The Daily News

“ Practical advice and useful information in special fields, humorous matter, and fiction, as given in the daily newspaper, do not differ materially from similar matter published in other forms and cannot be considered distinctly journalistic types of writing.
How news is gathered. Since the day’s news is the essential part of the daily newspaper, the gathering, writing, and editing of news is naturally the chief concern of journalism. ”

“ Scarcely any other form of publication has regularly so great a variety of writing as the daily newspaper. Thus, although a newspaper is ordinarily thought of solely as a medium for the publication of current news and editorials, the average daily paper supplies its readers with much entertaining reading matter as well as considerable advice and useful information. ”

“ The news value of normal, peaceable developments is very small. It is therefore a godsend to the newspapers when something extraordinary happens, particularly in international affairs. For this reason, the daily news frequently presents an172 untrue or warped picture of the actual situation. ”

“ Even the Daily News has been moved to raise a protest against the present state of affairs, and as recently as March 15th declared that the mind of authority "is being fed on selected facts that convey a wholly false impression of things." ”

“ By far the most important and exacting task, which falls to its lot, is the provision of a daily—or weekly as the case may be—supply of news and that not of any news nor of enough news but of all the news. The distinction is of immense practical importance because it trebles the difficulty imposed on the conductors of a newspaper. ”

“ Every reader is interested at once, for the news affects his own daily life. Sometimes this personal appeal is due merely to the reader's familiarity with the persons or places mentioned in the story; sometimes it is due to the story's application to his business life, his social or religious activities, or to any phase of his daily existence. That is the reason why political news interests every one, for we all feel that the management of the government has an influence on our own lives. ”

“ It is the imperative demand for news, embracing every movement of human life in every class and every country, that sets in action the wondrous organization that produces a daily newspaper. Its ministers of communication are almost ubiquitous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The time for this has not come, and may never come; but our journalists already know that editorials neither make nor mar a daily paper, that they do not much influence the public mind, nor change many votes, and that the power and success of a newspaper depend finally upon its success in getting and its skill in exhibiting the news. ”

“ The Look-Up Club Bulletins, pamphlets and little books containing news of critical importance and timeliness to all members—news not generally known or not available in the same concentrated form in the daily press, will be sent to all members for their own use and for distribution to others at critical times and places and with strategic persons—labor unions and employers and public men. ”

“ Big news, of course, is always good; but those special types of news, those little hobbies for which individual papers have characteristic weaknesses, one can learn only by studying the columns of the paper for which one corresponds. Some newspapers make specialties of freak news, such as odd actions of lightning, three-legged chickens, etc. Others will not consider such stories. One daily in America wants a bulletin of every death or injury resulting from celebrations of the Fourth of July. ”

“ One frequently takes up a daily paper and finds in it everything but the news, so that last week’s issue is just as good reading as yesterday’s.
The principal reason and necessity for having so many newspapers is that every public man requires an organ in order to get his views before the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So with the story of a national election, a great labor strike or a declaration of war.45 These are the exceptional stories whose importance as news is as obvious to one unskilled in newspaper making as to the trained editor.
But what of the more commonplace happenings of the day? The problem that confronts the editor daily is to make a paper that will appeal to as many readers as possible. The man who asks a newspaper to print, as news, a long dissertation on recent discoveries in Asia Minor mistakes the purpose of daily journalism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides this information, there are many little incidents in the daily life of every city that have no significance as news but that can be written up as entertaining stories. Hotels, railroad stations, docks, and street cars are frequently the scenes of little comedies and tragedies that the reporter with keen insight into human life and with ability to portray them, turns into readable sketches. Animals no less than persons may be the central figures in these stories. ”

“ People learned most of the news of the day from distant places, whether it pertained to politics, society, or gossip, through faithful correspondents.
Imagine a busy merchant in one of our great cities writing a business letter, but giving most of the space to the results of the last election, or the doings of the state legislature. ”

“ A study of the magazine and feature pages of any metropolitan daily paper will show the possibilities of this kind of story. Almost any subject may be made into a feature story if the writer has the gift of originality.
3. Department or classified news. Under this head come stories that are grouped by the newspaper in separate departments, as sporting news, market reports and society notes. The extent to which news is classified varies widely with different newspapers. ”

“ Out of the day’s news it gives prominence to that which fits into its scheme of treatment, and there is so much news that it can fill its columns with interesting materials, yet leave untouched a myriad of events. ”

“ Hence he should never write short paragraphs upon unimportant topics—his style is too ponderous. The News, as a political sheet, is well managed, barring some desire, occasionally manifested, to pull, for personal ends, the strings of its influence ”

“ The distinction between local news and general news grows out of the greater degree of interest on the part of the reader in persons and places that he knows and in matters that are closely related to his business and his home. News of significance concerning the community in which he lives is of prime importance to every reader. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may be the act of going into bankruptcy, it may be a fire, a collision, an assault, a riot, an arrest, a denunciation, the introduction of a bill, a speech, a vote, a meeting, the expressed opinion of a well-known citizen, an editorial in a newspaper, a sale, a wage-schedule, a price change, the proposal to build a bridge.... There must be a manifestation. The course of events must assume a certain definable shape, and until it is in a phase where some aspect is an accomplished fact, news does not separate itself from the ocean of possible truth. ”

“ Bringing a Story up to the Minute.—The first requisite in rewriting is the necessity of making old news new, of bringing it up to the minute. No matter when the events occurred, they must be presented to the reader so that they shall seem current. Currency is all but a necessity to life, vigor, interest in a yesterday's event. Here is an item of news in point. Suppose the following story from an afternoon paper is given a reporter on a morning daily:
Charged with running his car thirty miles an hour, Dr. ”

“ Whether news shall be the record of things admirable or things disgraceful practically depends on the community. In the early days of Dodge City, Kan., or Leadville, Colo., the information that Cherokee Jake or San Juan Bill had attended church would have been news. ”

“ Are there not a hundred little rivulets of news which never flow through the journals, but are passed from mouth to mouth, and seem shallow enough, but which, uniting at last, form a great stream of public opinion, and this, having formed itself imperceptibly, is suddenly found in full flow, and is so obvious that the newspapers forget to mention it? ”

“ If the newspaper has not the news it may have everything else, yet it will be comparatively unsuccessful; and by news I mean everything that occurs, everything which is of human interest, and which is of sufficient interest to arrest and absorb the attention of the public or of any considerable part of it. ”

“ If a hundred thousand picked men in this country in all walks of life all get the same news the same week, and then use the news the week they get it, and put it where other people will use it, we will all know and everybody else will know what the Look-Up Club is for. ”

“ Undoubtedly the event of the day, whatever it may be, is apt to become unduly prominent, and to thrust itself obscuringly between us and the perhaps more important event of yesterday, where the public appetite demands fresh gossip rather than real news, and the press accordingly keeps its spies everywhere on the lookout for trifles that become important by being later than the last. ”

“ One can easily imagine the busy political talk going on at that time in all kinds of dwellings and places of resort—the eager expectancy with which citizens waited for news—the haste with which reports, often exaggerated, passed from lip to lip—the sensation produced by decided acts on either side ”

“ The secret political movement here introduced to the reader has contributed more to the sensational character of American politics, and, at the same time, proven a more influential factor in those political questions with which we have dealt as a people, than any or all contemporaneous issues. And yet nothing has been written on the theme bearing a just proportion thereto,—absolutely nothing,—if we subtract the unknown quantity in the news problem of the day from this estimate, and for reasons as varied as obvious. ”

“ The company of bright minds, certain to be sanguine and optimistic, the excitement produced by unexpected news, the rush to prepare it most attractively and against time, the thousand unpublishable conceits and views and arguments that leap to the mind and are discussed in council, the freaks and blunders of the reporters and contributors—all these elements are in the cup of joy that a journalist drinks off every day. ”

“ These reports, so far as they are calculated to cause readjustments, have the character of what we call news. It is the existence of a critical situation which converts what were otherwise mere information into news. Where there is an issue at stake, where, in short, there is crisis, there information which might affect the outcome one way or another becomes “live matter,” as the newspaper men say. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Elopements, clandestine marriages, unusual engagements, freakish parties, and similar extraordinary social and personal news do not come within the sphere of the society editor, but take regular, and usually prominent, places in the news columns. ”

“ For instance, if a newspaper is undertaking a crusade against midwives or pawnshops or certain political leaders, it gives those institutions or those persons little or no credit for the good they accomplish, nor does it feature impartially in its news articles their good and bad acts. ”

“ The old staid and influential organs of the past, such as the Constitutionnel, the Debats, or the Siecle, which were accepted as oracles by the preceding generation, have disappeared or have become typical modern papers, in which a maximum of news is sandwiched in between light articles, society gossip, and financial puffs. ”

“ THE NEWSPAPER AS AN ORGAN OF OPINION While the necessary characteristic of all periodical literature has been the conveyance of news of some sort, sometimes of a general and frequently only of a special character, there has run side by side with this function the conveyance of general information and of instructed comment and incidentally the opportunity of thus moulding public opinion. ”

“ Nor must we forget our gallant body of volunteers, who look every morning in the daily press for the chronicle of their latest doings. All of this intelligence has to appear daily, or the grumblings of the reader would make themselves unmistakably heard, and even felt. ”