Reporting

“ Here, then, is an opportunity for the "beats" I speak of. The reporter who, through acquaintance, friendship, or natural detective skill, can get that which it is the policy of the police to conceal from him, wins. It may seem to many a reader a matter of no great importance if a man should miss a safe-burglary for his paper; but reporting is a business, a very exacting one at that, and if he will stop a moment and think what it is he instinctively looks at first in his morning paper, even if he has schooled himself not to read it through, he will see it differently. ”

“ Each one depends on a different factor for its interest and each must be written in a different way so that its individual interest may be most effective. However there are general tendencies in the reporting of court news. ”

“ No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. ”

“ For this thing reporting is a business involving consider able specialized knowledge, to be learned by experiments and mistakes, like every other job, and there's considerable toil and moil and drudgery at the bottom, just as there is at the bottom of any other business or pursuit. So young Linton was bossed around and jumped upon and made to feel very small and stupid and in the way, just as he would have been in a law office, or a mercantile house, or at the bottom of any other place. ”

“ All the rules that apply to the fire lead apply to the lead of any story.
It would be impossible to classify all the news stories that a newspaper must print. The very zest of reporting comes from the changing variety of the work; no two assignments are ever exactly alike—if they were only one would be worth printing. Newspapers themselves make no attempt to classify the ordinary run of news or to work out a systematic division of labor; a reporter may be called upon to cover a fire, a political meeting, a murder, a business story, all in the same day. ”

“ Reporting requires as high ability as editorial writing; perhaps of a different kind, though in the history of American journalism the best reporters have often become the best editors. Talent of this kind must be adequately paid; and it happens that in America the reporting field is so vast that few journals can afford to make the reporting department correspond in ability to the editorial, and I doubt if the importance of doing so is yet fully realized. An intelligent and representative synopsis of a lecture or other public performance is rare. ”

“ We need not fear that the first-night reporting would be ill done if competent reporters were instructed that they were not to consider themselves as critics, and that it was their sole duty to report, as they would report anything else, conscientiously and accurately. ”

“ From the details of a news story it is almost always possible to infer the sources from which the news was obtained. Public and private records, reports, officials, eye-witnesses, for example, are often cited as authorities for the facts in the story. These sources should be noted carefully, so that they may be drawn upon by the student in his own reporting. In fact, a list of sources compiled from news stories of various kinds, such as those of crime, accidents, fires, etc., will be found helpful to the beginner. ”

“ REPORTING, the art or business of reproducing in readable form, mainly for newspapers, but also for such publications as the Parliamentary or Law Reports, the words of speeches, or describing in narrative form the events, in contemporary history, by means of the notes made by persons known generally as reporters. The special business of reporting is a comparatively modern one, since it must not be confounded with the general practice of quoting, or of mere narrative, which is as old as writing. ”

“ The intrinsic power of the reporter appears to be so great, the number of very able men who pass through reporting is so large, that there must be some deeper reason why, comparatively speaking, so little serious effort has gone into raising the vocation to the level say of medicine, engineering, or law. ”

“ You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?"
"Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting."
"I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting." ”

“ Reporting is the first use to which writing is put and through which the writer is trained. For this, abundant material is indispensable, as much as clinical material for a medical school. As the medical schools gravitate to cities, and the rural institutions flicker out one by one, so in the end the effectively trained reporter will gravitate to a large city. Towns of under 20,000 population furnish a very tame sort of reporting, and those who get this training in them find reporting is under new conditions in a great metropolis. ”

“ Each of a number of special kinds of reporting requires more or less expert knowledge, which a reporter who specializes in that field acquires as a result of training and experience. Sometimes, however, a general reporter may be sent out to cover an athletic contest or a society event, and he should be prepared to do either successfully. Every reporter should familiarize himself with the best methods of handling all kinds of news. ”

“ Interviewing in its broad sense is thus at the basis of nearly all newspaper reporting, because nearly all stories deal with persons—their doings and opinions. Even in covering the story which the reporter is fortunate enough to observe, a certain amount of interviewing may still be necessary to make the story complete. ”

“ The findings of the District Court, which this court has not modified, criticised, or overruled, establish beyond cavil that, despite the fact that AP was early in the field and has grown to great size, many other reporting agencies have been established, and grown in the United States, two of which, UP and INS, are now comparable to AP 'in size, scope of coverage and efficiency.' Additional agencies which furnish substantial news reporting services in the nation total between twenty and thirty. ”

“ The railroad, labor, market, or marine editors report the news in their particular fields, sometimes in special forms, such as market reports or quotations, but their work of news gathering is like that of the general reporter.
Qualifications of the Reporter. Rapidity, perseverance, accuracy, intelligence, and tact, as well as the “news sense,” or “nose for news,” are the essential qualifications for successful reporting.
Nowhere is it truer that “time is money” than in newspaper making. The reporter, as the news collector and news writer, must save as much time as possible by working fast. ”

“ In reporting on cases of a confidential character, in which it [7] is not desirable that the facts should be made public, mark the word "confidential" both on the report and on the cover in which it is transmitted. ”

“ To my mind, the ability and the judgment shown by the members of the reporting staff cannot be too warmly commended. It is not surprising that occasionally attempts should be made by warm-hearted persons to express in a substantial way their recognition of the talents of this department of a newspaper. I have several times known of sums of money being offered to reporters in the country, with a view of obtaining the insertion of certain paragraphs or the omission of others. ”

“ After the lead is finished a court report usually turns into a running story of the evidence as it was presented. This may be condensed into a paragraph, giving the reader merely the point of the day's hearing, or it may be expanded into several columns following the testimony more or less closely. In form, it is very much like the summary paragraphs in the body of a speech report. The result is usually more or less dry and reporters often resort to a means, similar to dialogue in fiction, to lighten it up. ”

“ Perhaps he can talk to some of the people who had narrow escapes, or interview the friends or relatives of the dead. Everywhere he turns new clues open up, and he must follow each one of them in turn until he is sure that he has all the facts.
6. Point of View.—The task would be easy if every one could tell the reporter just the facts that his paper wants. But in the confusion every one is excited and fairly bubbling over with rumors and guesses which may later turn out to be false. Each person who is interested in the incident sees and tells it only from his own point of view. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They follow every clue that the tip suggests and [6] every clue that is opened up as they progress; they hunt down the facts until they are reasonably sure that they have secured the whole story. The result may not be worth writing, or it may be worth a place on the front page, but the reporter must get to the bottom of it. Whether on a beat or on an assignment every reporter must have his ears open for a tip of some unexpected story and must secure the facts or inform the editor at once. ”

“ As we shall see when we begin to write court reports, it is necessary to exercise every possible trick to put interest into the story. In the actual court room all that relieves the dreary monotony of legal proceedings is an occasional bit of interesting testimony. And when the reporter tries to report a case he sometimes finds that interesting testimony is all that will lighten up the dull monotony of his story. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In other words, the reporter in answering these questions, as he must in the lead of every story, finds the answer to one question so much more interesting than the answer to any of the other questions that he puts it first. In every fire story, however, the feature is not so easily discovered. ”

“ The editor turns over to the reporter the tip that he has received and instructs him to go out and get the facts. A paper's best reporters are used almost entirely on assignments, and when they go out after a story they practically become detectives. ”

“ The reporter must gradually learn the names of the various kinds of type and the various proofreader's signs that are used to indicate the way in which the type is to be set, for the whole work of writing the news is governed and limited by the mechanical possibilities of the printing 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. ”

“ Incomplete investigation leaves a reporter with the fear that he may have overlooked something essential which a rival news gatherer has found. The good reporter—and he is the one who83 is most likely to be a good news writer—spares no effort in running down every smallest clew that may help him to understand his story. Persistent investigation, even when the story on the surface appears commonplace, may uncover an important feature and enable the reporter to score a notable beat for his paper. ”

“ If not, the reporter may examine, as in the "follow-up," to see whether the first story plays up the best feature, or whether it does not contain another feature equally good, or one possibly entirely overlooked. Failing here, he may look forward to probable developments, as an investigation following a wreck, a search by the police following a burglary, or an arraignment and trial following an arrest. Failing again, he may consider whether some cause or motive or agency for the fire or divorce or crime may not have gone unnoticed by the other man. ”

“ Story.—Any article prepared for a newspaper.2 A three-line item and a three-column account of a convention are both, in the newspaper sense, stories. The term is applied also to the happening with which the story deals. Thus a reporter sent to get the facts about a fire is said to be covering a fire story. A happening of unusual importance makes a big news story. Reporters are assigned or detailed by the city editor to cover certain stories, and the task given each is his assignment. ”