JOURNALISTIC RESOURCE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9388, 6 March 1909, Page 2

JOURNALISTIC RESOURCE.

There has been some little discussion in the Daily News of late con- * cerning journalistic resonrcefnlness. An American newspaper office found itself in trouble one morning because the engine had broken down, but the editor was a man of courage. He borrowed a friend’s motor car and an ingenious engineer connected up the printing machine with the sixty horse power petrol engine. The same device was adopted by more than one newspaper in Paris when a had deprived the offices of both electric light and power. The Daily News, however, capped this story with an account of the resourcefulness of Mr T. P. Ritzema, when he was editing the Northern Daily Telegraph at Blackburn. “It was a veteran newspaper man recently connected with this journal,” says the Daily News, once found himself faced by exactly the same difficulty when producing a paper in a certain northern town. Motor cars were not invented then; but this man of resource sent round to the town olerk, whom he knew, borrow-

ed the municipal steam roller, knocked a hole in the wall of his works, connected up hie machinery with the engine, and went merrily to press.” This paragraph had a curious sequel. It provoked the Northern Daily Guardian, of Hartlepool, to declare that the Daily News had appropriated an incident in its own history. But it proved, on investigation, that the steam roller plan had occurred to more than one great mind. Mr Ritzeraa had used it in Blackburn in 1888. The Hartlepool newspaper adopted it eleven years later. The Guardian had trouble with its engine and borrowed the steam roller belonging to the West Hartlepool municipality. The steamroller was placed in the street. A belt was passed round the fly wheel and passed through a window, which had to be enlarged to admit it. It was another editor, this time at Nottingham, who came to the rescue when the fuel feed of a gas engine went wrong. He found a length of rubber tubing and carried one end to a street lamp outside the office, obtaining thus a sufficient supply of gas to enable work to proceed. A similar incident to the borrowing of the steam roller occurred in Gisborne some twenty years ago, when, owing to a defect in the gas engine that drove the printing machinery, the Herald had to requisition the services of a steam engine used for boring artesian wells; this was hurriedly brought round to the rear of the office, a hole knocked through the wall, and the printing of the paper proceeded with an hour behind time.