Bulletin

“ Then—particularly if the hour is nearing press time—the correspondent should follow as rapidly as possible with instalments of the detailed story, without waiting for a reply to the bulletin lead. When there is doubt about the length, editors would rather have one not take chances on delaying the news,—would rather have too much of a story than too little. ”

“ The bulletin gives suggestions for a constitution, enrollment of members, and a scheme for cards on which to keep a record of the crop you are going to grow. There are rules, too, that each person who competes for prizes must observe. ”

“ While that struggle was in progress the arrival of the weekly mail in a remote village was an event of importance. The inhabitants would gather in large numbers at the post office, and the meager war news contained in the newspapers would be read aloud. The postmaster or some subscriber to a paper would often post a copy of the latest journal in some conspicuous place in the town, and from that simple beginning there was developed the newspaper bulletin board, where the public may obtain brief information of great events before the full report can be put in type. ”

“ You can also send in news, such as reports of job conditions and local items that you think will be of interest to workers in other localities. This is important to a good bulletin, because, it will give the workers in one locality more heart to know by reading the bulletin, that workers in other localities are also active. ”

“ Smaller papers often print stories on the new city directory; the increase or decrease in population is treated as news and a very interesting story may be written on a comparison of the names in the directory. In university towns the appearance of a new university catalog or bulletin of any sort is the occasion for a story which points out the new features or compares the new bulletin with a previous one. ”

“ Not until the close of the nineteenth century did these pony reports for the smaller dailies completely disappear. The bulletin board has possibly reached its highest development in reporting ath- letic events. Because of the great interest taken by the Ameri- can public in baseball, the bulletin board has frequently blocked
city streets with its crowd of interested spectators who wanted the news even before it could appear in "Sporting Extras." ”

“ THE ENEMY’S MOVE.
Although the Bulletin was not a profusely illustrated newspaper, it maintained a photo-engraving plant of its own. Carroll had installed this department when he first acquired possession of the paper, and had brought a man named Neilson from New York to take charge of it. ”

“ Write stories on bulletins, catalogues, city directories, etc. Study them with reference to their timeliness and try to discover what in them has the most news value. Require the student to begin with this element of news value and to give the source (the name and date of the bulletin, etc.) in the lead. Look over the daily papers and pick out news [305] stories which bury the gist of their news and have the students rewrite the leads to play up the real news or to give greater emphasis to buried features. ”

“ Our monthly bulletins, presenting in serried ranks the accessions of the month, severely marshalled by the rules of the decimal classification, and with one title closely followed by the next, so that the roaming eye is constantly caught by new and ever more attractive possibilities for skipping and skimming—what could be devised more effectively to promote that species of gluttony which is indicated by long lists of call numbers of books which we simply must see before next month's bulletin appears with another long list? ”

“ 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. ”

“ March 1, 1881.—I have just been glancing over the affairs of the world in the newspaper. What a Babel it is! But it is very pleasant to be able to make the tour of the planet and review the human race in an hour. It gives one a sense of ubiquity. A newspaper in the twentieth century will be composed of eight or ten daily bulletins—political, religious, scientific, literary, artistic, commercial, meteorological, military, economical, social, legal, and financial ”

“ These events, recorded in the newspaper, are as much history as events which happened in the days of 46 Roman power, as recorded by Julius Caesar, Livy, and other writers of those times. Thus the man who reads a daily newspaper, or a weekly newsmagazine, is making definite use of history—otherwise he wouldn’t bother to read!
Equally, events which happened to us in our daily work last year, last week, even today, are as much historical events as things which occurred centuries ago. ”

“ After recording these transactions, my Journal thus continues:—
“It is impossible to notice all the proceedings of the week, nor is it necessary. The accounts of meetings to protest against the measure, and the gross falsehoods which have been promulgated in order to get up a case, will be found in the Morning Herald; . . . the real facts appearing in my published minute, and in the statements of Ministers on receiving the deputation of Wednesday.” ”

“ It seems to me that the leading feature of the Sunday magazine should be the biggest topic that will be before the public on the Sunday that the newspaper is printed. It should be written by one who thoroughly knows his subject, who is forceful in style and fluent in words, who can make a picture that his readers can see, and seeing, realize. So every other feature of the Sunday magazine should have points of human interest, either by contact with the news of the day or with men and women who are doing something besides getting divorces and creating scandals. ”

“ The increase in the amount of advertising has made possible also the expansion, in size and scope, of the Sunday paper. Special articles, fiction, humor, and illustrations in black and colors, fill special supplements, magazine sections, and “comics.” In fact, aside from the news sections, the reading matter in Sunday newspapers has become practically identical in character with that of the popular weekly and monthly magazines.
Reading matter the primary purpose of which is entertainment rather than information has always had a place in daily papers. ”

“ The Herald, feeble as it was, managed to survive financial diseases concomitant with newspaper infancy, and at the beginning of 1847 it appeared with a new dress as The Morning Herald and The Evening Herald. An editorial spoke as follows about the penny press in Boston: "The competition of the penny press has caused a mental activity among all classes; rash and impul- sive it may be, but, nevertheless, far preferable to the dignified stagnation which, in times of yore, was seldom broken by the larger and more expensive journals." ”

“ But we all love our dear common country better than all that belongs to district and climate; and so loving my country, and so being proud of its best fame and honor, its literary advancement, I was decidedly pleased with your periodical. The writing, the printing, the revision of the proofs, the ensemble, are all unquestionably creditable to you. I am too old and too much hackneyed in the style of periodicals to compliment. The Richmond Messenger gives respectable promise. Periodicals have to me a kind of physiognomy. Some look sickly and death-doomed from their birth. ”

“ On Thursday, in conspicuous type, black faced and double-leaded, there appeared on the front page and again at the top of the editorial column of every daily paper, morning and evening, in the United States, and in every weekly and every monthly [47] paper whose date of publication chanced to be Thursday, the following paragraph:
"There is a name which the press of America no longer prints. ”

“ The material of the sheet attracts our scorn. It is a fair specimen of rebel manufacture, thick and coarse, like wrapping-paper, all overspread with little knobs; and of such a deep, dingy blue color, that we wipe our spectacles thrice before we can distinguish a letter of the wretched print. Thus, in all points, the newspaper is a type of the times, far more fit for the rough hands of a democratic mob, than for our own delicate, though bony fingers. ”

“ If any doubt lay in the mind of the world as to who was the actual founder of the new paper it should have been dispelled by the editorial in the issue of the Sentinel, October 24, 1908, in which the editor thanked the Boston Herald for the respects paid to the forthcoming Monitor. The Herald had printed this paragraph:
Good luck to the coming Christian Science newspaper. Starting a daily paper is an enterprise that usually tests the courage and resources of the bravest and most resourceful souls. The graveyards are full of their remains. ”

“ In the magazine the patchwork of daily journalism is assembled into more meaningful designs. Local news is sifted of its provincialism to become matter of national concern. Topics which you rapidly skimmed in the afternoon newspaper three or four weeks ago are re-discussed in the weekly or monthly magazines in a way which often makes you feel that here, for the first time, they become of personal import. ”

“ An attempt to start a belated Press discussion of the speech by circulating it in the form of specially printed brochures, or at least to induce those papers which had only given extracts to publish the whole text, unfortunately failed; only the Current History, a special war magazine of the New York Times, felt itself called upon to reprint the speech in extenso in its December number. ”

“ The sixpenny journals, the Evening Post, Commercial Advertiser, Courier, Journal of Commerce, and Express, perforce learned much from the Herald about news-gathering. Years later the Evening Post described the new spirit of enterprise which had seized upon journalism by the early forties:
In those days expresses were run on election nights, and in times of great excitement the Herald and Tribune raced locomotive engines against each other in order to get the earliest news ”

“ We commenced our issue last year avowedly as an evening journal; we claim now the distinction of having changed the fashion of evening newspapers. When this journal appeared, the morning journals had, it may be said, the day to themselves. No evening paper had more than an insignificant circulation. In these days it has long been little less than absurd that the people of this great country should have no new medium of information as to the news of the world from the midnight hour when what are called morning papers are made up. ”

“ Owing to the inconvenient innovation of magazine proprietors, in publishing their periodicals on different days, “Magazine day” has lost much of its pristine glory, but even now the work commences on the eve of the chief day of publication, which is known consequently as “late night,” for the assistants are generally kept busily engaged till twelve or one o’clock. By the morning’s post of this preceding day the country orders arrive, and the invoices have to be made out from the lists received. ”

“ For six months of the year a daily newspaper is a bolter, and will scarce yield obedience to the restraining hand of the editorial Chifney—for six other months it is a slug, and requires the soft incentives of whip and spur to keep it in its place. That task of weaving of the daily leaders out of one’s own bowels—as one may say—is a hard one indeed. ”

“ In magazine sections of Saturday and Sunday issues such articles are supplied in greater numbers. These feature stories are frequently illustrated. They seldom fill less than a column; more often they are several columns in length.
“Human Interest” Stories. Material for the “human interest” type of feature story is to be found anywhere and everywhere in the reporter’s daily round of news gathering. The many police court cases furnish an abundance of humorous and pathetic incidents. ”

“ The whole aspect of the humbler press has changed within these few years. Unquestionably the people have changed. Visit, if you can, the interior of that marvellous human machine, the General Post-Office, on a Friday evening, from half-past five to six o'clock. Look with awe upon the tons of newspapers that are crowding in to be distributed through the habitable globe. Think silently how potent a power is this for good or for evil. ”

“ A newspaper is a living organism, threaded through with the nerves of men and women, inspired by their spirit, animated by their ideals and thought, the living vehicle of their own adventure of life. So The Tribune seemed to us then, in that last [Pg 108] hour, when we looked back on our labor and comradeship, our laughter, our good times together on “the rag,” as we had called it. ”

“ I did a good morning’s work, correcting and clarifying my draft, and have now finished for press eight chapters, ninety-one pages, of this piece of journalism. Four more chapters, say fifty pages, remain to be done; I should gain my wager and finish this volume in three months, that is to say, the end should leave me per February mail; I cannot receive it back till the mail of April. Yes, it can be out in time; pray God that it be in time to help. ”

“ Not a single paper has a reporter. Two men are considered plenty to clip and translate for a daily, and it is not unusual for them to borrow type to set the paper. All the type-setting is done in the day time and a morning paper is ready for sale—if anybody wanted it—the afternoon before. While our morning newspapers allow their brains to rest at 5 a. ”