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.