece of unsilvered glass, called the mirror. This mirror receives the sun’s rays direct, diverts the major portion of the light, and reflects the small remainder upon the lens, which in turn imprints the image upon the sensitive plate at the near end of the tube.
This near end—earth end, it might be called—is inserted in one wall of a square, dark room, within which the photographer stands. A vertical slit, one-sixteenth of an inch wide, in the near end of the tube, admits the light from the lens. At the precise moment the photographer, by a quick, strong pull on a lever, shoots the sensitive plate across this slit, thereby accomplishing an “exposure” of about one one-hundredth of a second in duration. In that infinitesimal fraction of time the desired image of the eclipse is—and yesterday was—imprinted upon the photographer’s plate.
In case of a total eclipse the operation is different. On account of the complete obscuration of the luminary by the moon, a time exposure of about two minutes is required, and to achieve this a clock mechanism turns the camera tube so as to keep the heavenly object always centered on the lens.
The diameter of the sun is 800,000 miles. The diameter of the moon is 4,000 miles. But the sun is 92,500,000 miles away from the earth, and the moon is only 24,000 miles away. So, upon the ocular principle that the nearer an object is the bigger it looks, the moon, when it passed between the sun and the earth yesterday, had an apparent diameter as great as the actual diameter of the sun. That is why, when there is a total eclipse, the moon is big enough, looked at from the earth, to all but completely hide the sun, though the sun is 200 times as large as the moon. Otherwise there could not be such a thing as a total eclipse.
So yesterday in Florida and Mexico, where the eclipse was central, at the moment of the maximum eclipse all that the people could see of the sun was a brilliant ring around the circumference of the moon, like a molten circlet.
April 19, 1821, two feet.
April 6, 1852, tremendous storm. Snow a foot deep on the level.
April 17, 1854, heavy storm, with two-foot drifts and good sleighing.
April 3, 1861, deep drifts, traffic suspended.
April 2, 1862, over a foot of snow.
April 7, 1868, seven inches of snow.
April 1, 1872, a six-inch fall.
April 25 and 26, 1874, severe storm with 18-inches of snow.
April 5, 1876, heaviest snowstorm of the winter, two feet on the level.
April 8 and 9, 1907, about seven inches on the level.
CHAPTER XIII
SPORTS
Interest in sports. One of the marked characteristics of American newspapers is the large amount of space, both absolutely and relatively, that they devote in every issue to news of sports. Although there is undoubtedly a healthy interest in athletic contests on the part of many readers, newspapers have greatly stimulated this interest and have created a considerable part of the present demand for sporting news and gossip. Hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers who have never seen a major league baseball game follow day by day the doings of the various teams and players, not merely during the playing season but throughout the greater part of the year. Newspapers have also assisted in developing intercollegiate football from a game in which students and alumni were primarily interested into a sport of big spectacular contests that attract the general public. Even after prize fighting was barred in most states, newspapers, by the space given to the contestants for months before every fight, were able to maintain wide-spread interest in the results. In order to furnish readers with a very large amount of reading matter concerning both major and minor sports, most papers have a special staff of sports writers under the direction of the sporting editor.
Type of story. Sporting news stories may be divided into three classes: (1) those that deal with the contestants and the conditions before the event, (2) those that report the contest itself, and (3) those that analyze the event and its results. Stories that discuss the relative merits of the contestants and forecast the results of the game are based on first hand observations of the writer or on the observations of others, regarding the showing made by the contestants in previous events and in practice. The general and the detailed accounts of a contest can, of course, be written only by writers who have witnessed it. The analysis of the event and of its results may be based either on the reporter’s own observations of the contest or on the reports of it printed in newspapers. In covering a big sporting event, a newspaper frequently assigns two men to report it, one to write a general account and one a detailed story. It is evident that all sporting news stories can best be written by men who are thoroughly familiar with the sport itself and with the contestants.
Purpose. The general aim of sporting news stories should be to satisfy a normal, healthy interest in legitimate sports. That newspapers have stimulated an excessive interest in professional baseball and intercollegiate football, as well as in prize fights, is a criticism deserving careful consideration. The evil effects on schoolboy athletes, and even on some college players, of undue newspaper publicity have been pointed out by educators and should also be considered by the sports writer. Accuracy and fairness are as vital to news stories of sports as to any other news stories. Although the interest that readers have in local contestants may warrant a writer in devoting considerable space to them, it does not justify him in slighting or treating unfairly their opponents in whom the readers have less interest. The spirit of fair play that is essential to sport is equally necessary to reports of sporting events.
Treatment. The handling of sporting news presents several problems. The review of conditions preceding the contest and the analysis of the game and its results require careful observation, clear thinking, and a good expository style. In some respects this kind of interpretation is not unlike editorial and critical writing. The account of the event itself demands spirited narrative and description that portrays not only the scenes but the spirit of the occasion. The contrast between the emotions of the victors and those of the vanquished may be used to good advantage. Because of the popular interest in individual players, many events give ample opportunity for developing the personal, or human interest, elements. The term “heroes” as often applied to athletes is not inappropriate, for it is the heroic qualities of the contestants that appeal to the spectators and the followers of the sport.
Style is also an important element in sporting news stories. The very popularity of a subject that demands much writing on the same or similar material day by day necessitates variety of presentation. Efforts to avoid constant repetition in reporting baseball games have resulted in some picturesque diction and some original figures of speech in the stories of the clever few, and in much more cheap humor and almost unintelligible jargon in the work of their mediocre imitators. That readable stories can be written in good English with as much originality of style as is to be found in other well written news stories, has been repeatedly demonstrated by a number of writers on sports.