News bulletin

“ Most newspapers rely on a news gathering organization for stories of railroad wrecks, big fires, floods and the like. The correspondent should never duplicate a story of this kind that he knows will reach the newspaper through another channel in time for publication. If, however, an event is of unusually grave importance, or if it happens at a late hour, the chances are that a special dispatch will be required, and the correspondent should send a bulletin of the facts immediately. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The independent policy of the Bulletin backed up by its superior news including telegraph, local news and correspondence from nearby towns, together with a splendid distribution service, has brought to it the largest circulation of any publication in Southeastern Washington and Northeastern Oregon. The Bulletin has a strictly modern mechanical plant. A site for a permanent home has been secured at the northwest corner of First and Poplar streets and there a first class modern newspaper building will soon be erected. ”

“ Remember that a few words of an item to-night are worth more than a column of the same to-morrow night.” That is a good rule for the correspondent. Do not delay sending news in the hope that it will be allowed greater space if you hold it a day.
Assume that you have the story of a railroad wreck in which a dozen passengers were killed. You are sure the story will be wanted. It is 10 o’clock at night. There is not time to query and get instructions. As soon as possible send a brief bulletin, telling what the news is and about how many words you will have. Then begin to send the story at once. ”

“ What M. E. Stone says to his correspondents on story writing may be read with profit by any newspaper man. The following is clipped from the monthly bulletin issued by the Associated Press to its correspondents:
A plain statement of fact is the best introduction to a news story. A simple, direct style—which does not mean a wooden style—is always desirable. In the opening sentence it is of particular value.
The news which a story contains is the one thing which entitles it to place in the Associated Press report. It is the news, not the manner of telling the news, on which the story must stand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The collectors making their weekly or monthly calls distribute leaflets and circulars disseminating sound ideas in regard to public and private health.
It is not possible to over-rate the press as a factor in the clean-up movement. The work of the newspaper does not stop with the spreading of information both before and during the campaign—in some instances it takes part in the activities. The columns of the newspapers are open to everything of a news nature that will materially assist—news 215stories, special articles, editorials, daily programs, cartoons and advertisements. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In full uniform, no manager—certainly no editor—of another morning paper is aware of the existence of the Daily News; the Daily News, on its part, being courageously steeped in equally dense ignorance of the existence of other journals. ”

“ These may perhaps be telegraphed to the newspaper office from some intermediate port when the theatre of war is distant—for unquestionably we shall, before very long, be able to telegraph pictures quite as easily as words. And this brings us face to face with one of the most interesting and important developments to be looked for in the vending of news. Beyond doubt, newspaper illustration will, in even the near future, be the subject of great and, in fact, of revolutionary improvement. Every daily paper will be copiously illustrated, and illustrated in colour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus the daily newspaper will be entirely a vehicle for the propagation of news, correctly so called: and very likely it will become almost entirely colourless, politically, because a well-informed public will resent obvious garbling or clearly unfair selection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In such departments of a modern newspaper as the City, Telegraph, Sporting, Financial, etc., the work of the reporters and editors is to chronicle and present the actual news. If nothing of vital interest has happened during the day, that is not their fault. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But there would be a newspaper or two, pretty old now, as some people reckon the age of newspapers, but in Newbank a newspaper is very wisely considered new until it has been read, and news is always news until you have heard it, no matter how long after the occurrence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The New York Tribune, as an example of editorial bravery, points out in an advertisement published May 23, 1922, that though “news knows no order in the making” and though “a newspaper must carry the news, both pleasant and unpleasant,” nevertheless, it is the duty of any newspaper to realize that there is a possibility of selective action, and that “in times of stress and bleak despair a newspaper has a hard and fast duty to perform in keeping up the morale of the community.” ”

“ Let us endeavour to supply a rapid sketch of the wonderful organization that is required to produce this great necessary of modern society.
The essential characteristic of a newspaper is news. It may be philosophical, or critical, or imaginative—it may pour forth treasures of learning or eloquence, to live but a few hours and then be too readily forgotten—but no amount of ability will give it currency if it be deficient in news. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Day after day the Press Bureau, of course under official inspiration from higher sources, issues statements in which the good news is unduly emphasised and the bad unduly slurred over. Day by day a large section of the Press helps on, with every ingenious device of big type and sensational headlines, the official hoodwinking of the public. Many pay their nimble halfpennies to be gulled. ”

“ The present week has been one of such general excitement, that we do not recollect its parallel for many years and, though we have more space to devote to news than any other weekly paper in the town, it would be impossible to give more than a sketch of the proceedings at the different public meetings, on the subject of the ministerial proposition. ”

“ 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? ”

“ A reporter on a morning paper, for example, would be given a clipping of the above story taken from the afternoon edition, and would be told by the city editor to see the coroner to get the results of his telegram to Williams, the man’s nephew, at Ithaca, and any other information available regarding the identity of the old man. Often unexpected and important news develops, which makes the “follow-up,” or second story a bigger one than the first. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why do we not let on the flood, raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion? He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Employ your senses.
The newspapers tell us of news not to be named even with that in its own kind, which an observing man can pick up in a solitary walk, as if it gained some importance and dignity by its publicness. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But quick judgment and quick action are a daily necessity in the newspaper office. The biggest event of the month may explode an hour before time for going to press. The news must be prepared with frantic haste with half the staff tumbling over each other, so to speak, in the rush to be on time. ”

“ 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. ”