Chapter I: Preface

In preparing this volume the author has had in mind the needs not only of students in schools of journalism, but of others who may desire a concise statement of the principles that govern the art of news writing as practiced by the American newspaper. It is hoped the book will prove helpful either as a laboratory guide in the school room or as a text book for home use.

As the title indicates, the book deals with one phase of journalism, the presentation of the news story, more especially with the writing of the story--the reporter’s part in the day’s work. No attempt has been made to go into other aspects of journalism--the writing of editorials, the administrative features of the work, the delicate adjustment that every newspaper must make between its business and news departments--except in so far as they bear directly upon the subject in hand.

The term journalism is broadly used here to mean all branches of newspaper endeavor. In common with other newspaper men, the author admits an aversion to the word as restricted to the working field of the men who get and write the news. They call themselves not journalists, but reporters or newspaper men. It is for newspaper men and women in the making that the book is primarily designed.

The nature of newspaper work makes it impossible to formulate an all-sufficing series of rules by which the news writer shall invariably be guided. But there are certain well-defined principles, largely technical, that set apart the news story as a distinct form of composition, and these the author has tried to put down simply and concisely--after the fashion of the news story itself. Going beyond the common practice, there is wide divergence among newspapers in the details of “office style.” Methods peculiar to the individual paper can readily be acquired by one grounded in the essentials of the craft; hence only the more significant points of departure from the generally accepted practice have been noted.

Practically all the examples in the book are from published news stories, reproduced in most cases exactly as they appeared in print. In some, for obvious reasons, fictitious names and addresses have been substituted for the real. With one or two exceptions the examples illustrating right methods of news presentation have been chosen not for special brilliancy, but as fairly showing the everyday output of the trained news writer.

University of Missouri,
Columbia,
July, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. NEWSPAPER COPY
Terminology--Directions for Preparing
Copy 1

II. THE ENGLISH OF THE NEWSPAPERS
Clearness--Conciseness--Force 7

III. THE WRITER’S VIEWPOINT
Fairness--Impersonality--Good Taste--Originality 17

IV. THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY
In Observation--In Names--In Street
Addresses--In Spelling 30

V. NEWS VALUES
The Reporter--What Is News?--The
Newspaper’s Problem--Kinds of Stories 41

VI. WRITING THE LEAD
What the Lead Is--What the Lead Should
Contain--Observance of Style--Leads to
Be Avoided--Sentence Structure--Leads
That Begin With Names--The General
Rule--Study of 100 Typical Stories 57

VII. THE STORY PROPER
Compression and Expansion--The Mechanics
of the Story 79

VIII. THE FEATURE STORY
What the Feature Story Is Not--Stories
for Entertainment--The Human-Interest
Story--The Editor’s Problem--Sunday
Magazine Stories 98

IX. THE INTERVIEW
When the Interview Is Incidental--When
the Interview Is the Story 113

X. SPECIAL TYPES OF STORIES
Stories of Fires--Deaths--Weddings--Crimes--
Business--Second-Day Stories--Rewriting 129

XI. THE CORRESPONDENT
Writing for the Wire--Some Pitfalls to
Be Avoided--What Not to Send--What
to Send--Sporting News--How to Send--Handling
the Big Story--Sending by
Mail--General Instructions--Payment 150

XII. COPY READING
Qualifications for the Work--Organization
of Copy Readers--Editing the Story--Rules
About Libel--The Guide Line--Marks
Used in Editing--Additions and
Insertions--The Lighter Side--The Copy
Reader’s Schedule 171

XIII. WRITING THE HEAD
First Requisites of the Head--Definiteness--The
Question of Tense--The Mechanics
of the Head--Some Things to Avoid--Symmetry
and Sense--Special Kinds of
Heads--Capitalization 193

XIV. DON’TS FOR THE NEWS WRITER 211

XV. NEWSPAPER BROMIDES 224

INDEX 231

THE WRITING OF NEWS

... But however great a gift, if news instinct as born were
turned loose in any newspaper office in New York without the
control of sound judgment bred by considerable experience
and training, the results would be much more pleasing to the
lawyers than to the editor. One of the chief difficulties in
journalism now is to keep the news from running rampant over
the restraints of accuracy and conscience. And if a “nose for
news” is born in the cradle, does not the instinct, like other
great qualities, need development by teaching, by training, by
practical object-lessons illustrating the good and the bad, the
right and the wrong, the popular and the unpopular, the things
that succeed and the things that fail, and above all the things
that deserve to succeed, and the things that do not--not the
things only that make circulation for to-day, but the things
that make character and influence and public confidence?--From
an article by JOSEPH PULITZER in the _North American Review_.

THE WRITING OF NEWS