NEWS GATHERING

Evening Star, Issue 21751, 20 June 1934, Page 2

NEWS GATHERING

ROMANCE OF JOURNALISM EFFICIENT OVERSEAS SERVICE ‘ How We Get Our News ’ was the title of an interesting, and informative address given last night by Mr James Hutchison (editor of the ‘ Otago Daily Times ’) to the young visitors from the country who are participating in the educational and cultural course organised by Mr A. C. Cameron. At the outset the speaker said he would like to congratulate the organiser of the course on the evident success which had attended his efforts, it was highly desirable that young men from the country should be afforded an opportunity of studying the industrial and cultural interests of the city, and he trusted that his hearers would return to their homes having not only enjoyed their stay in the city, but also conscious of actual benefit from it. REPORTING. The romance of journalism, he said, .was too large a subject to be dealt with in one breath, but he proposed to speak about the collection and distribution of the world’s news, which was, in reality, the romance. of the Press. In this connection he was not referring to the local news of everyday life in the community, with the gathering of which most of them would be more or less familiar, it was largely the work of ...reporters, but in larger centres newspapers employed specialists for various aspects of ; the work. As a general rule, however, , members of a reporting staff were expected to be able to turn their hand to any task assigned to them. A reporter might be asked to go from a cattle show to a theatrical first night, from a flower show to the Supreme Court, or from a wedding to an execution. In all his experience in Dunedin there had only been one execution that required to bo covered, and he had managed to dodge that. .Actually lots were drawn to decide who should do the job. and he had lost, but another member of the staff who was anxious to cover the assignment had taken it over from him, and had been sick for a week afterwards. (Laughter.) The collection and distribution of dominion news was carried out by the United Press Association, of which all the larger dailies were members, by a system of exchange. He instanced the Bayly murder trial in Auckland, and explained how both the evening and morning papers in the northern centres acted as collectors and distributors of this news. THE PRESS ASSOCIATION, The Press Association, however, had a much more important function to which he wished to refer specially. It concerned the receipt of news from almost every corner of the globe, Europe, Asia, America, and Australia, and in this respect he often wondered whether readers of the "overseas news in the daily Dress realised that in this little country, so far removed from the centres of the Old World, they got news from all quarters while it was still hot. That was, in his opinion, one of the marvels of journalism. They could readily understand that it would be far too costly for New Zealand papers to employ correspondents in all the centres from which cable news was received. Even the Press Association could not do that. It depended on arrangements made with two large Press agencies in Australia, rival organisations in constant competition with one another. Even they did not employ their own correspondents, hut maintained in London special stairs of highly-trained men, who worked day and night, seven days a week, rushing nows to Australia. They had access to all the great London, papers and to the large Press agencies in Great Britain, and the competition between them was so keen that no effort was spared in either case to provide » speedy and reliable news service. The advantages of such an arrangement flould he easily imagined. RADIO DEVELOPMENT. Formerly, said the speaker, all overseas news reached the dominion through the cable service, and it had been a very good service, too. The difficulty was, however, that except in eases of particular urgency cable nows might lie anything from five to seven hours on the way. Wireless and beam wireless had revolutionised all that, and news was now received in New Zealand as quickly ns it took an ordinary Press message to go from Glasgow to London, fn illustration of this he referred to information concerning cricket in Eng-, land. Four years ago a newspaper in New Zealand was very fortunate if it were able to publish in the morning the barest details of tho previous'day’s play. To-day it was possible to give some of the afternoon play. Play was resumed after lunch at 2 p.m. (English Mine), which was about 1.20 a.m. New Zealand lime, at which hour most of those responsible for morning dailies in this country wore thinking of putting their papers to bod, Beam wireless and .summer time in England, which gave an extra hour's play, were largely responsible for this. While they now enjoyed the. advantage of wireless, cable services had been

greatly improved, and nows was transmitted much more expeditiously than at one time. Still, it was a very costly way of getting news, and this fact made very drastic condensation necessaryThis was a task for experts, since the whole sense and significance of a message could be changed by the omission of too many words, or, perhaps, the wrong words. It was astonishing, however, to what extent messages could be abbreviated without becoming ambiguous. The system of condensation had resulted in the coining of a lot of words which made for economy in transmission without any loss of intelligibility. Moreover, many words so coined were from time to time finding their way into common use in the language. SIFTING THE NEWS. The selection of news, said Mr Hutchison, was another expert job. It all had to be sifted at Homo by trained journalists with a special knowledge of the requirements of colonial newspapers. The range of interests of colonial readers was very extensive, and it was generally recognised that the average newspaper reader in the dominions was a well-informed person. This fact was recognised by most of the larger publishing houses in Great Britain. People out here were interested in wars and rumours of wars, world politics, accidents, tragedies, love, and sport, nor must financial, commercial, or shipping news be neglected. It was because of this that they would notice all manner of topics dealt with side by side on the same page. They would perhaps have wondered sometimes regarding the significance of the line at the head of cable messages, “ By Electric Telegraph —Copyright,” followed by the actual tiihe of receipt of the message. This was required by the law of copyright, and any message bearing such a distinguishing line could not be copied for at least twenty-four hours after publication, or if a Sunday intervened for forty-eight hours. THE I?US,SIAN SILENCE. “ No doubt,” said the speaker. “ you have sometimes heard depreciations of the cable service which have had their origin in political services. It is sometimes suggested that this news comes from tainted sources, and cannot be relied upon. What I have said will convince you that such statements have no foundation. The working journalist takes no active part in politics, and when on the job admits no allegiance to cult or class. Accuracy is the first consideration, and he will not jeopardise his employment by subordinating accuracy to any whim of his own. The cable news, therefore, is as far as possible accurate and reliable. Of course, in some countries the censorship of news has an effect on accuracy, but that is a difficulty that cannot easily he overcome. You may have noticed that we never publish any cable news from Russia. Anything appertaining to the Soviet which does appear comes from Riga, because the censorship of news is so strict that English correspondents are not permitted to send out the inessages which they would like to cable. For a long time" the Soviet Government has been very anxious that the London ‘ Times ’ 'should have a correspondent in Moscow, but 1 Thc/Times ' has steadfastly refused to be ‘ represented there as long as the censorship is persisted in.” CAREFUL SELECTION. “ 1 am now going to make a bold claim, and one which many of you may think is an extravagant one,” said the speaker. “ I will say that the cable news published in New Zealand furnishes a better epitome of world affairs than can be had in any other part of the’world. We get the cream of the news from two largo agencies with access to all the great papers at Home and the large agencies, such as Reuter’s, and everything that is sent out to us is the result of the most careful selection. An official of the Foreign Office who recently visited Australia confirmed this statement when he observed ’that he was given a better insight into world affairs by the Sydney papers than he ever got in London. And in making such an observation he was referring to the news supplied by only one of the two agencies of whose services New Zealand has the benefit. You may rest assured that every reliance can be placed on the accuracy and completeness of our cable service. It is a service of which the United Press Association has every reason to be nroud, and with which the people of Now Zealand should be completely satisfied.” (Applause.) After a large number of questions had been asked Mr W. Gillespie (Manngawera) moved a hearty vote of thanks to the speaker, the motion being carried bv acclamation.