Chapter V: Constructive Newspaper Writing

"The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore."
LORD BYRON.

I. Introduction

The worst thing about most news articles is that they tell of destruction, failure, and tragedy instead of construction, success, and happiness. If one were to judge from the papers, one would be forced to conclude that the world is rapidly advancing from civilization to barbarism. To test the truth of this assertion, you have only to examine almost any current newspaper. A man may labor honorably and usefully for a generation without being mentioned; but if he does or says a foolish thing, the reporters flock to him as do cats to a plate of cream. The reason is obvious. Tragedy is more exciting than any other form of literature; it contains thrills; it sells papers. However, aside from the fact that the publication of details concerning human folly and misfortune is often cruel and unjust to the sufferers, its influence upon the public is debasing in the same way, if not in the same degree, as public executions were debasing.

Newspaper writing should, therefore, deal with progress rather than with retrogression. Most newspaper men admit that this is true, but declare that the public will not buy the kind of papers which all sensible people approve. Just as soon as such papers can be made to pay, they say, we shall have them. One of the objects of this course is to create a taste for constructive rather than destructive newspapers.

As an exercise tending to produce this result, the student should each day examine the local paper for the purpose of ascertaining how many columns of destruction and how many of construction it contains. The result should be reported to the class and thence to the papers as news.

There are three kinds of items which boys and girls can write and which are constructive. These are:

1. Items dealing with progress.
2. Humorous stories.
3. Items based on contrast.

The work this week will be on the first of these.

II. Models

I

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 22.--L. C. Phillips will plant 1,000 acres of
his southeast Missouri land in sunflowers this year as a further
demonstration that this plant can be cultivated with profit on
land where other crops may not thrive so well. Phillips has been
experimenting for several years in the culture of sunflowers,
whose seed, when mixed with other seed, makes excellent chicken
and hog feed. Last year he planted nearly 100 acres in
sunflowers. The cost of planting and harvesting is about $6 an
acre, he says, and the returns from $35 to $48.

II

HALIFAX, N.S., Dec. 25.--One of the most extraordinary
endowments bestowed by nature on any land is enjoyed by the
fortunate group of counties round the head of the Bay of Fundy,
Nova Scotia.

Along the shores of this bay there are great stretches of meadow
land covered with rich grass and dotted with barns. These
meadows have been brought into existence by the power of the
tides in the Bay of Fundy, which have no parallel elsewhere on
the globe. There is sometimes a difference of sixty feet between
the levels of the water at low and at high tide. The tide sweeps
in with a rush, carrying with it a vast amount of solid material
scoured out of its channel.

The accumulated deposits of the ages have produced a soil
seventy or eighty feet deep. Owing to its peculiarities, this
meadow land retains its fertility in a marvelous way, producing
heavy crops of hay annually without diminution and without
renewal for an indefinite number of years.

When renewal is desired it is only necessary to open a dike,
which allows the tide to flood the land again and leave a fresh
deposit of soil.

III

WASHINGTON, Dec. 25.--Michigan holds sixth place among the
States in the value of its mineral production, with an output in
1912 valued at $180,062,486, according to the United States
Geological Survey, its prominence being due to its great wealth
in copper and iron. Ranking second only to Minnesota in the
production of iron ore, it is third in the production of copper,
being exceeded only by Arizona and Montana. It also stands first
in the production of salt, bromine, calcium chloride, graphite,
and sand lime brick.

In 1911 Michigan's production of iron ore was 8,945,103 long
tons, valued at $23,810,710, and in 1912 it increased to
12,717,468 long tons, valued at $28,003,163.

The production of copper in Michigan, the value of which in the
last two years has exceeded that of the output of iron ore,
amounted in 1912 to 218,138,408 pounds, valued at $135,992,837,
a decrease in quantity, but an increase in value of over
$8,000,000.

The mining of copper in Michigan is of prehistoric origin, the
metal having been used by the North American Indians before the
advent of the white man. The records since 1810, or for a little
more than 100 years, show that the total production of copper in
Michigan from that date to the close of 1912 has amounted to
over 5,200,000,000 pounds, which is about 30 per cent of the
total output of the United States.

III. Oral Composition

All three of these items are evidently condensations of longer articles. The writers have boiled down a vast amount of material into the form in which it here appears. The student will find similar material in abundance in _The Literary Digest_, in _The Scientific American_, in _The National Geographical Magazine_, in many government reports, and in almost any daily newspaper. In preparing for this exercise he should observe the following steps:

1. Find his material.

2. Boil it down, to the size desired, which is a most useful
exercise of the judgment.

3. Make a careful framework, in doing which the models will be
useful.

4. Get the whole so well in mind that he can present it fluently.
Hesitation should not be tolerated.

IV. Suggested Time Schedule

_Monday_--Dictation.
_Tuesday_--Notes and Queries.
_Wednesday_--Oral Composition.
_Thursday_--Written Composition.
_Friday_--Public Speaking.

V. Notes, Queries, and Exercises.

1. Write an appropriate heading for each item.

2. Point out the "Four W's" in each.

3. Tell whether each sentence is simple, compound, or complex.

4. Explain the syntax of the nouns in Model I, the pronouns in II,
the verbs in III.

5. Explain the location of St. Louis, Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Bay
of Fundy, Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, and
Montana.

6. Where is the copper country of Michigan? The salt, bromine,
calcium, chloride, graphite, and brick regions?

7. Explain the etymological signification of "demonstration,"
"extraordinary," "accumulated," "Nova Scotia," "annually,"
"geological," "Arizona," "Montana," "advent."

8. How many words does Model I contain? II? III?

9. Discover and write out the framework of each model.

10. Find one subject on which you could make an item like Model I.
Do the same for II and III.

VI. Written Composition

Remember that you are writing for the compositor. Every letter must be right. If you do a good piece of work it is altogether probable that your composition will get into one of the local papers.

VII. Suggested Reading

Mark Twain's _Tom Sawyer_, _Huckleberry Finn_, _Pudd'nhead Wilson_, or _Roughing It_.

VIII. Memorize

GOETHALS, THE PROPHET ENGINEER

A man went down to Panama
Where many a man had died
To slit the sliding mountains
And lift the eternal tide:
A man stood up in Panama,
And the mountains stood aside.

For a poet wrought in Panama
With a continent for his theme,
And he wrote with flood and fire
To forge a planet's dream,
And the derricks rang his dithyrambs
And his stanzas roared in steam.

Where old Balboa bent his gaze
He leads the liners through,
And the Horn that tossed Magellan
Bellows a far halloo,
For where the navies never sailed
Steamed Goethals and his crew;

So nevermore the tropic routes
Need poleward warp and veer,
But on through the Gates of Goethals
The steady keels shall steer,
Where the tribes of man are led toward peace
By the prophet-engineer.
PERCY MACKAYE.[1]

[1] "He [Goethals] received last week three medals--one at Washington, at the hands of President Wilson, from the National Geographical Society; another in New York, at the hands of Dr. John H. Finley, head of the New York State Educational System, from the _Civic Forum_; and a third, also in New York, at the hands of Hamilton W. Mabie, from the National Institute of Social Sciences. At the presentation of the _Civic Forum_ medal, a poem written for the occasion was read by its author, Mr. Percy MacKaye." (_The Outlook_. March 14, 1914.) This poem is here quoted, by permission, from Mr. MacKaye's volume, _The Present Hour_. Published by The Macmillan Company, New York.