Part 1
TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 342 Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Hints on News Reporting
Murray Sheehan
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1922, Haldeman-Julius Company
HINTS ON NEWS REPORTING
HINTS ON NEWS-REPORTING
WHAT IS NEWS?
“To be explicit, easy, free, and very plain,” was the ideal set down for himself by Daniel Defoe in his news-writing more than two hundred years ago. And despite its age the advice could hardly be bettered for a newspaper man of today. For after all, what a modern reader of the news-column wants is a detailed account of some happening, written in such a style that it can be easily and rapidly read without thought to its grammar or construction, and can be easily understood throughout. That Defoe was master of such a style in his own writing will be granted by anyone who has read his “Robinson Crusoe”--and who has not!--a style which can be understood by a child of seven or eight and yet which gives delight to grown-ups. No wonder he was one of the most popular journalists of his own time.
When a man buys a newspaper on a street corner, what he wants is manifestly a paper that will give him the news in an easily read account. “News,” for him, may be something far different from what you or I would call by that name, and perhaps he picks out a paper which would furnish me with very little news indeed, very little, that is, of the world’s current happenings which would interest me. He may be devotedly concerned with the latest prices of dress-goods and men’s clothing, or the most recent gossip from the ring-side, whereas it may be that for me neither of these subjects contains the slightest interest. Perhaps when you approach a news-stand, what your eye naturally goes looking for is a sheet that gives much space to stock quotations or political news or notes on recent books. What Mrs. Brown always wants is a certain newspaper that devotes columns to the naming of prominent people who have dined or danced, and to the detailed description of the clothes they wore. Miss Black buys a certain evening paper because the back page always has a lot of interesting little stories drawn from daily life in the streets about her, little things that do not amount to much in themselves but are written up in an interesting way. And the fact that thousands and even millions of other Americans are interested in the same things as the individuals I have mentioned, has made American newspapers what they are, for better or worse. It has made them, that is, a sort of glorified crazy-quilt of the varied interests of their readers, with the individual news-patches all worked out in a style which is at once detailed, loose, free, and very easily comprehended.
The central key, then, to the problem of why we have so many newspapers in New York, for instance, and why tens of thousands buy this paper and other tens of thousands buy that one, is, of course, simply one of interest. One man buys the “Times” regularly because he knows that in it he will find the particular type of news that he is interested in, and that it will be treated in a manner which brings out most forcefully that interest. Another man will want only the Brooklyn “Eagle,” as it will do the same for him. Another will choose the “American,” and so on.
And the central key to all news-writing, one might say, is simply this same matter of interest. If news is something in timely happenings which interests the people, then news-writing is perhaps best defined as the method of presenting the facts of current happenings in an interesting manner. News-writing is, or should be, one form of being interesting.
When a man picks up his newspaper he wants, as we said before, the news. For that reason we have, in American newspapers particularly, developed the headline to a high efficiency in advertising the contents of the paper. This side of the question does not concern us here, however, as headlines are ordinarily not written by the reporter at all, but by specially trained men on the copy-desk. We are interested only in the technique of the news-story proper.
Now when we sit down with a novel or a short story, what many want is suspense. We do not want to know what the end will be. We want that to come to us as a perfect surprise, and the more perfect our wonder at the end of the tale, the better we feel it is. We like to be kept guessing about the outcome of the narrative. If we can predict it we generally call the writer a failure.
The beginning of a news-story is diametrically opposed to this procedure. What a man wants when he begins to read a news-story is not suspense, but news. He is interested in the news, and he wants it given to him as soon and as quickly as possible. He wants to be as fully informed of the news in as short a time as possible, with all the essential facts at the beginning. Then if he wants to go on with the story he is at liberty to do so. If he is interested in the minor details he can continue down the column. But what he wants at the very beginning of his story is the main facts, and this is responsible for what we call in America the “lead of the story.”
WHAT IS THE “LEAD”?
The lead of a news-story is really very simple in its construction, as far as the main outlines are concerned. In actual daily practice you will find that the working out of the same principles results in an infinity of effects. But fully ninety-five per cent of the stories in American newspapers are begun on the same principle, that of the “straight news lead.”
For the basis of any news-story will, upon analysis, always turn out to be that somebody or something has done something or is now doing something, or is going to do something. Either Mrs. Smith has just died, or Mr. Williams is now building an addition on his store, or the Red Men will tomorrow stage a monster parade. Fox’s mill burned down last night, or plans are now going forward for the new freight depot, or the janitors’ strike begins tomorrow. WHO did WHAT can be set down as the first two elements which will certainly go to make up the “lead,” as without them there would be no news at all. In this connection, also, we always give ample identification, so there can be no mistake as to WHO is meant, which John Jones it is. If necessary we give his age, address, profession, etc., so that in a large city he can be identified.
But readers of newspapers are also interested in the locality in which the action took place, and in the time at which it occurred. If John Jones killed his wife, they want to know where it happened and at what hour. Did he do it at home or abroad? We give the home address of the Joneses in either case, and if the murder occurred elsewhere we give that address likewise. And at what time did he do it, demand the readers, at morning, noon, or night? If lightning destroyed the chimney of the Miller factory, readers want to know when, and they like also to have given the location of the factory, so that they can check up on whether it is the Miller factory that they know, or whether it is in the vicinity where live any of their acquaintances, or near where they do business, who have thus been in danger. These two elements of time and place, the WHEN and the WHERE are considered essential to the lead of a news-story, as well as the agent and his action. So that we might say the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN were absolute essentials to the lead. They are always included in a straight news-lead, and no story is considered complete without them.
There is one more element almost in the same category, and it is sometimes included to make what are known as the five essentials. When Mr. Jones killed his wife at their home, 14 East Ninth street, this morning, most people want to know HOW and WHY he did it. Was it with an axe or a revolver or Othello-wise with a pillow? Was he jealous or insane or did he mistake her for a burglar? When the lightning struck the Miller factory, we want to know how or why it did so. We want to know if it was the chimney or one of the new tower structures. How did it strike? What route did it follow? Was it because the mill had no lightning-rods? This element of the lead is not always included, however, unless the HOW or the WHY are especially interesting.
These five, then, can be set down as the framework of what is known as a straight news-story, and you can find the theory in practice by picking up any copy of any one of the myriad newspapers of the United States. The statement will not be true of most foreign news-sheets, as they follow a different technique altogether. This fact accounts for the “deadness” that many Americans find in English and Continental papers. They develop their news-stories in a slower fashion. But read over any ordinary edition of any American paper, and you will find that fully ninety-five percent of the stories have the five essentials at the very front tip of the account. The other five percent belong to another class of stories which will be considered later.
WHAT INTERESTS PEOPLE?
Variety, however, would be largely an absent quantity if all news-stories started out with a bald setting down of all five of the essentials “onetwothreefourfive, just like that,” as E. E. Cummings has said. And variety there must be. The American newspaper is in a keen competition against other newspapers and must attract its readers. It must interest them, display its news in an attractive fashion, do it better than the other fellow, display its wares in so interesting a way that people will buy here rather than from the other fellow. This is particularly applicable, of course, to cities and towns having two or more newspapers, but it is also true of the little places that have only one daily or perhaps only a weekly. In these cases, if the sheet is written in an unattractive fashion, with the news badly presented, there is great likelihood that large numbers of the people will feel that “they can get along without the paper,” and away goes the list of subscribers on the downward “path to the everlasting bonfire.” On the other hand, if the news is brightly set down, with variety and interest, there will be scores of people who will take the paper that otherwise would not, and even if they move away from the locality they will wish to continue receiving it.
What is it that must be added to the five essentials in order to liven them and give them interest and variety for the readers? The answer lies in a consideration of what it is that attracts the interest of readers, what it is that readers are interested in. And here we come back to the very first thing we talked about in considering the news-writing of American newspapers--INTEREST.
People are interested in scores of things, as you will find out if you scan the pages of a large metropolitan daily. You might almost say that there is nothing in which they are not interested, if the matter is presented to them properly. And the “properly” part of the preceding sentence is what we must now consider.
In the first place, people are interested in anything which will make a DIFFERENCE TO THEMSELVES. If I am a grown man and I see a train approaching, I am not under ordinary circumstances vitally interested. If I am on the track, however, I decidedly am interested, because that train then may perhaps make a difference to me. Or if some of my family are on that train, as I happen to know, and we have arranged to wave at this point, then also I am interested, because, again the thing makes a difference, however slight, to me. Or if I am interested in mechanics and I suddenly notice that some improvement in machinery has been built into this engine, I prick up my ears and am interested, for here is something that matters to me. Or if there is a wreck or an accident to that engine, and particularly if there are human beings injured or killed, then again I am interested, because, after all, such a thing might some day happen to me or mine, and I am thus touched in my deepest interest--my interest in myself.
Thus, if any happening in the day’s news can be shown to be vitally connected with the WELFARE of the readers, that happening will make good news, and will stir the interest of the readers. It is undoubtedly on this basis that we are all interested in political news, in questions of taxes and tariffs, civic improvements, international relations, wars, scientific discoveries, etc. We are interested in them only to the extent, generally, that they are seen to touch our daily lives, to the extent that they make a difference to us. If the Grand Lama of Thibet makes a new law about transportation in his realm, I am not interested, because it makes no difference to me, so far as I know. But if I am told that as a result of this, my wife can have silk more cheaply, or tea will be twenty-five cents dearer, I sit up and take notice, and the thing has become news indeed. Before, the thing was only a happening on the other side of the world, and touched me not. But now it has been brought into my field of concern, by touching my interests, and I am wide awake to the recent developments over there.
SPORTS are, of course, another field in which the American public shows interest, and almost any information from its activities will be given space on the sports page of the papers and be read with avidity. Even quoits or horseshoes are sometimes featured on the sports page, and the big games of baseball or football actually become sometimes the most prominent story on the first page of the paper, driving international and national news to subordinate positions and sometimes to inner pages.
HOBBIES offer another opportunity to catch the reader’s attention with matters that interest him. Chess and bridge would come under this head, I suppose. Radio and wireless, new wrinkles in diving and swimming, recent developments in crochet stitches or the making of strawberry preserves, etc., can properly be included here, perhaps, as news of all these recent developments will make real news. In the spring when tens of thousands of people will be interested in gardens, any and all information about growing things will have interest for readers, and hence will constitute, for them, news. Some papers can even, according to the nature of their subscription-list, offer recent developments of art, literature, music, architecture, etc., as news, and have it welcomed. News about new plays and motion picture plays, if they are to run for any length of time, is welcomed in the form of criticisms, pro or con, of the first night’s performance.
All the interests thus far considered have been more or less, as I said, based on our own welfare and the relation which we could see between the new occurrence and its power to influence our daily lives. Some of them have stepped over into the next division to be taken up. When the great annual Harvard-Yale football game comes off, it is looked upon as the classic game of the season. When the final series of baseball games is played, it is for the championship of the world. Even the most sluggish of imaginations will take some interest in these events, however slight their ordinary interest in these sports may be.
This brings us to interest in the PROMINENT. There is something about anybody or anything that has reached a supreme position in this world, which makes us all stop and look in that direction with interest. If the highest mountain in the world does something, we are interested. If the greatest murderer in history has fried eggs this morning for breakfast, we are interested. If the richest man in the world plays golf, we want to see pictures of him in the act. If the manufacturer of the greatest number of automobiles in the world gives a quarter to a little girl, we stop and read all about it, or gaze with interest on a photograph of the perfectly ordinary quarter lying in her quite unusual hand. When a great tenor dies, we have stories about old ladies who suddenly remember that he was their nephew. Just as a handkerchief on which Napoleon once blew his august nose is still a center of interest in the Invalides museum in Paris, so the tiniest fragment of information about the greatest this or the greatest that interests us, and thus becomes news. Big numbers impress us the same way. We seem to be carried away by good round numbers. “Thirty thousand eggs” or “Four hundred million toothpicks” seem to wield a hypnotic fascination on us because of their resounding figures, and we are interested.
On the other hand, we are interested also in people and things known only locally, or at any rate, interesting to us only because KNOWN LOCALLY. If the carpenter next door dropped his hammer on his foot and was laid up for two days, we might run a little paragraph on the occurrence in the local paper. But if he lived ten miles away and was not known locally we should hardly be interested in his accident, and the story would never appear. If Amy White takes part in a college play at the state university, we do not give a rap, unless she happens to come from our home town, in which case we are interested and the thing becomes news. If I live in St. Louis, I am interested in local drawings, which will not appear at all in Chicago papers.
There is one field, however, in which we are all interested, no matter where the thing happens. And that is the UNUSUAL. We are all wildly romantic when it comes to this matter of the out-of-the-ordinary. So much is this the case, that the life of a reporter becomes one long quest for the most unusual feature in every story he is called upon to write, as offering the best possible way of catching the interest of his readers. He lives in one long flurry of the exceptional--which perhaps is one of the causes of his astonishing grip on the secret of youth, even into his last years.
This quest of the unusual takes all possible forms. If a thousand men go up a flight of stairs successfully, they do not make news, but the thousand and first man, who trips and breaks his leg while carrying home a crutch for his wife who last week broke her leg on the very same step, makes news. He has done something out of the ordinary run of events. Ten thousand babies daily lead healthy lives in the country, and they are therefore not news. But the baby who today swallows an open safety pin and allows his mother successfully to remove it with a button hook will very likely be heralded all over the lands as news. Hosts of happenings are published daily in the papers of America which in themselves are unimportant, trivial. But because they are out of the ordinary, have the mark of the unusual on them, they are published on the front pages of otherwise sedate news-sheets. The fact may be telegraphed all over the country that such and such a farmer in some little unknown place in Kentucky chopped off the end of his thumb accidentally and a rooster ate it. Countless very high-priced linotype operators will set it into type, and other highly paid workers will put the fact on costly white paper, which will then be transported in divers expensive manners to the readers--and all because of their seemingly ineradicable interest in the new and the strange.
Still another unfailing interest is that in CHILDREN. A news-story which otherwise would amount to very little will take on new value if there is a child in it who can be written up, or “featured,” as the newspaper reporter says. A fire which ordinarily could be adequately covered in a hundred words, and which would only get a number four headline will call for three or four hundred words and will get a number two head if some man rushed back to save a child, or if a child discovered the fire.
The same way with ANIMALS. The public is interested in any animal story, wild or tame, and as in the previous story, if a cat or a canary or a dog is rescued out of a fire or gives warning to the inhabitants, the story immediately becomes for news purposes much more valuable, and the animal interest is generally played up in writing such a story. So much is this the case, that reporters in cities possessing a zoological garden can well afford to make almost a daily visit to the place. The fact that a lion cub needs a kitten for a playmate so that he won’t be lonesome, or that the beavers are building a new nest seems to wield a magic influence over readers.
HOW TO BEGIN
The thing to do, then, upon sitting down to write a news story, is to ask yourself, “What is the most interesting thing about this story?” If the principal figure is a man or a woman very prominent in the world or extremely well-known to your readers, the problem is very likely solved immediately, since the name alone is sufficient to arouse interest and catch the reader’s attention. Otherwise, some other element of the story is taken as the most interesting, and in this connection you must remember the list of interests which has just been enumerated. Go over any copy of even a moderately well-written newspaper, and you will note the comparatively small range of interests to which reporters feel that they can safely appeal in beginning most of their stories. Of course the interest in the unusual gives an almost infinite field of adventure in writing, and the trick then becomes one of getting the strange set of circumstances most quickly and most effectively before the readers.