Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

“ 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. ”

“ Terrified by the rain of bullets which poured through the blazing canvases above their heads, the women and children, apparently more afraid of the lead than of the flames, remained huddled in their pits until the smoke carried death to them by suffocation.
When it appeared that no more men remained in the colony the militia ceased its fire and went to the work of rescue. Women ran from the burning tents, some with their clothing afire, carrying their babes in their arms. Many were forced to abandon their older children to their fate. ”

“ Cambridge, November 7.—Brave north-west winds, a blue sky with heavy clouds drifting across, sunlight with a glint of steel in it, and air with a tang, were the weather conditions which added zest to the spirit with which Cambridge greeted the day of her big game of the season, the contest for gridiron supremacy between the Harvard and Princeton football elevens. The game with Yale will be played two weeks hence at New Haven, and as a consequence Nassau takes Eli’s place in the Cantabrigian scheme of things.
Enthusiasm is keen both here and in Boston ”

“ At gaze stand the citizens of Santo Domingo City as they watch the feluccas steal into the track of the Good Faith. Tortured with anxiety are these good folk when they behold the Good Faith swing about the headland and come into view of the dastard Spaniards. Now the Good Faith is aware of her peril. See her crowd the canvas on! See her leap to the tug of the wind and race for her life down, down the watery way to the horizon! The feluccas follow fast; they gain yard by yard; still they gain and yet still. ”

“ Since newspapers are read rapidly, it has been taken for granted that a story is most effective when its structure and style enable the reader to get the news with the least effort and the greatest interest. Many pieces of news can best be treated in a simple, concise style, with the essential facts well massed in a summary lead. Such straightforward presentation does not mean that the style must be bald and unoriginal. ”

“ Have you ever been in a smoking car when the man in the seat ahead was trying to prove that forced draught does not improve the natural perfume of a rubber plant in a cigar make-up? If you have not it will be impossible to bring to you from last night the atmosphere of the automobile parade in celebration of New York’s three hundredth business birthday. ”

“ Away over behind the grandstand are the cattle sheds, where one may fill his eye with as many different kinds of cows, bulls and oxen as he ever imagined. There they are—the Jerseys, the Guernseys, the Holsteins, the Ayrshires, and whatever other kinds there be, all beautifully groomed, with horns polished. Some are decked with blue ribbons and some with red, and some which have no ribbons at all appear about as good as their rivals. Out in the field to the rear, quiet men take technical notice of good points of competitors, and make the awards without any fuss. ”

“ It was the usual colorful crowd, bedecked with the crimson of Harvard and the yellow and black of the Tigers, that wended its way from the special trains from New York and Philadelphia early to-day to Palmer Stadium. Automobiles by the hundreds brought thousands of spectators. Old Princeton graduates, back for the annual game, held impromptu reunions on the campus or on Nassau Street, or made a tour of inspection of the University buildings to note the changes since they were last here. ”

“ The ward contains 39 children at present, suffering from injuries and being treated for various ailments. Perhaps some of them will never have another Christmas. But if you had closed your eyes and heard them laughing and singing, you would never have thought you were in a hospital. Many of them were able to sit up, and so that they could all be in one room, two were put in some beds. Those who could sit up had little red wrappers over their nighties, and propped up around the sides of the room, they looked for all the world like little animated red holly berries. ”

“ Quickly slipping in Alexander Hamilton, making him as Scotch as possible and crediting him with everything that hadn’t been already cornered by Judge Wilson, Mr. Carnegie then got along to the matter of education, and showed that Scotland, as copied by America, led the world.
Witness John Witherspoon, of the early days of Princeton, America’s model educator ever since. On account of him and for all the aforesaid reasons, said Mr. Carnegie, a Scotchman always feels at home in the United States; Scotland is his mother, America is his wife, and there is nothing inconsistent in his loving both. ”

“ Anna Vaughn Hyatt, its sculptor, sees only the spiritual in Jeanne, and in her work she holds indefinitely for us the moment after the finding of the consecrated sword, which Jeanne holds high over her head as she stands erect in her saddle, her head thrown back in exaltation. The horse is all but prancing. There is something of certainty and joyousness about the whole which could be inspired by nothing purely material or temporal. The upward gesture of the sword is not without meaning—it is the natural movement of a person who has had a great revelation, a deep creative instinct. ”

“ All is astir about the wharf, for the good English corvette, Good Faith, is sailing this day for Plymouth, laden fair to the gunwales with plate of price, spoils of cathedrals in Mexico and hard minted gold in doubloons—and oh, yes, pieces of eight!—that is, the ransom of cities in Salvador and the Guineas. Spanish gold it is, torn from the grasp of bleeding men. ”

“ By making more or less of a hero of him, news stories may lead undiscriminating readers to regard him and his crime as not unworthy of emulation. There is also a temptation in writing crime stories to sacrifice truth and accuracy of detail in order to secure greater picturesqueness or stronger dramatic situations, but such treatment is an indefensible deviation from the fundamental duty of presenting the news fairly and accurately.
Whatever influence a story of crime may have on the reader should be the result of the reporter’s selection and presentation of the actual facts. ”

“ Because of its traditions and its code, and perhaps also because of the never ceasing watchfulness of 900 members, it has come to pass that few people on earth are capable of giving the management of The Associated Press any points on maintaining a strict, though benevolent, neutrality on all questions on which we can be neutral and still be what we are—loyal Americans. We know, too—none better—that the genuine neutral, the honest neutral, is always the target of every partisan, and we find some solace in the fact that this is now being demonstrated to the world at large. ”

“ The flag display throughout the city yesterday, as well as along the line of march of the procession, was the greatest the city has seen since Spanish war days at least. Along many of the residence streets flags hung in clusters. Along Broadway, wherever there was a flagpole, there was a large flag out, while small ones by thousands flapped from windows and thousands of tiny ones stuck out of buttonholes.
Special cheers along the line of march were given for the twelve doughty old Zouaves who appeared in faded red baggy trousers with the characteristic jacket and tasseled fez. ”

“ A striking note about Cambridge to-day is the absence of Crimson banners in the hands of Harvard enthusiasts. Red flags are barred under the law, and the Socialists have insisted upon the enforcement of the ordinance. No one is permitted to carry the colors of fair Harvard, under pain of arrest, and, while there was a tendency on the part of certain indignant students and alumni to make a test of the law which, by the way, was aimed at anarchists and militant Socialists, the Harvard authorities deemed it unwise thus to force the issue. ”

“ Melville W. Mix, president of the Dodge Manufacturing Company, Mishawaka, Ind., and head of the manufacturers’ bureau of that state, placed the blame for 75 per cent of factory accidents on the disinterested and indifferent attitude of the employer toward his employe.
“Safety first is not a philanthropic movement on the part of employer to employe,” said he. “Safety first is a hard practicality of business extension. That seems a hard statement, but it is not without its qualifications, as there is a blood-and-soul side of every phase of business life. ”

“ Mary Stober, eighteen years old, of 951 East 135th Street, who tried to kill herself last week (Friday) because she has no piano, is home again from the Lincoln Hospital, and is starting in to live again in a world where no hope is, since she cannot have a piano.
To dream every night that you have a piano and “play just grand,” and then wake up to hear the alarm clock buzzing six o’clock; to forget where you are, and half close your eyes and pretend that the movements your fingers are making are on a piano, instead of having something to do with the bobbin of a machine in an embroidery factory ”

“ If there was a Yale graduate who did not feel the impulse to stand in his place and uncover silently to a little knot of athletes in blue gathered to give their bulldog bark of victory at the close of a bitterly fought struggle with Princeton in the Bowl on Saturday, that graduate had lost the edge of a certain fine spirit which the sons of Eli are supposed to take with them out into the world. ”

“ The selection and presentation of details from the point of view of their value as showing the mood of the occasion results in a story of much greater interest than does the mere recording of the different incidents. Accuracy in news stories of this kind, therefore, is not simply faithfulness to fact, but truth of sentiment. Untruthfulness lies in adding fictitious details in an effort to heighten the appeal, and in substituting sentimentality for true sentiment. ”

“ New York Sun
For why should the Kaminoka Strumolova Sick and Benevolent Association pay out money for burying a man who is not yet dead? For why that hearse, $8; that headstone, $35; those two funeral coaches for $11 when Leon Welfish, the dear dead one, is alive already and in his own town of Kaminoka, Galicia? ”

“ Much more effort should be made by newspapers in this country to show108 the significance of acts of representative public bodies, in relation not only to the home and business interests of the individual reader, but to the welfare of the community, the state, and the nation. Intelligent interest in government on the part of the individual citizen, which is generally recognized as absolutely essential to the success of a democracy, can be more effectively created through the news columns of the daily newspaper than by any other means. ”

“ This has been done in the belief that the reporter should consider carefully the probable effect on the reader of every story that he writes. Since “the food of opinion is the news of the day,” the kind of food that he serves and the manner in which he serves it is a matter of consequence, not only to him and his newspaper but to society as a whole. Not until a reporter realizes the influence that his news stories may have on the ideas and ideals of thousands of readers, does he appreciate fully the significance of hisv work. ”

“ To make interesting what is often considered dry and unattractive in proceedings of various public meetings, is the chief problem in writing news stories concerning them. Simple, clear explanation of the meaning of significant parts of the proceedings, lively accounts of debate on various measures, and vivid description of persons and scenes connected with them—all add to the interest of the stories. Too often, however, insignificant incidents of casual interest are played up as features of meetings of importance to the subordination or even to the exclusion of matters of vital concern. ”

“ The large amount of available news that must be crowded daily into limited space makes it essential to present the news in compact form and concise style. “Boil it down” and “Cut it to the bone” are constant admonitions in every newspaper office. Conciseness is a necessary quality of newspaper style.
The average newspaper, in order to succeed, must appeal to all classes of readers in the community. It must present its contents in a way that will attract and interest the so-called masses as well as the business and the professional classes. ”

“ Fels, the philanthropist spent a good deal of time in England. Mrs. Fels still resides there half of the year.
“England has a king,” she said, “but fundamentally the English government is more democratic than the United States. We call ourselves a democracy, but in reality we are a plutocracy. The idea of a democracy is a fine thing to hold up before the eyes of the people, but in the present circumstances it is only to blind them to real conditions.” ”

“ However interesting the theories and principles of the art of news writing may be for themselves, it is the practical application of them in the writer’s own work that gives them their value for the student of journalism.
Aims in studying news stories. The purpose in analyzing typical examples of news writing should be to discover in detail (1) how to obtain news, (2) how to determine its value, and (3) how to present it most effectively. Most stories reveal the means by which their contents were obtained and the importance which the writer or editor attached to each of the details. ”

“ The whole place is absolutely open to the street and is unguarded by fence or barrier of any kind. It has all the attractions of a playground and swimming hole and is doubly alluring to the lads of the neighborhood owing to the fact that they have been warned off from time to time by the police.
All during the summer scores of boys of all ages, but chiefly between 5 and 14 years, haunt the old wharf, jumping from pile to pile or taking an occasional dip when the officer on the beat is not looking. ”

“ Besides reporting the news with fairness and accuracy, however, the writer, consciously or unconsciously, may accomplish other ends by the manner in which he presents his material. By giving prominence to certain details and aspects of a piece of news, he may produce one effect upon the reader’s mind; by emphasizing others in the same piece of news, he may produce an entirely different impression. Thus news of accidents, crime, courts, and similar matters can be presented so as to exert either a wholesome or an unwholesome influence on readers ”