Newspaper office

“ Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no Kings and no incidents outside the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. ”

“ If the newspaper men in your town are too busy to give the Chamber the attention it deserves, write your own news; don ’t go for days without anything in the
papers about the Chamber. Be always ready to receive a reporter; don’t be too busy to see him; don’t let him cool his heels in an outer office.If there is a reporter on your beat who is at all capable, don't go over his head to the editor with a story.Do your kicking on a badly-handled story to the man who wrote it, not to his superior. ”

“ Anything interesting of this kind has always a value for some one so long as it can be kept secret and the only way in which a newspaper can counteract this tendency is to keep in touch or be introduced to other parties, who may be interested in disclosure. The ordinary published items of business news, failures, amalgamations, flotations, etc., are on the same footing as official news and come into the newspaper office of themselves. ”

“ Newspaper experience may aid the reporter in learning how to write his stories, but a newspaper apprenticeship is not absolutely necessary. However, whether he is studying the trade of newspaper writing in his home, in a classroom, or in the city room of a daily paper, he needs positive instruction in the English composition of the newspaper office—rather than haphazard criticism and a deluge of "don'ts." Hence this book is concerned primarily with the writing of the news. ”

“ When a young man secures a position as reporter for a newspaper he begins as a cub reporter and is usually said to be on the staff of his paper. His sphere of activity is confined to the editorial room, where the news is written; his relations with the business office, where advertising, circulation, and [29] other business matters are handled, consists of the weekly duty of drawing his pay. His chief enemies are in the printing office where his literary efforts are set up in type and printed. ”

“ But, if he desires to continue on the general writing staff he will find it very much to his advantage—in connection with his general work—to study a specialty or two. In the newspaper office the man who knows most about a given topic is the man summoned to write on that topic. The expert on national politics is sent to the national political conventions and the man who knows most about finance must write the big stories of financial moment—just as in football the best kicker is called on to kick the goal. ”

“ To solve these problems another group of men is needed, the reporters proper, called, when they are on this service, “general42 workers.” As the original brief messages come in to the city editor, he details one or another of his young men to the spot, who sets to work to ransack every fragment of fact or probability, which throws light on the case. If a general worker has to think only of a morning newspaper and the matter is important, he will try to treat it exhaustively and not return to the office, until he has his story complete and ready for the press. ”

“ In these days of many newspapers few readers are satisfied with merely being informed; [15] they want to be informed in a way that interests them. To this demand every one connected with a newspaper office tries to cater. It is the defense of the sensational yellow journals and it is the reason for everything in the daily press. ”

“ The business man would think chiefly of a newspaper, as a vehicle for prices and a10 medium for advertising. Cooks, butlers, clerks and governesses look upon it as a daily registry office. The solicitor sells houses and lands through it. Housewives through it sometimes buy their soaps and more often their hats. Actors, singers, authors, artists and musicians each read their special column and wonder when the editor intends to engage some one really acquainted with the only subject worth reading. ”

“ Such a system of local news gathering makes possible a staff of reporters relatively small as compared with the size of the city. Reporters employed by the city news association work under conditions practically the same as those in a newspaper office. Inasmuch as the stories that a news association reporter writes are edited in at least half a dozen newspaper offices by different editors and copy-readers, the reporter has the advantage of seeing how various papers treat the same news story. ”

“ Nearly all of the men who are furnishing this greatly increased volume of business information have had daily newspaper office experience. In looking through the lists of technical journals printed in New York I see124 the names of dozens of men as their editors whom I recognize as former daily newspaper men. They now have permanent and responsible posts at reasonably remunerative salaries. ”

“ He came down to the office one morning and found a notice in his letter box. Ten other men and a woman received similar notes. It was nothing unusual, just a little bi-monthly shake-up, decided upon in ten minutes. That is the way it is done in many a newspaper office. Billy told the desk that that was not the way they discharged men from The Day. "You ought to know," said the city editor. And for once Billy had no reply to make. ”

“ How different is the working of the great brain-engine above stairs! Here man rubs against man, jealousy and discontent and favoritism do what they can to clog the machinery; and the more one knows about the inner197 life of a newspaper-office, the more the wonder grows that the newspaper of to-day approximates so closely to the highest journalistic ideal. You may find flaws, gentle reader, in what your favorite journal says, but its typographical make-up is always perfect. ”

“ Or the reporter may dictate his story over the telephone to a man in the newspaper office, who, using an overhead receiver like that worn by telephone operators, takes it down rapidly on a typewriter. Experienced reporters can dictate their stories in this way with only their notes before them. The long distance service is used in the same manner by correspondents when it can be more advantageously employed than the telegraph.
Photographs. Illustrations, or “cuts,” have come to be an important part of almost all newspapers. ”

“ Each reporter takes short-hand notes for a space of ten to fifteen minutes time, and is then relieved by his colleague, waiting above him, who steps into his place as the other retires to the Reporter's Room, in the corridor, to write out his notes, and thence to take them to the newspaper office, or else, if he chooses, he may send them by the small boys waiting in the gallery, who are employed by the newspapers at a salary of from eight to twelve British shillings a week to act as messengers. ”

“ With this came, in the first quarter of the last century, the extension of private announcements, which have now attained, through the so-called advertising bureaus, some such organization as political news-collecting possesses in the correspondence bureaus.
The modern newspaper is a capitalistic enterprise, a sort of news-factory in which a great number of people (correspondents, editors, typesetters, correctors, machine-tenders, collectors of advertisements, office clerks, messengers, etc.) are employed on wage, under a single administration, at very specialized work. ”

“ But I am sure that few persons who read the papers realize the great amount of time and thought that goes into turning out a good, up-to-date, artistically illustrated newspaper. The mere mechanical toil required is enormous; and in addition to this labor there is all the bustle, rush, and rivalry attending the securing of the latest news. The editorial office has its set of problems, as you know, if you yourself get out a paper. ”

“ The journalist in the small city, like the village editor, is in close intimacy with his readers. He is bound to them by the tie of community interest. He lives with them as well as for them. He may make himself the most influential and the most beloved man in the neighborhood if he cares to do so. Repeatedly in the history of this Republic the editor of the small city newspaper has been called to the President’s cabinet, to a foreign ambassadorship, to the national congress, to the government of his state and to county and town office. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Associated Press also has correspondents everywhere in the world, most of whom are paid for what news they furnish, while others at important news centers are regularly employed to gather and send news to the association. To facilitate the handling of the news, the Associated Press has divided the country into four divisions with a central office and a superintendent in each; and in these divisions there is a bureau at every important news center with a correspondent who is responsible for all the news in his district of the division. ”

“ When anything unusual occurs in this field there will always be some one at the police office or in the city hall to telephone to the chief papers and warn them not to miss an opportunity.
Business items of serious importance are of all news the most valuable that a paper can get. ”

“ When I first entered the street, twenty years ago alas! the social status of press men was much lower than at present, when the pendulum has swung the other way, so that newspaper proprietors wear coronets, the purlieus of Fleet Street are infested with barons and baronets, and even reporters have been knighted by the King. In my early days a journalist did not often get nearer to a Cabinet Minister than the hall porter of his office. ”

“ Yet the press was still the last resource of the educated poor who could not be artists and would not be tutors. Any man who was fit for nothing else could write an editorial or a criticism. The enormous mass of misinformation accumulated in ten years of nomad life could always be worked off on a helpless public, in diluted doses, if one could but secure a table in the corner of a newspaper office. The press was an inferior pulpit; an anonymous schoolmaster; a cheap boarding-school but it was still the nearest approach to a career for the literary survivor of a wrecked education. ”

“ The city editor also has an assignment book or sheet on which is entered every important news possibility for the day, with the name of the reporter assigned to cover it, and with any information or suggestions that the editor wants to give the reporter. When the reporter arrives at the office to begin his day’s work, or when he reports to the office by telephone, he gets his assignments for the day. These assignments are usually connected with his run, so that while he is on his daily round of news gathering he may get in addition the special news assigned to him. ”

“ In the eighteenth century the Clerks of the Road developed the exercise of their privilege. They accepted subscriptions and undertook the supply of newspapers generally throughout the country. They became, in fact, newsagents. Their newspaper business was something quite apart from their duties as officers of the Post Office. ”

“ No newspaper can exist without taking part in it, because every newspaper wields influence, and every newspaper must cast its decision on every issue that arises. Every paper is expected to have its candidates for political office ”

“ Some men of wealth and some big business corporations have undoubtedly bought existing newspapers or have established new ones, secretly or openly, with the evident intention of using news and editorial columns to advance their own interests. Ambition to secure political office or power has obviously been the purpose of some of these men. Creation of public opinion favorable to their business interests has undoubtedly been the aim of other men and of corporations. ”

“ This duty falls on a special class of men called “watchers,” who are far from being ordinary reporters, as very often they have not been promoted to the dignity of writing a line, but they must know what news is and their function is to telephone to the head office any bulletins, which are41 promising, or any definite items, which need to be investigated and worked up, and in fact to be the eyes and ears of the newspaper. But they are eyes and ears which have to be open all the time. ”

“ Unlike almost any other profession, that of a newspaper reporter combines two very different activities—the gathering of news and the writing of news. Part of the work must be done in the office and part of it outside on the street. At his desk in the office a reporter is engaged in the literary, or pseudo-literary, occupation of writing news stories; outside on the street he is a detective gathering news and hunting for elusive facts to be combined later into stories. ”

“ Increased facilities for gathering news and information and the wonderful improvement in printing office mechanism permit the making of a complete newspaper almost anywhere. The small cities may have just as good a daily sheet as the big ones if the owners care to pay the price of producing it. The news associations and the telegraph companies deliver news simultaneously in all parts of the country. The newspaper in the remote Northwest or the extreme South gets the same telegraphic news as is furnished to New York City or to New England. ”