Newsboy

“ The newsboy cannot gain admission to many of the boys clubs, debating clubs, athletic clubs, and is often debarred from many of our greatest christian associations, because he is a being within himself, he stands alone in his class, a creation of his own acts and deeds, and goes upon the street at that age when environment molds his future, and generally molds it bad. ”

“ Although unkempt looking, rough in manner, boisterous and unmannerly in speech, there is often much that is good in the newsboy, and Mr. Beatty, of the Witness office, keeps a sharp eye after their character and interests. About once a year the office gives them a dinner, or something of the sort, which they attend as one man, or, more properly, as one boy or girl, for some of the "newsboys" are girls. ”

“ The newsboy is ubiquitous. He is the product of the century, and will never be shelved as are so many useful things. Their cries were welcome to those men, who were anxious to know what each day was bringing forth and when one galloped into camp, two days after the battle of the Antietam with a bag heavily freighted with New York dailies, he was surrounded at once, and his stock rapidly melted away.
“Good news!” flashed through the ranks as they eagerly devoured the news of the battle of Iuka, with Rosecrans at the head.
“It was a daring attempt,” Ralph read aloud to the eager group ”

“ Jimmy Small was only one of a dozen newsboys crying the same thing in City Hall Park, New York. The lads, ragged little chaps, were rushing at all in whom they saw possible customers, thrusting the papers in their very faces, a fierce rivalry taking place whenever two of the boys reached the same man at the same time. But of all who cried none shouted louder than this same Jimmy Small, and none was more active in rushing here and there with papers. ”

“ The boy at school is taught to be kind, to be generous, and to remember his little friends whenever opportunity favors. Heartfelt sympathy in a newsboy, comes like a flash of lightning, [187] and he is ever ready to fall in line when the boys want to remember a friend. The president was taken by surprise one day when the street sellers, the poorest of our newsboys, through one of their hustlers, presented him with a gold badge. The money to purchase it was raised by subscriptions from the boys, in amounts ranging from two cents to twenty-five. ”

“ A one hundred thousand dollar Newsboys’ Building. (How essential is the conservation of the Newsboy! When he is no longer small enough to be a newsboy and must do the work of an able-bodied man, what then?) ”

“ A dozen or more newsboys can be seen at almost any hour of the day, dodging here and there around the corners, down alleys, or playing in the rear of the circulating offices of the great dailies. In all kinds of weather they will be found at their posts, prompt in delivering their papers to subscribers, or upon the streets crying the most important of the many head lines of the transactions of a day. Would it be possible to get this noisy, hustling crowd of boys together and gradually to bring this great power, this great force, into a channel for doing good? ”

“ Newsboys are largely responsible for leading girls of this class into the tempting paths of vice. In purchasing their papers at the newspaper offices, generally in cellars, they are subjected to many indignities and familiarities, which, at first resented, are gradually accepted as a matter of course. Once the descent is begun, the journey is completed by outsiders, until the girls become corrupt and unscrupulous, with a knowledge of the ways of the world that would surprise many a matronly head. ”

“ Accidents and minor crimes of all kinds many times are worth only a few lines as news, but as the basis for feature stories, they contain great possibilities. An incident in a crowded street car, a mishap on the street, a bit of conversation between two newsboys, a mistake made by a person unaccustomed to the ways of the metropolis, or any one of the hundred little episodes in the daily life of a city may be taken by the reporter as the subject of his feature story. Little children, because of the great appeal that they make to men and women of all classes, often furnish good material. ”

“ As a class, the newsboys of New York are worthy of more than common attention. The requirements of the trade naturally tend to develop activity both of mind and body, and, in looking over some historical facts, we find that many of our most conspicuous public men have commenced their careers as newsboys. Many of the principal offices of our city government and our chief police courts testify to the truth of this assertion. From the West we learn that many of the most enterprising journalists spring from the same stock. ”

“ Newsboys are students. From the necessity of knowing the special happenings of the day, as soon as they receive their papers they quickly read the head lines. First, they can be seen to slowly spell each word, but in a very short time they read without assistance. ”

“ These little wiry, nervous street boys, alert [11] of eye, and lithe of limb, who flock the principal thoroughfares of our great cities at almost all hours of the day.
Newsboys and bootblacks, boys whom the world seems to have forgotten. By peculiar conditions these boys are used to being at odds with the world. It need not be told that our newsboys, as a general rule, as people know them, are regarded as a swearing, stealing, lying, dishonest lot of young criminals, and these qualifications are recognized adjuncts to their business. ”

“ The newsboys are a most unruly lot, and to be kept under control are compelled to wait in a room, built on purpose for them, until the papers are ready. This time they occupy in quarrelling, cutting their names on the sides of the deal partitions, and calling out to "Miss Gray," the traditional name given to every young lady who has had charge of that department for the last ten years or more. Should a gentleman take her place for the nonce, he is called Mr. Gray. As soon as the papers are ready they are counted out to the newsboys, each of whom has his particular beat or stand in the city. ”

“ The newsboys are smart there, just as they are elsewhere. They take advantage of popular weaknesses. When they find they are not likely to sell out, they approach a citizen mysteriously, and say in a low voice—“Last copy, sir: double price; paper just been suppressed!” The man buys it, of course, and finds nothing in it. They do say—I do not vouch for it—but they do say that men sometimes print a vast edition of a paper, with a ferociously seditious article in it, distribute it quickly among the newsboys, and clear out till the Government’s indignation cools. ”

“ These newspaper boys can spin the most gorgeous yarns on a speck of truth—it’s their business to stretch things to the breaking point you know, partner, and they sure do that. All that I discarded and threw over the side was just chaff, without a single sound kernel of wheat in it. When later on, after I’ve had time to digest things a bit when I go over what’s left, chances are there’ll be another sheaf of clippings go bad and be tossed out. Some of those stories were the bunk, made up in the reporter’s skillful brain out of nothing at all, even if interesting to the general reader. ”

“ But even the staff did not understand how utterly the getting and printing of news absorbed the small man with the huge nose. To him it was a fetish—and more: it was his religion.
Once in a great while he gave voice to what was always in his mind, and preached his gospel to a group of reporters.
“A newspaper lives to give news. If it does not give the news—all the news—fully, clearly, it is no newspaper, but a dead rag. A newspaper is really a public institution, with a sacred duty to all the people.
“News is alive. It breathes. It has personality. ”

“ Larry thought with a sigh. He imagined it was some magic gift that comes to only a favored few. And so, in the main, it does, but at heart every boy is a reporter, for if he doesn’t tell his chum or the family at home the different things he sees during the day he’s only half a boy. And telling the things one sees is, after all, the beginning of reporting,75 for that’s all a newspaper does, only on a larger scale. ”

“ The reporter who brought in the story, or the 'tip,' gets some praise, and possibly a check. His position on the newspaper is secure—until he makes his next mistake. Tersely expressed, a 'beat' is a story which only one newspaper gets, and which all the other newspapers wanted. A reporter with the right spirit will move heaven and earth to get it for the journal he represents."
"I 've just prepared a graceful tribute to you," he called out as he caught her eye. "The chief says you 're one of the most reliable members of the staff, can always be depended upon, and all that. ”

“ This seemed all wrong to Rufus, who thought that a newspaper man, of all men in the busy city, ought to be the busiest.
He had supposed that reporters went out upon the street and prowled about blindly on the lookout for news, like policemen after arrests, and he had wondered what part of the town he would have to patrol, and whether to wear his reporter's badge on the breast of the waistcoat or at the bottom, like his Harlem literary-club pin. ”

“ Nothing could be farther from the truth. A newspaper that permitted such a condition would be swamped with libel suits within a week. In every newspaper office, certainly in every newspaper office worthy the name, there is an unceasing war against inaccuracy of every kind. The new reporter learns this when he comes in jubilant from an assignment, only to be sent back to get the middle initial of a name. The out-of-town correspondent learns it when he is called from his bed by long-distance telephone to explain a vague statement in a story he had wired earlier in the night. ”

“ Now the editorial smile turned upon William Douglas. It was gentle, but unsatisfying.
"And the reporter will be discharged at once," continued Elias M. Pierce, exactly as if Douglas had not spoken at all.
"Mr. Ellis," said Hal, "will you 'phone Mr. Wayne to send up the man who covered the Pierce story?"
The summoned reporter entered the room. He was a youth named Denton, one year out of college, eager and high-spirited, an enthusiast of his profession, loving it for its adventurousness and its sense of responsibility and power. These are the qualities that make the real newspaper man. ”

“ Every story must be secured in the same way—whether it is the account of a business transaction, a bank robbery, a political scandal, a murder, a reception, or a railroad wreck. Seldom is it possible to find any one person who knows all the facts just as the newspaper wants them, and many a story that is worth but a stickful in the first [10] edition is the result of two hours' running about town, half a dozen telephone calls, and a dozen interviews. That is the way the news is gathered, and that is the part of the reporter's work that he must learn by experience. ”

“ A Newspaper Man's Honor.—In conclusion, emphasis may be laid on the reporter's attitude toward obtaining [Pg 56] news. He must go after a story with the determination to get it and to get it honorably. Once he has started after an item, he must not give up until he has succeeded. But he must succeed with honor. Stories are rampant over the United States of newspaper men stealing through basement windows at night, listening at keyholes, bribing jurymen to break their oath, and otherwise transgressing the limits of law and honor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In London scarcely any one knows the newsman but a newsman. His customers know him least of all. Some of them seem almost ignorant that he has like “senses, affections, passions,” with themselves, or is “subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer.” They are indifferent to him in exact ratio to their attachment to what he “serves” them with. Their regard is for the newspaper, and not the newsman. Should he succeed in his occupation, they do not hear of it: if he fail, they do not care for it. ”

“ The newspapers now demand the very best men as reporters, and they are getting them, too. You have heard, of course, of the professorship of journalism at C—— College? Well, it was established by a man who, only a few years ago, was a reporter on one of the New York papers, and he is making a first-class thing of it. I am a sort of a reporter myself,” he continued, laughing, “and the [20] minute I graduate from here I mean to become a full-fledged one.”
“You a reporter!” cried Myles. “How can you be a reporter and a college man at the same time?” ”

“ It’s in the blood. Newspaper men have been known to inherit fortunes, to enter politics, to write books and become famous, to degenerate into press agents and become infamous, to blossom into personages, to sink into nonentities, but their news-nose remained a part of them, and the inky, smoky, stuffy smell of a newspaper office was ever sweet in their nostrils.”
But, “Not yet,” Von Gerhard had said, “It unless you want to have again this miserable business of the sick nerfs. Wait yet a few months.”
And so I have waited, saying nothing to Norah and Max. ”