Charles G. Ross

“ Take the story of death in a tenement house fire. There is the outline, the basic fact, of stories without number; yet each story, told with its wealth of human, moving detail, has the power to affect the reader as if the theme itself were absolutely new. A dozen houses in the same block look alike from the outside; yet the life that each conceals is different from the life in all the others. ”

“ I have always cared much for style and have endeavored to improve my own by reading a great deal of the best English and French prose. In writing, as in music, much of the perfection of style is a question of ear, but much also depends on the ideal the writer sets before himself. He ought, I think, to aim at the greatest possible simplicity and accuracy of expression, at vividness and force, at condensation. The last two heads will usually be found to blend; for condensation, when it is not attained at the sacrifice of clearness, is the great secret of force. ”

“ If a story is not accurate, it is not news in the best sense.
Accuracy implies more than mere grammatical correctness. It means more even than the stating of every fact with precision. A story may be taken to pieces, fact by fact, and every sentence found to be correct; yet the whole may give a false impression. Accuracy means the spirit as well as the letter of the truth.
OBSERVATION
Truthful, precise writing is the fruit of accurate observation. If one would write news, he must learn first to see news clearly and without prejudice. Therein the trained reporter excels the casual observer. ”

“ In looking for the feature do not descend to the trivial. To return to an illustration just used, don’t write the lead of your fire story on the rescue of the family cat and overlook the fact that human lives were lost. Originality does not consist in straining after a feature at the expense of the vital things in a story. Triviality comes with cynicism. The power to be truly original, to put life into a story based on a commonplace theme, comes with the broad, human sympathy that results from keeping the impression ever fresh. ”

“ Everything interests the new reporter. As he gains familiarity with the work, there is danger that his viewpoint will become jaded. Especially if he is covering the same run of news day after day must he fight against this tendency to fall into a rut. The newspaper has no use for the man in a rut. The reporter who becomes cynical loses the news writer’s best asset, the power to feel the pathos or the injustice or the humor of the thing he is writing about. If he himself cannot feel his story he is not likely to impress the reader with it. ”

“ The general rules that govern all news writing apply with equal or greater force to the telegraph story. So far from taking an unworthy advantage of his comparative freedom from supervision, the correspondent should feel perhaps even more keenly than the local reporter the news writer’s obligation to be absolutely fair and accurate. It goes without saying that he should be concise, because the newspaper pays for every word that he sends over the wire. On the other hand he should never sacrifice clearness to save a few words. ”

“ The story of an aged miser’s death, for example, may be worth only a paragraph if written for its immediate news value alone. But underlying the surface facts there may be a story of intense human interest—the man’s life story. The field of investigation that opens before the news gatherer is fraught with possibilities. It is for him to clothe the skeleton of the story with the flesh and blood of reality. What of the man’s early life? ”

“ There is no variation from one day to another in the basic themes of the news, but there is an endless variation in the local color, in the shadings of motive, in all the details that go to make one story different from all others. ”

“ But however great a gift, if news instinct as born were turned loose in any newspaper office in New York without the control of sound judgment bred by considerable experience and training, the results would be much more pleasing to the lawyers than to the editor. One of the chief difficulties in journalism now is to keep the news from running rampant over the restraints of accuracy and conscience. ”

“ The fact that a newspaper does not order a story or orders less than the correspondent offers does not necessarily imply that his news judgment is questioned. Stories that ordinarily would be used may be crowded out by a rush of news of greater importance. One story like that of the San Francisco earthquake and fire will cause the omission or rigid condensation of news that usually would be “featured.” Sometimes the correspondent’s story is not ordered because the facts are covered in the reports of a news gathering organization as fully as the newspaper desires. ”

“ Before making a damaging statement about a person, be sure you have legal evidence in which there is no loophole. Hesitate even then—go to the city editor for instruction. If you are a correspondent,20 let your office know the facts—all the facts. Bear in mind that homicide is not necessarily murder. There is grave danger, no matter how convincing the evidence may appear to be, in calling a person a murderer before he has been so branded by the courts. If he is acquitted he has ground for a libel suit against the newspaper that has charged him with crime. ”

“ THE STORY PROPER
There are numbers of people whose ideal paper is one in which the editorials shall be written by an Addison, a Lamb, or a Swift; the art criticism by a Ruskin; while the financial editor shall be an Adam Smith. It is a fairly safe guess that a newspaper with such a staff would have a life about as long as the ministry of all the talents. Imagine Mrs. Battle’s views on whist ... written in an hour at midnight. Good writing really consists of clearness of expression mingled with true literary form. ”

“ No set of rules could be drawn up to cover every case with which the correspondent has to deal. To equip himself to give the best service he should not only learn the general principles of news writing, but should study the columns of the newspaper he represents to find out its particular needs. He should remember, too, that no rule is iron-clad. A story falling under any head of the foregoing classification may possess some extraordinary feature that will make it worth printing. In that case the correspondent should be careful to build his story around the unusual part. ”

“ The newspaper man is compelled, as the price of success in his calling, and often through severe experience, to learn that only that which is true is “news.” There is a popular impression that all is grist that comes to the newspaper mill, and that everything brought into the office is published. The fact is that the hardest task of newspaper work is to sift the truth out of the masses of falsehood offered daily.... Daily newspaper workers have neither time nor need to fabricate falsehoods for public deception. ”

“ Here, then, is need for originality in the writing of news. If the reporter’s outlook is cynical he is likely to overlook the human side of the story for the lifeless skeleton of commonplace facts. His story may be mechanically correct, but it has no power of appeal. Without distorting a single fact, in plain, everyday words, the news writer may tell a story of human suffering that will rouse his readers to generous response. ”

“ Then, too, the greater speed with which the evening paper is turned out makes it imperative that a story be so written that it can be changed with the least possible delay.
Do not get the idea from the foregoing that your story should be a dry-as-dust recital of bare facts. Try to weave your facts together into a coherent story that will hold the reader’s attention at every point. The best news story moves with a swing that carries the reader swiftly and easily along from the lead to the conclusion, and leaves him at the end with a definite and clear idea of what he has read. ”

“ News writing is objective to the last degree, in the sense that the writer is not allowed to “editorialize.” He must leave himself out of the story. True, he may give it, in his way of telling the facts, a certain individuality and power, but he is not permitted to cross the border line between the strict presentation of news and the editorial. Only writers whose stories are signed are allowed to use the capital I. They are the exceptions in modern newspaper making. The average news writer, however brilliant his work, receives only the commendation of his fellows. ”

“ No defense is needed of the style of writing in the well-edited modern newspaper. Free from pedantry and obsolete expressions, the English of the best newspapers fulfills its purpose of telling the news of the day in language that all can understand. ”

“ The newspaper as it goes to the reader, though it is the product of many very human persons working37 under pressure, is remarkably accurate. A painstaking effort has been made to give the reader a true picture of the day’s happenings. Copy readers have gone over the reporters’ copy for errors of fact and of style; proofreaders have corrected typographical errors after the matter has been set in type; one or more editors have read the revised proofs with an eye single to detecting faults.
The newspaper, of all modern institutions, is the most human. ”

“ When one considers the difficulties under which news is gathered and the limited time at the newspaper’s command, the wonder is not that errors occasionally creep into the news columns but that the errors are so few. ”

“ The nature of newspaper work makes it impossible to formulate an all-sufficing series of rules by which the news writer shall invariably be guided. But there are certain well-defined principles, largely technical, that set apart the news story as a distinct form of composition, and these the author has tried to put down simply and concisely—after the fashion of the news story itself. Going beyond the common practice, there is wide divergence among newspapers in the details of “office style.” ”

“ Nothing could be farther from the truth. A newspaper that permitted such a condition would be swamped with libel suits within a week. In every newspaper office, certainly in every newspaper office worthy the name, there is an unceasing war against inaccuracy of every kind. The new reporter learns this when he comes in jubilant from an assignment, only to be sent back to get the middle initial of a name. The out-of-town correspondent learns it when he is called from his bed by long-distance telephone to explain a vague statement in a story he had wired earlier in the night. ”

“ The name of the Secretary of the Interior, the latest development in a famous will case, whether a thoroughfare is a street or an avenue, the initials of the county recorder—all such details can be found in the files of the newspaper or in reference books, but the copy reader can save valuable time if he has them filed away in his memory. New words are constantly coming into general use and new ideas are demanding expression. The copy reader must keep abreast of the big movements in science, in politics, in all the fields from which news stories are drawn. ”

“ The news writer is the agent of the paper that employs him. As such, in a wider sense he is the agent of the public, which relies on the newspaper to keep it informed of the day’s happenings. The story is the all-important thing; the reader as a rule cares nothing about who wrote it or what the writer thinks of it. The viewpoint of the news writer18 must be that of the unprejudiced, but alert, observer. He must approach his story with a mind open to the facts and he must record the facts unvarnished by his own preferences and opinions. ”

“ Its failings are the common failings of humankind. Forewarned thus against himself, it is the duty of the news writer, even while he works with one eye on the clock, to be always vigilant in the battle against inaccuracy—to do his full share, and more, in keeping the columns of his paper free from misstatement of every kind. ”

“ We know at a glance what has happened and we get the force of whatever significance the writer has wished to impress, but it is all hurled at our heads in the same wholesale fashion, with the same neglect of “form,” that the genuine American is accustomed to in his quick-lunch resort, and, in his heart, really likes. ... Without intending to be dogmatic about it, we are inclined to say that, if a newspaper’s English makes a fair approach to the level of an educated, intelligent man’s serious conversation, it will be doing about all that can justly be expected. ”

“ COPY READING
If that change occurs (a return to smaller newspapers) there will be an increased demand for the services of the man who possesses not the common ability to make a story long and diffuse, but the rare talent of making it short, vivid and complete. There is hardly a newspaper office in the country in which the difficult and admirable art of compression has not been to a greater or less extent neglected in recent years.—From a lecture by Hart Lyman, editor of the New York Tribune. ”

“ Sometimes, of course, a reporter’s assignment is such that he can see the story unfolding before him, as at a fire or a court trial, and he is enabled to write more vividly than if his facts had come to him second-hand. Every reporter dreams of the day when he will have the chance to write a big story that he has seen in the making. It is related that a group of New York newspaper men were discussing the biggest possible story that could “break.” ”

“ Unless the interview is printed for no other purpose than to poke fun at the speaker, as might be done with the remarks of an ignorant and disreputable politician, the writer should strive to convey the spirit of what is said rather than the exact words. Now and then a characteristic phrase or sentence may be quoted verbatim—and this is desirable in order to give a flavor of the speaker’s individuality—but the faults of ordinary speech, verbosity, awkwardness and the like, should not be reproduced. True accuracy leaves a correct impression of the whole. ”

“ Except when a story is dependent on what a person has said, in a speech or a formal interview,116 it is nearly always desirable that the reporter, as far as possible, should make the story his own. He should hitch his wagon to the star of absolute certainty and then tell the story, at least the salient facts, in his own words. It is poor policy in news writing, as a rule, to put trivial bits of information in the form of direct quotation. ”

“ The ‘stories’ of the reporter on a daily paper are written under such trying conditions of hurry and confusion that they seldom have, in the very nature of the case, what is called the ‘literary touch.’ But occasionally a news writer produces a story which has real qualities of vividness, pathos and power. ”