Chapter IV: Structure and Style in News Stories (2)

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When a story covers considerable time because the incidents leading up to the principal event took place a week or more before, care must be taken to keep the time element before the readers in order to make the series of incidents clear in their relation to one another. The following story shows the arrangement of material in such a story:

SUGGESTIONS

1. Write legibly; use a typewriter whenever possible.

2. Double or triple space your typewritten or longhand copy.

3. Never write on both sides of the sheet.

4. Make your meaning absolutely clear to the rapid reader.

5. Be concise; don’t use needless words.

6. Use superlatives sparingly.

7. Find the one noun to express the idea, the one adjective, if
necessary, to qualify it, and the one verb needed to give it life.

8. Get life and action into your story whenever circumstances warrant.

9. Use original expressions; avoid trite and hackneyed phrases.

10. Remember that every one of your mistakes adds to the work of your
superiors.

11. Study and follow the peculiarities of the style of your paper.

12. Make your paragraphs short and concise.

13. Avoid choppy, disconnected short sentences.

14. Don’t overload the first sentence by elaborating on the essential
points.

15. Select the most interesting phase of the news as the “feature” of
the story.

16. Put the “feature” in the first group of words at the beginning of
the lead.

17. Answer satisfactorily in the “lead” the questions—Who? What? When?
Where? Why? and How?

18. Seldom “play up” the time or place as the feature.

19. Avoid the hanging, or dangling, participle, particularly at the
beginning of the lead.

20. Don’t put important particulars of the story in the last paragraphs
where they may be cut off in the “make-up.”

21. Avoid beginning successive paragraphs with the same phrase or
construction.

22. Use an unconventional form of “lead” when the news justifies it.

23. Tabulate on a separate sheet significant statistics, lists,
excerpts, or summaries, so that they may be “boxed.”

24. Don’t suppress news; refer all requests for such suppression to
your superiors.

25. Put the mark (#), or the figures 30 enclosed in a circle, at the
end of every story.

PRACTICE WORK

(1) Point out the faults in the following story and correct them by
rewriting it.

Suspected of starting over a score of fires in the downtown district
within a month and confessing starting nineteen, with six false
alarms in three months, Henry Handifort, a South Side boy, was
arrested after a fire early today.

In a confession to the police Handifort, who is 16 years of age, said
he began his career as a firebug when 5 years old, but after starting
three fires was so punished by his parents that he refrained from
further operations until a few months ago. He said his ambition was
to be a fireman and that he started the fires to be on hand when the
firemen came so he could help them. He said he enjoyed seeing the
apparatus turn out.

The fires to which he confessed caused a total loss of $25,000. His
climax came Sunday night, when three fires caused $8,000 loss. The
boy, then under suspicion, was watched carefully, and a fire early
today brought his arrest.

(2) What are the faults in the following story printed in a weekly
paper, and how should they be corrected in rewriting?

Mr. Ed. Williams of this city met with a very severe and painful
accident in the zinc works in this city.

Mr. Williams, who is employed as a cart driver at the works, was
performing his usual duties, when in some way the horse became
frightened and started to run away. Ed was thrown out of the heavy
ore cart and fell in such a position, that the wheels of the cart
passed over his body, causing severe injuries to his head and
fracturing four ribs, besides bruising him internally. He was at once
taken to the hospital rooms of Dr. Hulton, where his injuries were
dressed. He was then conveyed to his home, where he is recovering
nicely at present. It will be some time however before he will be at
his post again.

(3) What is the weakness of the following story and how could you
improve it by rewriting?

Mrs. William Black, wife of the caretaker of the Yewdale Yacht Club
house, which is on the end of the long bulkhead of the South Basin
at the foot of Ring street, Lawton Park, sent her eleven-year-old
daughter, Madelaine, to Dresden Avenue yesterday morning to get some
oranges.

Mrs. Black sat by an upper window of the club house waiting for
Madelaine to come back. Pretty soon the little girl put in an
appearance. The wind was blowing so hard that the mother feared
for the child’s safety and she arose to go to her assistance. When
she looked out of the window again, Madelaine had disappeared. She
hurried out and saw the child’s cloak floating on the water.

Charles Blaine, a sailor on the yacht Elizabeth E., and Otto Grey
of the schooner John Bull, dived for the body several times before
Blaine succeeded in bringing it up.

The child’s father is on a fishing trip to Block Island.

(4) Play up the unusual element in this story by putting it in the
first group of words.

Mrs. Minnie Greene, a colored janitress, was burned to the point
of death by a fire started by the son’s rays focused by a large
reflector which she carried. Mrs. Greene, with the big brass
reflector under her arm, was standing in front of the First
Presbyterian church when suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her left
leg. Looking down she saw that her skirt was afire. Screaming in
terror she ran down the street and in and out of three stores before
she could be stopped by two policemen. It is not believed that she
can recover.

(5) Compare the leads of the two following stories of the same event,
pointing out their merits and defects; then write a new lead
embodying the best points of each.

(1)

Princeton, N.J., Nov. 3—Governor Woodrow Wilson had a narrow escape
from serious injury at an early hour this morning when the automobile
in which he was returning home from Red Bank ran into a rut in the
main street leading into the little village of Hightstown, throwing
him with great force against the top of the limousine, inflicting a
painful cut in the top of his head.

When he appeared in his library this afternoon to meet many callers
and the newspaper men the governor wore across the top of his head
a broad plaster bandage, covering part of the scalp that had been
shaved when the cut was dressed.

Captain “Silent Bill” McDonald, the Texas ranger traveling companion
of the governor, received a severe jolt, but escaped any other injury
than a bruise on his neck.

(2)

Princeton, N.J., Nov. 3—Gov. Woodrow Wilson wears a strip of
collodion and gauze across the top of his head covering a scalp wound
three inches long which he received early on Sunday in a motor mishap
on the way home from Red Bank, N.J. His automobile struck a mound in
the road and jolted him up against a steel rib in the roof of the
limousine car.

The wound is not serious and the democratic presidential nominee will
fulfill his speaking engagements in Paterson and Passaic, N.J., on
Monday.

At night the governor was in the parlor of his home the center of a
group of friends. There was nothing in his manner to indicate that
he had met with any mishap. He said he did not feel the wound in the
slightest degree and had not even developed a headache from it.

“I guess I’m too hardheaded to be hurt,” he said smilingly as he
received the correspondents.

The mishap occurred in the early hours of the morning. The governor
had spoken at Red Bank and left for Princeton, a distance of
forty-five miles, shortly before 11 o’clock. He rode in the limousine
car of Abraham I. Elkus, a New York lawyer who lives at Red Bank,
accompanied by Capt. William J. McDonald, his personal body guard,
who was shaken up and bruised.

(6) Criticize the following story and rewrite it in accordance with
your criticism.

Another hero of the sea was disclosed today through a collision
of the Norwegian steamer Noreuga with the Norwegian sailing ship
Glenlui. It appeared that he saved, not only the passengers and
crews, but the ships.

The Noreuga arrived at Norfolk last night in a sinking condition in
tow of the revenue cutter Onondaga and is preparing to dock. The
Glenlui is expected later.

The Noreuga will be repaired at the Newport News ship yards, where
its eleven passengers, including eight women, and its freight will be
transferred to the steamship Mexicana. The passengers were brought to
port on the Onondaga.

The man to whom credit is given is the wireless operator on the
Noreuga who declined to tell his name and whose desire to avoid
notoriety was respected by Captain Hansen.

When the crew favored deserting the stricken Noreuga after the
collision last Friday the wireless operator refused to leave his
post. With death riding the gale he continued to flash his appeals
for help. He succeeded finally in raising both shore stations and
vessels of the Atlantic fleet. The rescue of the Norse vessels was
accomplished as they were about to founder.

(7) From the following account, as given by an eye-witness, write a
news story for a local daily paper.

John Quinn, foreman of the E. J. Mackey Co., 356 W. 40th St., gave
the following account of an accident in his plant this noon:

“I was working on the fifth floor of our new six story warehouse just
before dinner time today when Oscar Taub who lives out at 216 W.
139th St., one of the men who works for us, came up and said that Mr.
Mackey wanted him to find out how much whiskey there was in the big
tank on my floor. Taub put a ladder against the side of the big tank
and, catching hold of the cord of one of the electric lights, started
up to the top of the tank. When he got up to the top he called to
me saying that there were 7,705 gallons of whiskey in it. When he
started down the ladder again, the bulb of the electric light slipped
from his hand and broke on the edge of the tank.”

“Then there was a big explosion and I saw Taub flying through the air
against the side of the wall about 30 feet away. Then the whiskey in
the tank started to burn and the flames spread out along the ceiling
as if the tank were a big furnace. When I saw that the whiskey was
afire, I jumped over to turn on the outlet valve so that the whiskey
would run off into the drain pipe. I turned on the water so it would
run into the tank and put out the fire. I hurried over to see if
Taub was hurt, for the water had put out the blaze and all of the
whiskey was running out into the sewer. I found Taub lying against
the wall unconscious with his hands and face burned. I was just going
to carry him over to the elevator when the firemen came rushing up.
I told them the fire was out and asked them to help me carry Taub
downstairs. Then Mr. Mackey called the ambulance and they took Taub
who had regained consciousness and was groaning with pain from his
burns to Roosevelt Hospital.

“There wasn’t any damage done but we lost all the whiskey and I guess
the building would have burned if I hadn’t let the whiskey run out
and turned on the water. The ambulance doctor said Taub would be able
to get back to work in about a week.”

(8) Compare these three stories in regard to the effectiveness of the
introductory statement.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(9) Analyze the treatment of material in the second story below and
compare it with that in the first.

(1)

(2)

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Newspaper Writing and EditingChapter IV: Structure and Style in News Stories (2)

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