Local news

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Type of story. Although most local events have been included in the various classes of stories discussed in preceding chapters, there remain several forms of city news that require separate consideration. Much interesting, timely information is to be found in schools, public libraries, museums, parks, and various departments of city government. As activities supported by public money, these institutions should be of interest to every citizen. Real estate, building, manufacturing, and business matters also furnish news of considerable interest and importance. ”

“ American universities of over 1000 students usually support a daily. The city daily necessarily covers four fields: (a) the events of the place in which it is published; (b) events without; (c) opinion, usually given on a separate page, known as the editorial page; (d) the quotation of stock, cereal, and other exchanges, and advertisements. To these are added combined criticism and record, in special articles and correspondence on special fields, as politics, sports, theatre, letters, education, etc. Usually the earlier pages of a newspaper open with news from without and pass to local news. ”

“ Local Reasons.—These factors and many others give news stories a news value that will carry them a long distance and make them interesting in communities far from their source. Many local reasons may enhance the value of a story for local papers. A paper's policy or some campaign that it is waging may give an otherwise unimportant event a tremendous significance. If an unimportant person is slightly injured while leaving a trolley car the story is hardly worth a line of type. ”

“ It is a recognized fact that colored readers in the South care almost exclusively for local news. Indeed, they simply desire to see their own locality written up. The news of the great, wide world, or even the news of the great, wide country, or the news even narrowed down to the experiences and doings of their own race, as they are scattered abroad throughout our land, is not desired to any great extent by them. ”

“ We should read important local news, that is, news of our own neighbourhood. We cannot understand our neighbourhood unless we know what is going on in it. A new library may have been opened, a new church or picture gallery. Some worth while person may be speaking whom we may go to hear. There may be trouble in the community which we can help to put right. The person who is really living in touch with progress must give some time to daily newspapers. ”

“ Various kinds and forms of news matter are grouped in various ways. Local, state, national, and foreign news is often arranged each kind on a separate page, as is also the society, the sporting, and [Pg 326] the market news. Short one-paragraph news stories, usually with one line of type for a head, are often assembled under such heads as “City News In Brief,” “News of the State,” “Sporting Gossip,” and are arranged in order of size, the smallest being put first, or vice versa. The society news is also frequently arranged in order of size, the longest stories being put at the beginning. ”

“ Conducting a Local Column.—When conducting a column giving the news of a particular locality or neighborhood, the one thing not to write is that there is little news in the community this week or to-day. The readers of a column should not be allowed to suspect that one has little information to present. All about one are unnumbered sources of news if the correspondent can only find them—humorous incidents, reminiscences of old pioneers, stories of previous extremely wet, dry, hot, or cold seasons, recollections of Civil, Spanish American, and European War battles, etc. ”

“ Most newspapers have special departments for different classes of readers—a woman's page, a children's column, a page devoted to sports, another to market conditions. Most of them also have a department in which individuals may ask questions or express their own opinions regarding questions of the day. The "local newspaper," with a circulation that seldom extends far beyond the county in which it is published, is of the greatest value in stimulating a community spirit. ”

“ If it is inexpedient for him to return to the office, he writes his story quickly at some convenient place and sends it to the office by messenger or by telephone. Under some circumstances, particularly when lack of time prevents his writing the story and sending it in, he telephones the facts to a rewrite man in the office, who writes the story from the data thus secured. The reporter for a local news association prepares his stories, as directed by the news editor of the association, under practically the same conditions as the newspaper reporter. ”

“ News is primarily local, and the first thing a correspondent must learn is how to distinguish the stories that are purely local in their interest from those that would be worth printing a hundred miles away in a paper read by people who do not know the places or persons involved in the story. Colonel Smith may be a very big frog in the little puddle of Smith's Corners, and his doings may be big news to the weeklies all over his county, but he has to do something very unusual before his name is worth a line in a paper two counties away. ”

“ In organizing its news collecting, the newspaper only takes advantage of information filed for various official purposes by many different persons in no way connected with the newspaper. Policemen, firemen, sheriffs, coroners, and practically all officials of local, state, and national governments, as well as doctors, lawyers, and merchants are all unintentionally serving as reporters of news. ”

“ We shall endeavor to make the Chronicle a reliable newspaper, advocating the interest of the farmer, stock raiser, and business man, and to aid in developing the resources of this magnificent country. We shall pay special attention to gathering local, territorial and general news, and make the Chronicle interesting as a home paper. Printing our own outside we shall have room for numerous correspondents. ”

“ It is the correspondent especially who must have the proverbial "nose for news," who must know the difference between information that is nationally and merely locally interesting, who must be able to tell when a column story in a local paper is not worth a stick in a journal a hundred miles away. ”

“ Even an accidental acquaintance of a man in town with the noted governor or the notorious criminal who has just been brought into the public eye—with a brief quotation of the local man's opinion of the other fellow, or how they chanced to meet,—is worth generous space in any paper. Oftentimes a resident man or woman's opinion of a statement made by some one else, or of a problem of civic, state, or national interest, is given an important place merely by reason of the fact that the story is associated with some locally prominent person. Always the effort is made to localize the news. ”

“ A spirited local press has anticipated the substance of the news, and most people wait tranquilly for the same local press to spread before them the particulars when the tardy mail arrives. Even the weekly and semi-weekly editions issued by the New York daily press have probably reached their maximum of importance; since the local daily press also publishes weekly and semi-weekly papers, many of which are of high excellence and are always improving, and have the additional attraction of full local intelligence. ”

“ The hurried reader has no time for the story clogged with unnecessary words and trivial detail; the newspaper has no space for it.
Daily there comes to the newspaper a stream of copy from various sources. The local room contributes its share, while the telegraph editor receives scores of dispatches from special correspondents, besides the regular service of one of the great news gathering organizations. It would be neither possible nor desirable to print all of the immense amount of news matter received. The paper as the reader sees it is the result of a process of careful selection. ”

“ They demand a high standard not only in the physical appearance of their newspapers but in the news service as well. Their daily paper must provide them with items of local, state and international interest and importance. In the complex activities of modern life, the newspaper must find and select the subjects which interest its readers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Evening newspapers, as a rule, are essentially local in character, and hence use less special telegraph matter than those published in the morning. But a big story is a big story at any hour of the day or night, and if it develops in time for day publication the correspondent of an evening newspaper should use every effort to get it in. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says: “In the early hours of the morning—say up to 10 or 11 o’clock—a brief bulletin on any important news item will be sufficient; if the telegraph editors want more they will notify you by wire. ”

“ Time is lost and unnecessary expense incurred if the correspondent sends in a slipshod story about which the office has to ask questions.152 The correspondent is as much an agent of the paper as the local reporter. He is responsible for all the news in a given territory, and if wide-awake and efficient he can do much toward increasing the prestige of his paper in his community. ”

“ Telegraph news includes all news not local, which comes to the3 paper by telegraph, long-distance telephone, cable, or mail, whether sent by its own correspondents or by a news association such as the Associated Press or the United Press. ”

“ The metropolitan press prints nothing of the ordinary happenings in the scores of cities and villages within fifty or seventy-five miles. The small city newspaper has a correspondent in every town and hamlet near by and everything of any account is recorded. In the country, the newspaper that has the best town and neighborhood news becomes the most popular sheet.
In the big city the editor and his staff know personally a very small proportion of the population; in the small city they know everybody worth knowing. The provincial editor enjoys, if he will, the social life of the place. ”

“ Gathering News.—The prospective reporter who supposes that newspaper men wander aimlessly up and down the streets of a city, watching and hoping for automobiles to collide and for men to shoot their enemies, will have his eyes opened soon after entering a news office. He will learn that a reporter never leaves the city room without a definite idea of where he is going. If newspapers had to police the streets with watchers for news as the city government assigns officers of the law, the cost of gathering news would be prohibitive. ”

“ In America every town of five thousand has its daily newspaper, and frequently two dailies, and in the West every town of five hundred people has its weekly newspaper. With us the newspaper crystallizes public sentiment, promotes local pride, and tries to be the social and intellectual centre of the community. A community of twenty-five thousand without a newspaper—and we found that this community never had supported a newspaper—was unthinkable to us in terms of any civilization that we knew. ”

“ His freckled face and his tawny shock of red hair rose above the gorgeous plaid of the clothes like a prairie sunset, and as he pranced off down the street he was clearly proud of his job. This pride never left him. He knew all the switchmen in the railroad yards, all the girls in the dry-goods stores, all the boys on the grocers' waggons, all the hack-drivers and all the barbers in town.
These are the great sources of news for a country daily. The reporter who confines his acquaintance to doctors, lawyers, merchants and preachers is always complaining of dull days. ”

“ News Runs.—These runs are distributed among the different reporters, sometimes only one, sometimes three or four to a person. On a small paper all of the runs, or all to be found in that town, may be given to one reporter, the number assigned depending upon the size of the town, the nature of the territory covered, and the willingness or unwillingness of the owners to spend money in getting news. On the larger papers, however, police headquarters generally provide work for one man alone, known as the "watcher." ”

“ The caterers are engaged weeks in advance. The florists provide the decorations. And the hair-dressing parlors are hotbeds of gossip. By visiting or calling regularly at these places one generally can keep abreast of all the society news in town. But always when getting news from such sources—or from any other for that matter—one must be sure of the absolute accuracy of all addresses, names, and initials. If one is not careful,—well, only one who has seen an irate mother talk to the city editor before the ink on the home edition is dry can appreciate the trouble that will probably result. ”