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 WHAT A 
 
 REPORTER MUST 
 
 BE 
 
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 HELPS TO SUCCESS IX 
 XEWSPAPER WORK 
 
 J* w* ^ 
 
 BY 
 NEVADA DAVIS HITCHCOCK 
 
 *£** *2r* Jr 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO 
 
 RALPH HITCHCOCK 
 
 I900 
 
TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 
 
 W%\ 1 1800 
 
 l«ter of Cepfdgjflj 
 
 SECOND COPY, 
 
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 * MAY 14191 
 
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 64859 
 
 Copyright, 1900, by Ralph Hitchcock. 
 
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This little book is intended as a 
 help to those who wish to engage 
 in that interesting occupation, re- 
 porting for a daily newspaper. It 
 was written for young women as 
 well as for young men, since sex 
 makes practically no difference in 
 the requirements of a reporter. 
 
What a Reporter must be 
 
What a Reporter must be 
 
 It commonly has been supposed that 
 newspaper men and newspaper women 
 are born, not made. This is erroneous. 
 Any man or woman of average intelli- 
 gence and health may hope, through 
 faithful application, to take up that most 
 fascinating occupation, reporting, and 
 gain an enviable degree of success. There 
 are, however, certain qualities or traits 
 of character which each aspirant should 
 consider carefully before he determines 
 to enter this field of labor. 
 
 Loyalty — First and most important 
 of these is loyalty. Unless a young man 
 is sure that he will be unswervingly loyal 
 to the paper which he may represent he 
 should not entertain one thought of be- 
 coming a reporter! A young woman 
 proves no exception to the rule. Both 
 may be required, even at the outset, to 
 work under orders that are extremely dis- 
 tasteful to them. Under such conditions, 
 want of loyalty makes a reporter value- 
 less to his paper. 
 
 It is seldom that one needs to be a 
 knight of chivalry to prove his loyalty. 
 In fact a reporter may do many things 
 
highly incompatible with his own super- 
 fine notions of courtesy. For his paper 
 he may do that which he would not do 
 for himself. He may deem it necessary, 
 at times, to peek over transoms, listen at 
 keyholes, hang on window sills and 
 prowl around dooryards in order to get 
 the "news" he has been sent after by his 
 city editor. Ho may even conceal his 
 identity, assume a false name and deny 
 his business when he is working up an 
 item. But in the office he must give a 
 full and truthful account to his editor. 
 He must describe conditions exactly as he 
 found them, no matter what influences 
 may have been brought to bear upon him 
 to induce him to suppress or pervert the 
 facts, A woman is, perhaps, more likely 
 to prove disloyal than a man because her 
 sympathies are more easily enlisted. 
 Tears and pitiful entreaties may cause her 
 to waver, but she should present a true 
 statement of facts to her editor and let 
 him decide what is to be published and 
 what shall be suppressed. 
 
 Lest some of the methods of getting 
 news referred to in the preceding para- 
 graph be considered questionable, I 
 would add that the supposed necessity 
 for such methods is growing less every 
 
day. The occupation of a reporter is now 
 recognized everywhere as one that 
 conflicts with no man's sense of honor. 
 
 Through loyalty a reporter keeps 
 the confidence of his editor and is given 
 important assignments. He may not be 
 able to write as cleverly as others and he 
 may not be as brilliantly original, but if he 
 can be depended upon to use his best 
 efforts in serving his employers his suc- 
 cess is sure. The reason for this is plain. 
 An editor must of necessity rely upon the 
 word of the reporter for the truth of the 
 news items. 
 
 On the so-called sensational papers 
 there are editors who distort reports, but 
 even on these papers the most valued 
 reporter is he who tells his editor exact 
 conditions of affairs. If the editor wants 
 a condition enlarged he instructs the 
 reporter accordingly, acting upon the 
 statement that this loyal worker has but 
 just given to him. Some high-priced 
 reporters exaggerate, or enlarge on facts 
 in accounts subsequently given to the 
 public as true, but, of this class of 
 reporters, those who are termed successful 
 write "fake'* upon their perverted copy 
 before they hand it to their editor. 
 The reporter who "fakes" (distorts 
 
or manufactures) without his editor's 
 cognizance cannot hold a position long 
 upon any paper. 
 
 If the reporter suppresses facts, he 
 places his paper at a disadvantage with 
 its rivals. If he perverts his reports he 
 may lead his editor to publish articles 
 which may involve the paper in that 
 newspaper office bugaboo, a libel suit, 
 or cause it to lose thousands of subscribers. 
 
 It is the business of a reporter, as 
 his name indicates, to report. The 
 responsibility of publication rests with 
 the editor. To the editor alone belongs 
 the power of presenting to the public 
 statements which deviate from facts. 
 
 As an incentive to the reporter him- 
 self, loyalty is invaluable. To feel that 
 he will be true to his paper at any cost 
 will give him necessary enthusiasm, a 
 clear head and a stout heart. 
 
 News Sense — The indications are 
 that the newspaper of the future will 
 devote itself exclusively to the publica- 
 tion of news. Special features gradually 
 are being discarded except by the Sunday 
 papers. A regular staff, moreover, is 
 employed to prepare these feature stories. 
 The ordinary reporter, therefore, will 
 devote himself more and more to news 
 
 io 
 
gathering. To do this properly he must 
 have a well defined news sense, or a 
 "nose for news" as newspaper workers 
 say. That is, the reporter must be able 
 to discriminate between what is interest- 
 ing and what is not, in the eyes of the 
 public. He himself may have no interest 
 whatever in the fact that Nancy Jones 
 eloped with John Smith but he must be 
 able to judge what proportion of the 
 readers of his paper are likely to be 
 interested in the elopement. 
 
 The reporter must be able to see 
 instantly that which is startling either 
 from its deep reaching effects, from the 
 prominence of the persons affected, or 
 from the rarity of the occurrence. For 
 example, an accident may be of thrilling 
 interest to a whole community because 
 scores of lives are lost in a brief space of 
 time. Again, an accident where but one 
 person is injured may take precedence 
 in a news sense over another where 
 several deaths occur. For instance, if a 
 statesman, a leader of congress, known 
 to everyone in the United States, and to 
 many on foreign shores, should meet 
 with a serious, perhaps fatal accident, 
 more readers would be interested in 
 reading a full report of that than would 
 
 ii 
 
be in learning the details of a boiler ex- 
 plosion where a half dozen men unknown 
 to the world beyond the limits of their 
 own little circles, are killed. An accident 
 that is important in a news sense on 
 account of the rarity of its occurrence is 
 exemplified in the case of a milkman 
 who was driving alongside a vat of 
 boiling tar, used in paving a street, when 
 a cable car struck his wagon and tossed 
 him into the tar, where he died before 
 he could be extricated. 
 
 A reporter who has a well developed 
 sense of news will follow out even a hint 
 of such cases as those I have just 
 mentioned, or others of similar impor- 
 tance, as keenly as a blood hound runs 
 over the trail of a fugitive. 
 
 Oftentimes a reporter gains a clue 
 to a great piece of news from the casual 
 remark of some one he is interviewing 
 on a comparatively trivial subject. Now 
 if the news sense be wanting the words 
 which give the hint fall on deaf ears and 
 the reporter will have lost his opportunity 
 to secure the important information. 
 
 Two young women, reporters on 
 New York daily newspapers, were 
 detailed by their respective editors to 
 describe Children's Day exercises in the 
 
 12 
 
Harlem Sunday schools. They chanced 
 to go over the ground together. In one 
 of the churches a conversation was 
 overheard relative to the evening services, 
 when a clergyman and twelve of his 
 followers were to renounce their faith 
 and become members of a new denomi- 
 nation. One of the reporters had a 
 "nose for news" and recognized the 
 importance of the information. She 
 hastily finished the work in hand, went 
 to the pastor of the church, gained the 
 names of the clergyman and his followers 
 as well as other particulars, returned to 
 the office of her paper and submitted a 
 complete report to her editor. As a 
 consequence, in addition to writing her 
 account of Children's Day, she had the 
 opportunity to prepare a leading article 
 for the next morning's issue and enabled 
 her paper to publish news that its rivals 
 did not have, or, in newspaper parlance, 
 she secured a "beat" or "scoop." This 
 was because she recognized that the 
 chance information was of far more 
 importance than the work to which she 
 had been assigned. Her companion was 
 without this news sense. She paid no 
 attention to the conversation that she 
 heard in the church but went painstak- 
 
 13 
 
ingly on with the duties which had been 
 apportioned to her. She is still reporting 
 at fifteen dollars a week while the first 
 young woman has won her way to the 
 head of a department on her paper. 
 
 The person who has this news sense 
 as a natural gift has the advantage over 
 his fellow reporters in the beginning of 
 his career. He may follow a short and 
 easy path to success. But the man or 
 woman who wishes to become a reporter 
 and who does not have this news sense 
 inborn need not be discouraged. The 
 ability to scent news can be acquired by 
 diligent application and observation. 
 The road to success may be steeper and 
 longer but it is no less sure. 
 
 Perseverance — It is an unwritten 
 rule of the newspaper office that a 
 reporter is not expected to return until 
 he has verified and secured the details of 
 the news item he is sent out to investigate, 
 or is able fully to satisfy his editors that 
 there is no foundation for the rumor. 
 The reporter must take for his daily rule 
 that ancient saying: "If at first you 
 don't succeed, try, try, again." He must 
 not acknowledge, even to himself, that 
 there is such a thing as failure. When 
 he has tried all the ordinary means of 
 
 H 
 
securing the desired information without 
 success he begins to devise new methods. - 
 He weighs every opportunity that chance 
 throws in his path. He tries a sudden 
 sally, an unexpected question or a shrewd 
 guess. No matter how often he seems 
 to be defeated, he plots and plans with 
 the calm assurance in his mind that if 
 there is any important bit of news in the 
 case he will be sure to get it. 
 
 To do this he sometimes works all 
 day and all night. He goes without his 
 regular meals, snatching a bite from a 
 sandwich and gulping down a cup of 
 coffee if he gets a chance. Bodily 
 fatigue and mental weariness are un- 
 noticed. Life even may be jeopardized 
 in the reporter's enthusiasm. 
 
 Perseverance also means the ability 
 to pass hours of inaction, to be on watch 
 or guard half a day or longer. This is 
 sometimes harder to do than to work as 
 hard as one's powers permit. It is an 
 art to be able to wait idly from two to 
 three hours in the ante-office of some 
 great man and, when finally admitted to 
 his presence, to appear as unwearied and 
 bright as if there had not been a moment's 
 delay. 
 
 15 
 
The reporter must be persevering in 
 other ways as well as in gathering the 
 material for the news item. He should 
 constantly try to improve his copy. He 
 should endeavor to be as correct as 
 possible. He may find in writing 
 up a certain article that there is doubt in 
 regard to the spelling of a name, or 
 about the date of a certain occurrence. It 
 is his duty to search records until he has 
 decisive proof in favor of one way or the 
 other, or has exhausted his resources. 
 
 It must be understood of course that 
 in cases of great haste, where the report 
 of an accident or similar piece of news 
 must be written within a limited number 
 of minutes to insure its appearance in an 
 edition of the paper which is almost 
 ready to go to press, the reporter cannot 
 exercise such minute care. But the 
 ordinary work of a reporter, while per- 
 formed as quickly as possible, requires 
 painstaking perseverance in its prepara- 
 tion. This is recognized on some of the 
 greatest dailies when fines are .imposed 
 for mistakes in spelling proper names 
 and when suspensions are made for the 
 misuse of titles or for similar offenses. 
 
 The efficient reporter early learns 
 the importance of perseverance. He 
 
 16 
 
wastes no time in idle speculation but at 
 once gives his best efforts and thoughts 
 to the task in hand. Through the same 
 habit he becomes able to hand in perfect 
 copy. To the old reporter, perseverance 
 has made molehills of many things which 
 seemed mountains to him as a new 
 reporter. 
 
 Observation — It is not enough, 
 however, to scent out a news item, and 
 to persistently persevere in getting a 
 report of it. It must be written up in a 
 manner which will catch and hold the 
 attention of the reader. The reporter 
 can employ no better agent for this 
 purpose than the habit of close 
 observation. Those who train themselves 
 to see and hear the most will .have the 
 greatest fund of information. From this 
 fund they will be able to draw the 
 material for the touch of pathos, the 
 flash of humor, or the fine, but concise 
 description which distinguishes the well 
 written article from the mediocre one. 
 
 It is the ability to see beyond the 
 point of view of the ordinary observer 
 that marks the firstclass reporter. He 
 not only sees what has happened, for 
 instance, but he also observes the causes 
 which led to the occurrence and the 
 
 17 
 
manner in which it took place. In fact, 
 through observation, he takes a series of 
 mental photographs which afterward 
 pass before his analytical faculties like 
 the pictures of the kinetoscope. In 
 writing his report he thus is able to choose 
 the points which will be of most interest 
 to the public. 
 
 Observation serves the reporter a 
 double purpose when he once has gained 
 the habit. Aside from being necessary 
 to a well written report it is helpful as a 
 news gathering ally. It teaches the 
 reporter to investigate anything which 
 is out of the ordinary in any particular. 
 Every peculiarity, mechanical, natural, 
 or artificial is based upon some reason. 
 This reason is interesting almost nine 
 times out of ten, even if the peculiarity 
 itself is not. To the person who has 
 acquired the habit of exact observation 
 the slightest deviation from the ordinary 
 is at once apparent. The next step is to 
 find out why such a thing is, or has 
 happened and what effect it will have in 
 the future. Then the reporter has his 
 news item in a nutshell. 
 
 Education — A college education is 
 a great advantage to any one who 
 wishes to become a reporter. It is not 
 
 18 
 
essential, however, to success in the 
 reportorial line. In fact, there are cases 
 where both men and women have risen 
 to enviable positions, with unusual 
 salaries, who had at the outset but the 
 mere rudiments of an education. In some 
 other cases there are reporters whose 
 written matter requires the most careful 
 handling by the copy readers to weed 
 out mistakes in grammar, orthography 
 and punctuation. Such reporters never 
 have overcome the disadvantages of a too 
 limited education, yet their superior news 
 sense enables them to retain positions on 
 the best papers. 
 
 It must not be supposed for a 
 moment, though, that lack of education 
 is in favor of the would-be reporter just 
 because some have succeeded without 
 the advantages of proper training. 
 Perhaps with thorough education these 
 same persons might have been distin- 
 guished in the highest fields of literature. 
 
 A reporter ought to have a good 
 high school training, or its equivalent, 
 in practical knowledge of language, 
 literature and science. He should be 
 able to write sentences grammatically, 
 to spell correctly and to punctuate 
 properly. With so much of an education 
 
 19 
 
as the foundation it is not difficult to 
 acquire all else that is necessary. It must 
 be remembered that not the number of 
 books which the student pores over but 
 the amount of knowledge he acquires 
 and retains is the measure of his 
 education, 
 
 A reporter is a constant student. 
 He gives his attention to all subjects. 
 One day he may be assigned to prepare 
 an article on a filtration plant. To do 
 this he must master the principles upon 
 which the plant in question works, know 
 how it differs from other filtration plants 
 and so on until he has a complete 
 knowledge of filtration. The next day 
 he may be sent to report a horse show or 
 a lecture on theosophy. In either case 
 he must learn much in order to write a 
 little intelligently. 
 
 The college bred man, or woman, 
 for this reason, has the advantage in 
 doing reportorial work. He has a 
 broader foundation to build upon. His 
 fund of information is deeper and it is 
 not necessary for him to consult diction- 
 aries, encyclopedias and atlases so often 
 as the reporter without college training 
 must do. The college man brings a 
 better disciplined mind to bear upon his 
 
 20 
 
work. Yet I would emphasize the 
 statement made above that lack of edu- 
 cation need debar no one from the busi- 
 ness of a reporter. With an average 
 amount of brains and pluck that hin- 
 derance to success may be removed. 
 
 Practical Hints — Be modest. The 
 forward reporter may flourish for a time 
 but his downfall is certain. 
 
 Be gentlemanly. Courtesy wins 
 favor, and popularity will bring more 
 news items than rude keenness can 
 ferret out. 
 
 Be womanly. An aggressive manner 
 is even more disagreeable in woman than 
 in man. A dignified yet frank woman can 
 walk in any path of life she may choose 
 without fearing unpleasant experiences. 
 By womanly is not meant womanish. 
 Many women stand in their own path to 
 success by relying on the idea that they 
 are women and therefore to be treated 
 with indulgence, instead of recognizing 
 that merit and the ability to do real work 
 are the true factors which will enable 
 them successfully to compete with their 
 fellow reporters. 
 
 Be honest. Where trickery wins 
 one piece of news straight forwardness 
 gains a dozen. 
 
 21 
 
Be frank. Deal openly with the 
 world but be reserved in regard to 
 personal affairs and office business. 
 
 Carefully weigh the question of 
 becoming a reporter. Consider on one 
 hand that a reporter ought to have a 
 brain of steel, a frame of iron, an 
 unswerving will, indomitable pluck and 
 unflinching courage. On the other hand 
 he will find no other business more 
 fascinating, more broad in scope or 
 more generally instructive. The remun- 
 eration is fair. An ordinary reporter 
 earns as much as the average bank clerk 
 and a good one much more. If you 
 decide to become a reporter stick to your 
 business until you make a success of it. 
 
 LrfC. 
 
 22 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 in 
 
 022 204 673 7 
 
 !! 
 
Conservation Resources 
 Lig-Free® Type I 
 Ph 8.5, Buffered 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 022 204 673 7 I