The Practice of Journalism, a Treatise on Newspaper Making

UL-- r-i^i RACTICE OF JOURNALISM WIULIAMS AND MARTIN THE PRACTICE OF JOURNALISM THE PRACTICE OF JOURNALISM A Treatise on Neivspaper Making By Walter Williams PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF JOURNALISM IN THE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI a7id Frank L. Martin ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF JOURNALISM IN THE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 1 '• » COLUMBIA, MISSOURI Press of E. W. Stephens Publishing Co. 1911 Copyright, 191 1, by Walter Williams and Frank L. Martin I'^AJ LIT CONTENTS- PART I. The Profession. 1. Journalism as a Profession.- 9 2. The Newspaper—City, Country, Special 13 3. The Division of Labor. : 18 4. The Sunday Paper 22 5. The Business Department 27 6. The Printing Department 32 PART II. Editorial. 1. Editorial Direction 39 2. Editorial Style 44 3. Writing of Editorials 48 PART III. News-Gathering. Reporting 95 The Beginning 101 Sources of News Ill General Assignments 157 The Reporter. 168 Interviewing 207 News and Its Value 212 Organization in News-Gathering 225 PART IV. News Writing. 1. Writing for Newspapers 289 2. Writing the Story 294 3. What to Avoid 303 4. Use of Words 309 PART V. A Style Book. 221685 PART I. THE PROFESSION. I. Journalism as a Profession. II. The Newspaper—City, Country, Special. III. The Division of Labor. IV. The Sunday Paper. V. The Business Department. VI. The Printing Department. I. JOURNALISM AS A PROFESSION. Journalism is the conducting, directing, manag- ing, writing, for a journal, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication. Persons thus engaged are journalists. Printing is necessary to the publishing of a journal, but printing is not journalism. Printing merely affords medium for journalistic expression. Expression not medium constitutes journalism. Printing is a trade or, in its highest form, an art. The production of newspapers and periodicals involves purchase of news-reports, employment of labor, sale of advertising space, sale and distribu- tion of published copies. This production of the newspaper or periodical is publishing. Publishing is a business. Journalism is in essence different from printing and publishing. It is the gathering and presentation of news and of comment upon the news, of discussion of all that interests, entertains, informs, or instructs. It affords the pictured record and interpretation of human life in every aspect. The journalist is re- corder, advocate, buyer and seller of news, judge, tribune, teacher, interpreter. When he only buys 9 lo The Practice of Journalism. and sells news, he is in business. When he merely records, he is clerk and bookkeeper for the day's doings. When he interprets, whether as contributor, writer, editor, journalism is near of kin to literature, if it is not literature. In its highest sense journalism is not trade nor business, but profession, the profession of the interpreter. The term journalist was once held in disrepute by many members of the profession. By preference the term newspaper man was used for description. A journalist was said to be all pretense and a newspaper man all practice. This ancient prejudice against the term journalist doubtless was caused by the existence of numerous hangers-on, camp-followers, parasites. Men who wrote an occasional article for a newspaper or had a slight connection with some journal posed as journalists to the disgust of the men who actually made journalism their life work. More recently, however, this prejudice is disappearing. No other word so accurately serves for definition. Journalism has become a profession in which special aptitude, equipment, experience and training are increasingly necessary. The result of changed con- ditions, brought about by the marvelous growth of the press, has been to create a body of journalists forming a distinct profession. The profession of journalism has for its members men—and women—who do widely different work. Journalism as a Profession. ii It includes reporters, editors, illustrators, special writers, directors, managers. It includes workers on country newspapers and on city newspapers, on dailies, weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies. While their duties are widely different in many ways, they have the common purpose of journalism, to record for the public and to interpret to the public that which is of public value and interest. The fascination of journalism is, in part at least, in its appeal to man's desire for power, mastery, service. The journalist is creator, not merely car- penter and joiner. The highest journalism does not give a photograph but a portrait of life. While on the business side the making of a newspaper is a commercial enterprise, as much so as the manage- ment of a department store, yet few men enter journalism only or chiefly for business or commercial reasons. The man who enters journalism merely to make money does not achieve the highest pro- fessional success. Gen. H. V. Boynton, long a Wash- ington correspondent, said: "Men write for money, for fame and for dear life—journalists for all three." The call of journalism is a call to joyful, fascinating service. Called a grind by many of its followers, in- volving hard, continuous, nerve-racking, brain-ex- hausting, body-fatiguing labor, no journalist ever willingly quits journalism for another vocation. It is a tradition of the calling that the man who gets 12 The Practice of Journalism. printer's i.xk on his fingers—who goes seriously into journalism—never entirely gets it off. Personality trained, equipped, experienced, is dominant in journalism. That journalism has become impersonal is frequently said in way of belittling comment. Journalism is less personal in the sense that it has become co-operative rather than individ- ual. The successful practice of journalism, however, demands now more than ever before trained personality and to such brings its highest reward. Journalism, the journalism that is worth while, is personal journalism. "Whenever in the newspaper profession," wrote Charles A. Dana, in the New York Sun, "a man rises up who is original, strong and bold enough to make his opinions a matter of consequence to the public, there will be personal journalism; and whenever newspapers are conducted only by commonplace individuals, whose views are of no consequence to anybody, there will be nothing but impersonal journalism." Personal journalism has not been succeeded by impersonal journalism. The journalist was never more powerful nor did personality ever count for so much in the profession of journalism as now. "Great is journalism," wrote Thomas Carlyle, "for is not every editor a ruler of the world, being a persuader of it?" This is the Profession of Journalism. II. THE NEWSPAPER—CITY, COUNTRY, SPECIAL. The American newspaper has all fields for its own. It finds its home in the smallest villages as well as in the largest cities. Where all other business enter- prises have been affected by the spirit of consolida- tion, there are each year more newspapers in more different towns. There never has been and is not now a newspaper trust. While the publication of newspapers and periodicals grows larger in the centers of population, there has been no decrease but rather a considerable increase of the newspapers and periodicals in the smaller communities. Scarcely a county in any state of the United States, however sparsely settled, has not a local county newspaper. There is scarcely a town of a thousand inhabitants without a weekly journal. This is particularly true of the West and Southwest. In the North and East transportation facilities are such as to permit local newspapers to serve two or more communities. The first general division of the press may be into the city, the country newspapers, and special or class journals. This excludes from consideration the periodicals, class publications, monthlies and national weeklies. The line of division is not easily drawn. 13 14 The Practice of Journalism. It is difficult to define that which is a city in America and that which is a country town. The city newspaper is, of course, a newspaper published in a city, but there are in the United States cities of a million inhabitants and cities of a few hundreds. The newspapers published in cities differing thus largely in population differ as largely in character. Of 22,000 newspapers and periodicals in America, probably 300 are daily newspapers of general circulation, published in cities of more than 250,000 inhabitants. These may be called the metropolitan dailies or the metropolitan press. The country press consists of the newspapers, daily and weekly, published in smaller towns. The third division comprises a large body of class journals, of weeklies, of monthlies, of periodicals in newspaper and magazine form, devoted to the interests of some special class, trade, business or profession. The special newspaper or periodical is of such varied form that it can not be classified except broadly for description. Under the general classifi- cation may be placed all newspaper and periodical publications other than daily and weekly newspapers. The monthly magazine, which has within the last twenty years become numerous, excellent and widely circulated, is in this class. The spirit of the modern newspaper has affected the magazine and it has added timeliness to other excellencies and become The Newspaper. 15 journalistic rather than merely literary. Under this general head may be placed the weekly journal of wide circulation, publishing news and comment, and generally profusely illustrated. The trade and class newspaper or magazine is also included. Fra- ternal orders, religious denominations, businesses, trades and professions have newspapers which serve as mediums to advocate the claims or give the news that which they represent. No interest, however, small, fails to have a periodical devoted to itself.

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