Detroit news

“ The city directory is the newspaper man's Bible because accuracy is his deity.
The hardest lesson the journalist must learn is the development of the impersonal viewpoint. He must learn to write what he sees and hears, clearly and accurately, with never a tinge of bias. His own views, his personal feelings and his friendships should have nothing to do with what he writes in a story.
The ideal reporter would be a man who could give the public facts about his bitterest enemy even though such facts would make the man he personally hated a hero before the public. ”

“ Every worker on a newspaper knows the value of accuracy. Accuracy is the god before whom all newspaper men bow. If one could analyze the effort put forth in one day in this office, one might discover that perhaps a third of that effort was in an attempt to obtain accuracy. ”

“ Don't let the libel laws be your measure in printing of a story, but let fairness be your measure. If you are fair, you need not worry about libel laws.
Always give the other fellow a hearing. He may be in the wrong, but even that may be a matter of degree. It wouldn't be fair to picture him as all black when there may be mitigating circumstances.
It is not necessary to tell the people that we are honest, or bright, or alert, or that a story appeared exclusively in our paper. If true, the public will find it out. An honest man does not need to advertise his honesty. ”

“ Fine writing is quite out of place at all times in a newspaper and is particularly obnoxious when a reporter quotes a person of inferior mentality in polished—or what the reporter thinks are polished—phrases. Things like this shouldn't get into the paper: "It is with poignant grief that I gaze on the torn frame of my dear spouse," said Mrs. Sowikicki, as she stood beside a slab in the morgue.
On the other hand reporters should not try to be funny at the expense of someone inexpert in the use of the language. If a person interviewed uses bad grammar, correct him when you write the story. ”

“ Observation endows our day and our street with the romantic charm of history, and stimulates charity—not the charity which signs cheques, but the more precious charity which puts itself to the trouble of understanding. The condition is that the observer must never lose sight of the fact that what he is to see is life, is the woman next door, is the man in the train—and not a concourse of abstractions. ”

“ No story is worth ruining a woman's life—or a man's, either.
Keep the paper clean in language and thought. Profane or suggestive words are not necessary. When in doubt, think of a 13-year-old girl reading what you are writing.
Do not look on newspaper work as a "game," of pitilessly printing that on which you are only half informed, for the mere sake of beating some other paper; but take it rather as a serious, constructive work in which you are to use all your energy and diligence to get all the worth-while information for your readers at the earliest possible moment. ”

“ There is an interesting feature in every story, if you will dig it out. If you don't get it, it is because you don't dig deep enough.
The most valuable asset of any paper is its reputation for telling the truth; the only way to have that reputation is to tell the truth. Untruth due to carelessness or excessive imagination injures the paper as much as though intentional. ”

“ A good reporter usually plans his story, lead and details in his head on his way to the office.
NEVER GUESS.
KNOW WHAT YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT.
When you turn in a story KNOW that everything in that story is true—and if you feel there is a statement you can not prove, call your city editor's attention to it.
To color or fake a story is not newspaper work—it is prostitution of the profession of journalism.
Be sure of your sources of information. Never take anything for granted—find out for yourself. ”

“ For the purposes of the newspaper writer, libel may be defined as malicious defamation, either written or printed, charging on or imputing to another that which renders him liable to imprisonment, or tends to injure his reputation in the common estimation of mankind, or to hold him up as an object of hatred, scorn, ridicule or contempt.
Slander is malicious defamation by speech or oral language; hence the newspaper writer has no especial concern for the law relating to it, further than to remember one general principle—that the law of libel is much stricter than the law of slander. ”

“ No matter how accomplished a writer a reporter may be, the copy reader who handles his story can destroy his product. Then, too, it is the function of the copy reader, if he believes that a better story can be written with the same facts as a basis, to suggest to the city editor that the story be rewritten by the reporter, by another reporter or by the copy reader himself. Because a man is reading copy, he should not imagine that he is not to write a story or rewrite one when occasion demands. ”

“ All persons die because the heart fails to beat.
Write simply, he died, and not passed away, shuffled off this mortal coil, gave up the ghost, or any similarly amateurish phrase. There is no occasion for clothing the incident of death in a panoply of words, nor should birth be written of except simply. Do not say, a little stranger was ushered into a cold world, but a child was born. In writing of vital statistics—death, birth, marriage—be content to state the facts without unnecessary embellishment. ”

“ Words have a considerable share in exciting ideas of beauty—they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed them to stand. Words, by their original and pictorial power have great influence over the passions; if we combine them properly, we may give new life and beauty to the simplest object. In painting, we may represent any fine figure we please, but we never can give it those enlivening touches which it may receive from words. ”

“ CRITICISM DOES NOT EXTEND TO PERSON
But the privilege of criticism extends only to the actions or works of an individual; it does not extend to the person. In the case of an author, his works may be criticised as severely as the occasion demands. "Every man who publishes a book commits himself to the judgment of the public," says an eminent English judge ”

“ There is never any need of using big words to show off one's learning. The object of a story or an editorial is to inform or convince; but it is hard to do either if the reader has to study over a big word or an involved sentence. Use plain English all the time. A few readers may understand and appreciate a Latin or French quotation, or one from some other foreign language, but the big mass of our readers are the plain people, and such a quotation would be lost on the majority. ”

“ LEARNING THE METIER
Said Robert Louis Stevenson to a painter friend: "You painter chaps make lots of studies, don't you? And you don't frame them all and send them to the Salon, do you? You just stick them up on the studio wall for a bit, and presently you tear them up and make more. And you copy Velasquez and Rembrandt and Vandyke and Corot; and from each you learn some little trick of the brush, some obscure little point of technic. And you know damn well that it is the knowledge thus acquired that will enable you later on to deliver your own message with a fine and confident bravado. ”

“ You will discover that many persons talk convincingly about things although they have no actual knowledge of the subject under discussion.
Remember always that a newspaper has to prove what it says—and any decent newspaper is eager to.
If you don't know, tell the city editor you don't know. To guess is criminal because nobody can guess with any consistent degree of accuracy. And accuracy should be your guide. ”

“ The position of correlative conjunctions with relation to the elements they connect.
To gain grace in writing one must either be born with a natural aptitude in the use of words—and such men: Stevenson, Poe, Walter Pater and others, are geniuses—or one must study the writings of these masters of prose and attempt to discover the secret of their success. It is not necessary that a good writer should know rules of grammar, but he must know enough to observe them. ”

“ Avoid newspaper slang. To all but a few of our readers the word story means not an item of news in the paper but a piece of fiction. To speak of a story meaning a piece for the paper is to confuse them. ”

“ Associated Press stories must be accurate and accuracy involves not only the truthfulness of individual statements but the co-relation of these statements in such a way as to convey to the reader a fair and unbiased impression of the story as a whole. An account of a court proceeding, a political debate, or any other event which involves conflicting claims or interests, should not be introduced by singling out a particular phase of the story which is limited to one side of the controversy, simply because that is the most striking feature. ”

“ A writer may be unable to tell why a dangling participle is faulty English by testing it with a rule, but he may nevertheless avoid such a construction because his ear tells him it is not the best style. ”

“ The one infallible way to insult a man is to misspell his name; that is an old newspaper maxim. More care should be taken with the spelling of the names in a story than with any other mechanical detail. Often a name is misspelled because a typewriter is not clean and an e or an a is mistaken for an o or a u. It is wise for the reporter to make sure these letters particularly print clearly or he may be held to account for an error. An even better way is to write a proper name in CAPS if it is at all uncommon. ”

“ When it is said that "the truth is a complete defense," the literal truth of the published statement is not meant; but the truth of the defamatory charge.
To illustrate: A prominent official, say a judge, during the progress of a political campaign, either in the course of an interview or of a public speech, makes the charge against a candidate for an important office that he (the candidate) obtained his naturalization papers either through perjury or subornation of perjury. A newspaper publishes the interview or the speech, giving the speaker's name and the exact language he used. ”

“ Thus, a Gentile who adopts the Jewish faith may be called a Jew, but may not be called a Hebrew, because he does not descend from that sub-class of the Semitic race from which the Hebrews are reputed to come. Up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Jews rarely applied the term 'Jew' to themselves, as it was used as a term of opprobrium and as a contemptuous epithet. The Jews preferred to call themselves 'Hebrews' or 'Israelites.' Since about 1880, however, the Jewish people have come to adopt this name more and more generally, and it has begun to lose its derogatory meaning. ”

“ What M. E. Stone says to his correspondents on story writing may be read with profit by any newspaper man. The following is clipped from the monthly bulletin issued by the Associated Press to its correspondents:
A plain statement of fact is the best introduction to a news story. A simple, direct style—which does not mean a wooden style—is always desirable. In the opening sentence it is of particular value.
The news which a story contains is the one thing which entitles it to place in the Associated Press report. It is the news, not the manner of telling the news, on which the story must stand. ”

“ It is of vast importance that criticism, so long as it is fair, reasonable and just, should be allowed the utmost latitude, and that the most unsparing censure of works which are fairly subject to it should not be held libelous. ”

“ The Constitution of Michigan provides: "Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press. ”

“ But if the person who produces it is defamed, this must be defended, if at all, upon some other ground than that it is criticism.
Moreover, to justify such comment on men's actions or on the products of their hands or brains as criticism, it is essential that the acts or things so criticised should have actual existence.
For instance, a newspaper comments with great severity on certain occurrences which it publishes as the official acts of a mayor of its city. Before these strictures can be defended as criticism, it must appear that such official acts really occurred. ”

“ In all prosecutions for libel the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, accused shall be acquitted."
But the right to criticise is general, and belongs quite as much to any other individual as to the newspaper writer, editor or publisher.
The actions of individuals are always legitimate subjects of discussion and criticism. ”

“ When a noun is used which may refer indifferently to both sexes, the accepted practice is to use the masculine pronoun. For example, say: Let the teacher do his duty and he need not fear criticism, not Let the teacher do his or her duty and he or she need not fear criticism.
Similarly after indefinite singulars like each, every, somebody, anybody, use the masculine singular pronoun. Thus, Everyone should do his duty and he should do it every day. Here one is not only to avoid the use of he or she and his or her, but also particularly and constantly to be on guard against they and their. ”