Atlantic Reporter

“ Many a society leader plans receptions and dinners of which the florist learns before the friends who are to be invited. And by skilfully encouraging the friendship of these tradesmen, a shrewd reporter can obtain exclusive facts about prominent persons who cannot understand, when they see their names in the morning paper, how the information was made public. These "dark runs" justify diligent attention. They produce news, and valuable [Pg 41] is the reporter who can include successfully a number of such sources in his daily rounds. ”

“ When men were feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a reporter would insensibly take on something of the spirit of the hour, otherwise his reports would be limp and lifeless. ”

“ But, you know, every day in the newspaper every story has two sides to it, and it's not the reporter's job to figure out who's telling the truth and who's not or who's right and who's wrong, it's to be responsible and professional in gathering up all of the facts and allegations and presenting them in a neutral way. ”

“ The reporter who told me the story which I have just recorded, was an excellent specimen of the class—shrewd, a capital judge of character, and a good organiser. He had, however, never got beyond the stereotyped phrases which appear in every newspaper—indeed, there was no need for him to get beyond them. Every death “cast a gloom” over the locality where it occurred; and a chronicle of the weather at any time during the month of March caused him to let loose the journalist’s lion upon an unsuspecting public. ”

“ The meeting had come to his notice through Cowardin’s report in the “Dispatch.” The hearing was rich, a cluster of bright newspaper men being present, among them the “New York Herald” reporter, who endorsed Mr. ”

“ A journalist in the ranks of the unemployed naively addresses himself to the editors of American papers:
"A journalist without children, and total abstainer, wishes to obtain a situation as reporter. Writes leaders, general gossip, interviews, literary musical, and dramatic criticisms, and police-court reports. Fertile imagination: can make one or two interesting columns out of the smallest incident." ”

“ The young reporter has to steel his heart to these disappointments. He must not agonize too much if, after a day and night of intense and nervous effort, he finds no line of his work in the paper, or sees his choicest prose hacked and mangled by impatient subeditors, or his truth-telling twisted into falsity. ”

“ Capital was liberally subscribed by private citizens in a spirit which put greed to the blush. The press on both sides of the Atlantic recorded the details of the progress of the undertaking with cordial interest, and secured the generous sympathies of men of all kindreds and tongues and nations in its behalf. You were thus fortunate, sir, in being identified with a project of such magnificent proportions and universal concern. ”

“ The nature of news reporting is not generally understood. Routine reporting is comparatively easy. The reporting of highly important events is extremely difficult. In political convulsions, in financial panics, in commercial failures, in big criminal cases, in social scandals, in crooked legislation, in most of the topics that excite mankind, the people most involved strive to conceal the real facts. How is the reporter to know whether he is being lied to or not? Ah! but he must know. It is his business to know. ”

“ A reporter on an American newspaper is like a solider—he is expected to obey orders implicitly, even at the risk of his life. for this reason he is paid well, but a nervous reporter often goes out of the office with his heart in his mouth and an "assignment" that makes him think seriously of taking out another insurance policy on his life. ”

“ Nearly every reporter, while of course always ready to accept any assignment that is offered, has some specialty in which he excels. Some take to politics, detective work, or court reporting, and some to marine work, such as yacht-racing, wrecks, launches, and all things connected with the sea. ”

“ In order to get news one must be physically tireless, fond of adventure, persistent, unabashed, polite, courageous, and resourceful in the highest degree. To the successful reporter an impossibility is only an opportunity in disguise. ”

“ A Reporter, we modestly submit, is as good as anybody, and ought to feel that he is, everywhere and at all times. For one, let us quietly and without any show of vanity remark, that we are not only just as good as anybody else, but a great deal better than many we know of. We love God and hate Indians: pay our debts; support the Constitution of the United States; go in for Progress, Sunshine, Calico, and other luxuries; are perfectly satisfied and happy, and wouldn't swop "sits" with the President, Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of China, Sultan of Turkey, Brigham Young, or Nicholas Longworth. ”

“ If a wise choice and arrangement has been made in the organization of details, the part of the story following the lead will all but tell itself. The reporter's care now must be to maintain the interest he has developed in the lead and to regard the accuracy of succeeding statements. There are just two crimes of which a newspaper man may be guilty,—inaccuracy and dullness. ”

“ They treat an important event rather as a semi-news semi-editorial review article—an article of news with interjected comment, with expression of opinion as suits the writer’s fancy or belief or prejudice.
In American newspapers of high grade the reporter is not permitted to comment or inject opinion or seek to influence the reader; he must not depart from the cold facts of narration. No comment outside the editorial page is the rule. The foreign correspondent is excepted from this requirement and the Washington man partly so.
Not any other kind of newspaper work gives more useful experience. ”

“ Accuracy.—When a reporter is publishing a choice bit of scandal or a remarkable instance of disregarded duty, it is an easy thing, for the sake of making the story a good one, or for lack of complete information, to draw on the imagination or to jump too readily at conclusions, and so present as facts not only what may be untrue, but what often later proves entirely false. ”

“ Just as fast as the daily press advances in real independence and efficiency, the compensation of journalists will increase, until a great reporter will receive a reward in some slight degree proportioned to the rarity of the species and to the greatness of the services of which he is the medium. By reporters, we mean, of course, the entire corps of news-givers, from the youth who relates the burning of a stable, to the philosopher who chronicles the last vagary of a German metaphysician. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ A reporter seldom remains more than two or three hours. His place is taken by another, while he writes out his notes and prepares them for the press. The reporters are well remunerated, and give very faithful reports. ”

“ I suppose, having been more than half a century in close contact with matters of interest to the public, or officially in positions where I was a party to corporate activities or movements which might affect the market, I have been more interviewed than any one living and seen more reporters. No reporter has ever abused the confidence I reposed in him. ”

“ Have it clearly understood in large headlines as a part of the policy of the paper that no reporter will be allowed to invent or exaggerate, that he will be instantly discharged if it can be shown that he has in any way distorted the cold facts. ”

“ For, curiously enough, though a reporter sees much of life of various sorts that might furnish topics of conversation, no sooner do two or more of them get together than they begin discussions of matters connected directly with their work. ”

“ A single reporter, stationed at a strategic point, can collect columns of readable news of this kind in a single day, while the economic reporter engaged on an industrial item might require greater ability and training and yet have to work weeks upon a single article. The tendency, therefore, can scarcely be ignored to let industry and government assume the burden of the more expensive investigations, while the reporter employed by the newspaper concentrates upon the most productive matter—the cheap stuff. ”

“ A reporter returning from the army laden with information, procured at a lavish expense, was received in the office like a conqueror coming home from a victorious campaign, and he went forth again full of courage and zeal, knowing well that every man employed on the Herald was advancing himself when he served the paper well. ”

“ The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the one who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a printer's devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer take down speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real reporter, with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even excepting Police Captains. ”

“ To return empty-handed is to admit defeat. News hunting is often discouraging business, but the reporter must always keep up his determination by a firm belief that what is eluding him may be a big story, probably the biggest story of his career.
Accuracy. Accuracy must extend to every detail of reporting. As the reporter is seldom on the spot when an unexpected event happens, he must rely upon the accounts of it given by eye witnesses. ”

“ But whether he goes five times a day or only once, a [Pg 40] reporter is held responsible for all the news occurring on his run; and if he falls short in his duty or lets some more nimble-witted reporter scoop him on the news of his beat, he had better begin making himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness to receive him into their habitations; for a scoop, even of a few minutes, by a rival publication is the unpardonable sin with the city editor. The wise reporter never neglects any news source on his run. ”

“ One of these is the "up-lift run" for cub reporters—a round of philanthropic news sources to teach them the business of reporting before they become cynical. Another is the human interest story. If a reporter knows that his paper is always ready and glad to print human interest stories full of kindliness and human sympathy, he is ever on the watch for human interest subjects and consequently forces himself to see things in a sympathetic way. ”

“ On most of his assignments the reporter must trust to others for many, if not all, of his facts.115 Covering the story of an automobile accident, for example, he must see the story through the eyes of those who were present. These persons he interviews informally. From the information obtained in this way, supplemented by his own observation of the visible results of the accident, the reporter culls the salient facts and writes the story in his own words. What he is sure of he makes his own ”

“ In other words, the reporter in answering these questions, as he must in the lead of every story, finds the answer to one question so much more interesting than the answer to any of the other questions that he puts it first. In every fire story, however, the feature is not so easily discovered. ”

“ A REPORTER is now and again compelled to exercise other powers than those which are generally supposed to be at the command of the writer of shorthand and the paragraphist. I knew a very clever youth who in a crisis showed of what he was capable. There was, in the town where we lived, a society of very learned men and equally learned women. Once a fortnight a paper was read, usually on some point of surpassing dulness—this was in the good old days, when lectures were solemn and theatres merry. ”

“ The American journalist must be spicy, lively, bright. He must know how to, not report, but relate an accident, a trial, a conflagration, and, at a push, make up an article of one or two columns in length upon the most insignificant incident. He must be interesting, readable, as the English call it with reason. His eyes and ears must be always open, every sense on the alert; for, before all and above all, he must keep ahead in this race for news; if he should once let himself be outdone by a confrère, his reputation would be blasted. ”

“ Seldom is it that the
reporter on the job has no time for grind ing out the major part of his own copy. REWRITER CABRIES Loan But in New York how different! It is the humble rewrite man who does the
slaving, while the reporter is held in re serve to run after exclusive hunches. ”

“ No one ever heard of a newspaper man backing out, so no one moved.
“Come on,” said the president.
He led the way to the big express elevators and soon the crowd of reporters were on the ground floor. They went out the rear entrance and, by way of a number of back streets, to a dock on the New York side of the Hudson River where a steamer was in waiting.
“Keep close to me,” said Mr. Newton to Larry.
Once aboard the craft little time was lost. ”