Newsstand

“ 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. ”

“ Since news is the newspaper’s backbone, it is obvious that an understanding of what news actually is must be an integral part of the equipment of the public relations counsel. For the public relations counsel must not only supply news—he must create news. This function as the creator of news is even more important than his others.
It has always been interesting to me that a concise, comprehensive definition of news has never been written. What news is, every newspaper man instinctively knows, particularly as it concerns the needs of his own paper. ”

“ It was in my eighth standard, when one of the then Salesian fathers, Jude Borges, who taught moral science, brought copies of the Herald into the class and asked us to count the number of advertisements and the number of news items on each page. The verdict: There was more news than advertisements. The moral that day for us kids was: read the Herald newspaper, it enriches your knowledge because it has got more news than advertisements compared to the other leading daily. ”

“ All of them have souls to save—so has that lawyer who does not go to church. I must see him to-morrow. 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"
Meanwhile the newspaper man prints the news about them all, for he keeps his finger on the pulse of the whole world for news. "No factor in modern civilization is so important as the press," says he. ”

“ None, indeed, who have ever known it, can wholly forget the generous rage with which journalism inspires its followers. To each of those young men, beginning the strangely fascinating life as reporters and correspondents, his paper was as dear as his king once was to a French noble; to serve it night and day, to wear himself out for its sake, to merge himself in its glory, and to live in its triumphs without personal recognition from the public, was the loyal devotion which each expected his sovereign newspaper to accept as its simple right. ”

“ I need not elaborate upon the wonderful growth of the press in our country, or refer to the great power which journalism wields in the development of the new world. I need not ladle out statistics to show you how the newspaper has encroached upon the field of oratory and how the pale and silent man, while others sleep, compiles the universal history of a day and tells his mighty audience what he thinks about it before he goes to bed. ”

“ Every news story should present the details of the news as accurately as possible and as completely as the significance of the news warrants. The embellishment of news stories with fictitious details to make them more interesting or more entertaining, as well as the distortion and suppression of significant facts of the news in order to accomplish some end, are alike opposed to the fundamental purpose of the newspaper. ”

“ The impecunious newspaper cannot give its readers promptly the news, nor able discussion of the news, and, still worse, it cannot be independent. The political journal that relies for support upon drippings of party favor or patronage, the general newspaper that finds it necessary to existence to manipulate stock reports, the religious weekly that draws precarious support from puffing doubtful enterprises, the literary paper that depends upon the approval of publishers, are poor affairs, and, in the long run or short run, come to grief. ”

“ It occurs to me that with the great advancement of the newspaper, and the family paper, and the magazine, we do not expect leaders and statesmen to think for us so much as we did fifty years ago. We do not allow the newspaper to mold us so much as we did. We enjoy reading the opinion of a bright, brave, and cogent editor because we know that he sits where he can acquire his facts in a few hours from all quarters of the globe, and speak truly to his great audience in relation to those facts, but we have ceased to allow even that man to think for us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From his individual perception of the true philosophy of human interest, more than from any other single source, have come the now general repudiation of the old conventional standards of news importance; the modern newspaper’s appreciation of the news value of the sentiment and humor of the daily life around us;417 the recognition of the principle that a small incident, interesting in itself and well told, may be worth a column’s space, when a large, dull fact is hardly worth a stickful’s ”

“ When a busy American glances over his newspaper while he sips his breakfast coffee or while he clings to a strap on the way to his office, he reads only the stories that catch his interest—and he reads down the column in any one story only so long as his interest is maintained. Hence the ideal news story is one which will catch the reader's attention by its beginning and hold his interest to the very end. ”

“ Moreover, a new element has come to the front that played a much more subordinate part three or four decades ago—the headline. "Let me write the headlines of a people," said the late Henry D. Lloyd to the writer, "and I care not who makes its laws." It is the staring headlines that form the staple of the busy man's newspaper reading, and they are certainly hygienic for the eyes if not always for the mind. While the trend towards larger and clearer type [133] has gone on chiefly without the consciousness of the public, it has not been merely a reform imposed from without. ”

“ Perhaps the tendency of modern journalism is to epitomize too much. In the hurry of daily newspaper work and the press of matter upon our pages, very likely we are fatally brief, and sacrifice rhetorical beauty to naked and goose-pimply facts. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The fact that a newspaper does not order a story or orders less than the correspondent offers does not necessarily imply that his news judgment is questioned. Stories that ordinarily would be used may be crowded out by a rush of news of greater importance. One story like that of the San Francisco earthquake and fire will cause the omission or rigid condensation of news that usually would be “featured.” Sometimes the correspondent’s story is not ordered because the facts are covered in the reports of a news gathering organization as fully as the newspaper desires. ”

“ No event of news value was too insignificant to escape the watchfulness of the Consolidated Press, none so great that it could not handle it from its inception up to the moment when it ceased to be quoted in the news-market of the world. Each night, from thousands of spots all over the surface of the globe, it received thousands of facts, of cold, accomplished facts. ”

“ Editorials, repeated editorials, are both desirable and necessary. But to one reader who is influenced by a given editorial many hundreds are influenced day by day by the headlines of the paper and by the wording and form of presentation of the news. It is therefore to a considered and continuous policy of news presentation that we must look primarily for help.
Of newspaper influence Arthur Brisbane has said:
There never was a corrupt official who could hear without dread the growling of a hundred thousand human voices outside his door. ”

“ 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 newspaper of the early—perhaps the immediate—future will almost certainly dispense with leading articles altogether, and be much more a news-carrier than an educator. It will attack adverse opinion by simply not reporting it. It will sometimes, no doubt, minimise facts unfavourable to its political side by garbling them. ”

“ It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishes thought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day to day the themes the world shall think on and talk about. The occupation of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important. When you think of it, it is astonishing that this department should not be in the hands of the ablest men, accomplished scholars, philosophical observers, discriminating selectors of the news of the world that is worth thinking over and talking about. ”

“ He knows, better than any one else, that it is not by its external literary merits that newspaper-writing is to be judged. What he wants above all else is the news, all the news, and nothing but the news—accompanied, of course, by the obligatory comment this news may deserve. He needs editorial writers, reporters, and correspondents who are newspaper men, and not men of letters, except in so far as these men of letters may have accepted the special conditions of newspaper work. ”

“ Accuracy of Presentation.—One very definite caution must be given concerning the organization of the story,—the necessity of presenting facts with judicial impartiality. When the reporter is arranging his material preparatory to writing, casting away a note here and jotting down another there, he can easily warp the whole narrative by an unfair arrangement of details or a prejudiced point of view. Frequently a story may be woefully distorted by the mere suppression of a single fact. A newspaper man has no right willfully to keep back information or to distort news. ”

“ The story is a good one if the reader will suspend his sense of realism sufficiently to enjoy it. But in its purport [Pg 148] to be a true account of an arrest and a trial of certain persons, it makes one doubt first the story, then the newspaper that printed it, and finally newspapers in general. And so develops one of the main causes of criticism of the modern newspaper. A reporter must resolve to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. A journal loses its power the moment it is wrong. ”

“ The ideal of a newspaper, according to present-day ethics, is to print news. The daily press is no longer a golden treasury of contemporary literature, not even, perhaps, an exponent of political principles. Its primary purpose is to report contemporary history—to keep us informed concerning the events that are taking place each day in the world about us. ”

“ And the newspaper of to-day is a better paper because it is more accurate of statement and more faithful to fact, and more fair-minded in the presentation of passing events. The long weary day of misrepresentation in news reports is drawing to its close. The chief events of the time are recorded with such fidelity to accuracy that in future years they must be accepted as historically correct. All decent newspapers now take pride in their accuracy of statement in the news columns and there is little intentional misrepresentation. ”

“ It should be noted, however, as perhaps the most curious anomaly among the mass of anomalies which constitute modern journalism, that the newspapers do not insist upon this personal responsibility of the writer in their treatment of those matters which concern not one class but every class of the community. What the newspaper insists upon, on the ground, presumably, that it is right and natural, in the minor affairs of life, it entirely ignores in the major matters of life. ”

“ Certainly originality in expression adds much to the interest of newspaper stories, and many a good piece of news is ruined by a bald, dry recital of facts. Just as the good reporter is always one who can give his yarns a distinctive flavor, great newspaper stories are seldom written under the restriction of rules. ”

“ To every newspaper in the kingdom there comes daily sufficient news of one sort or another to fill three sheets the same size. The duty of the journalist, if, of course, he is not a reporter or leader-writer, is to make a judicious selection as to what he shall publish and what he shall omit. ”

“ It is the Sydney 'Bulletin,' I think, which preserves as its motto the proposition that every man has at least one good story in him. I have been studying newspaper files since I took this job,—all the files of all the papers I could get,—and I'm almost ready to believe that much news which the papers publish has got realer facts up its sleeve: that the news is only the shadow of the facts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”