Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of Newspaper Writing

Grant Milnor Hyde

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• Publié par: chyaz
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 40
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence, by Grant Milnor Hyde This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of Newspaper Writing Author: Grant Milnor Hyde Release Date: July 4, 2008 [EBook #25968] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEWSPAPER REPORTING *** Produced by Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) NEWSPAPER REPORTING CORRESPONDENCE A MANUAL FOR REPORTERS, CORRESPONDENTS, AND STUDENTS OF NEWSPAPER WRITING BY AND GRANT MILNOR HYDE, M.A. INSTRUCTOR IN JOURNALISM IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1912 COPYRIGHT , 1912, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO MY MOTHER INTRODUCTION The purpose of this book is to instruct the prospective newspaper reporter in the way to write those stories which his future paper will call upon him to write, and to help the young cub reporter and the struggling correspondent past the perils of the copyreader's pencil by telling them how to write clean copy that requires a minimum of editing. It is not concerned with the why of the newspaper business —the editor may attend to that—but with the how of the reporter's work. And an ability to write is believed to be the reporter's chief asset. There is no space in this book to dilate upon newspaper organization, the work of the business office, the writing of advertisements, the principles of editorial writing, or the how and why of newspaper policy and practice, as it is. These things do not concern the reporter during the first few months of his work, and he will learn them from experience when he needs them. Until then, his usefulness depends solely upon his ability to get news and to write it. There are two phases of the work which every reporter must learn: how to get the news and how to write it. The first he can pick up easily by actual newspaper experience—if nature has endowed him with "a nose for news." The writing of the news he can learn only by [vii] [viii] hard practice—a year's hard practice on some papers—and it is generally conceded that practice in writing news stories can be secured at home or in the classroom as effectively as practice in writing short stories, plays, business letters, or any other special form of composition. 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. Successful newspaper reporting requires both an ability to write good English and an ability to write good English in the conventional newspaper form. And there is a conventional form for every kind of newspaper story. Many editors of the present day are trying to break away from the conventional form and to evolve a looser and more natural method of writing news stories. The results are often bizarre and sometimes very effective. 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. But no young reporter can hope to attain success through originality and defiance of rules until he has first mastered the fundamental principles of newspaper writing. He can never expect to write "the story of the year" until he has learned to handle everyday news without burying the gist of his stories—any more than an artist can hope to paint a living portrait until he has learned, with the aid of rules, to draw the face of a plaster block-head. Hence the emphasis upon form and system in this book. And, whatever the form may be, the embodiment must be clear, concise, grammatical English; that is the excuse for the many axioms of simple English grammar that are introduced side by side with the study of the newspaper form. The author offers this book as the result of personal newspaper experience and of his work as instructor in classes in newspaper writing at the University of Wisconsin. Every item that is offered is the result of an attempt to correct the mistakes that have appeared most often in the papers of students who are trying to do newspaper writing in the classroom. The seemingly disproportionate emphasis upon certain branches of the subject and the constant repetition of certain simple principles are to be excused by the purpose of the book—to be a text-book in the course of study worked out in this school of journalism. The use of the fire story as typical of all newspaper stories and as a model for all newspaper writing is characteristic of this method of instruction. Four chapters are devoted to the explanation of a single principle which any reader could grasp in a moment, because experience has shown that an equivalent of four chapters of study and practice is required to teach the student the application of this principle and to fix it in his mind so thoroughly that he will not forget it in his later work of writing more complicated stories. It is felt that the beginner needs and must have the detailed explanation, the constant reiteration and some definite rules to guide him in his [ix] [x] practice. Hence the emphasis upon the conventional form. Since, in the application of the newspaper principle of beginning with the gist of the story, the structure of the lead is of greater importance than the rest of the story, this book devotes the greater part of its discussion to the lead. The suggestions for practice are attached in an attempt to give the young newspaper man some positive instruction. Most reporters are instructed by a system of "don'ts," growled out by busy editors; most correspondents receive no instruction at all—a positive suggestion now and then cannot but help them both. Practice is necessary in the study of any form of writing; these suggestions for practice embody the method of practice used in this school of journalism. The examples are taken from representative papers of the entire country to show the student how the stories are actually written in newspaper offices. Madison, Wisconsin, June 3, 1912. [xi] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. GATHERING THE N EWS II. N EWS VALUES III. N EWSPAPER TERMS IV. THE N EWS STORY FORM V. THE SIMPLE FIRE STORY VI. THE FEATURE FIRE STORY VII. FAULTS IN N EWS STORIES VIII. OTHER N EWS STORIES IX. FOLLOW-UP AND R EWRITE STORIES X. R EPORTS OF SPEECHES XI. INTERVIEWS XII. C OURT R EPORTING XIII. SOCIAL N EWS AND OBITUARIES XIV. SPORTING N EWS XV. H UMAN INTEREST STORIES XVI. D RAMATIC R EPORTING XVII. STYLE BOOK APPENDIX I—SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY APPENDIX II—N EWS STORIES TO BE C ORRECTED INDEX 1 14 28 34 41 50 75 105 125 143 169 192 204 219 233 259 276 294 311 339 N A E N W D I S P C A O [1] P R GATHERING THE NEWS 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. Although the two activities are closely related, each requires a different sort of ability and a different training. In a newspaper office the two activities are rarely separated, but a beginner must learn each duty independent of the other. This book will not attempt to deal with both; it will confine itself mainly to one phase, the pseudo-literary activity of writing news stories. However, introductory to the discussion of the writing of newspaper stories, we may glance at the other side of the newspaper writer's work—the gathering of the news. Where the newspaper gets its news and how it gets its news can be learned only by experience, for it differs in different cities and with different papers. But an outline of the background of news-gathering may assist us in writing the news after it is gathered and ready for us to write. 1. Reporter vs. Correspondent.—There are two capacities in which one may write news stories for a paper. He may work on the staff as a regular reporter or he may supply news from a distance as a correspondent. In the one case he works under the personal supervision of a city editor and spends his entire time at the regular occupation of gathering and writing news. As a correspondent he works in a distant city, under the indirect supervision of the city, telegraph, or state editor, and sends in only the occasional stories that seem to be of interest to his paper. In either case the same rules apply to his news gathering and to his news writing. And in either case the length of his employment depends upon his ability to turn in clean copy in the form in which his paper wishes to print the news. Both the reporter and the correspondent must write their stories in the same form and must look at news and the sources of news from almost the same point of view. Whatever is said of the re