“GO-GETTING”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 3 (Supplement)

“GO-GETTING”

Modem News Methods CALL FOR SPEED Hustling Journalism SINGULAR feature of Journalism is the belief of every individual engaged or ensnared in it that he alone has exactly the right skill to make a perfect newspaper. Curiously enough, this peculiar conceit is not confined exclusively to working journalists. It appears to be an infectious delusion. Thousands of clever men and others are convinced that they, too, could produce the ideal newspaper. As a rule, this common idea is merely amusing. It is only when the general conceit virulently afflicts magnates with inherited newspaper power that its exercise in journalism becomes irksome, If not positively and entirely a nuisance. In such cases there should be a drastic law compelling proprietors! journalists, so-called, to go wandering for forty years in the Amazonian Valley. IDYLLIC DAYS OF JOURNALISM Since everybody without experience claims ability to produce the supreme newspaper, an outline of the methods of experienced journalists may be interesting without causing general disillusionment. There was an idyllic time when an editor W’rote the whole of his newspaper and frequently, as under Cromwell's brusque rule, either lost his bccupation or went to gaol if and when editorial opinions hurt the policy or petty susceptibilities of men in high places. That was in the happy far-off days when the world was small, and the sources of news few and shy, thus enabling one man to survey the whole field of information and act as the interpreter of all knowledge. Things are now very different. To-day, an editor generally acts as a literary administrator, a director of news and views, and a court of appeal both for the management and the staff. He must, of course, take all the responsibility for bad policy and blunders, but then, as a meagre compensation, he also obtains all the credit for everything that is good in his paper. FILLING A NEWSPAPER There is a widespread idea that the principal difficulty of journalism is to fill the columns of a daily newspaper. On the contrary, the real task lies in the opposite direction. Organisation of supply has been developed so thoroughly that the main trouble is how to curb the daily flood of information, how to compress not quarts, but gallons, hogsheads of overflow news into pint measures. Happily (as observed by an English writer), the news pint is truly a liquid measure. A ruthless and competent sub-editor soon acquires the unerring knack of blowing the froth off a quart of news. Still, it is astonishing why so many contributors to every newspaper will persist in expounding trivialities into the bulk of world-shaking declarations. It seems difficult for the individual to realise and remember that a modern newspaper is the product of hundreds of trained writers, alert and accurate observers, and experienced interpreters of local and foreign news. So, as a result of their combined efforts all the world over, day and night, there is no working day in the year when the information and opinions which flow into a well-organised newspaper office would not suffice to fill two standard size metropolitan papers. COLLECTION OF NEWS By far the most interesting phase of newspaper production is the collection of news. There is a popular, if stupid, impression that a reporter has little mere to do than roam about like a policeman looking for something to happen, searching for some exciting incident, accident, or event to write about and put in his paper, merely for the sake of creating a public sensation. In daily practice and experience, a reporter’s life is anything but aimless. There is no economic waste of time in his interesting, but arduous experience. Journalism is not the profession for '"-awbers. Let "The Times,” as the greatest newspaper in the Empire, give its testimony concerning the life of working journalists: “In one aspect indeed there is no little patho3 in the immense devotion of aggregated energy to what appears to be an ephemeral use. No one who considers it with knowledge but is at times moved by what seems like the pitiable waste of it: by the thought of the thousands of men who daily burn themselves up, giving usually under conditions of intense and exhausting strain the best of their strength and brain to producing what to the general public serves only to beguile the idle moments of a day. None of the ancient gods was so insatiable as the Moloch of the modern Press, whose altar fires never go out, and who calls daily for his sacrifice; for no article, no paragraph, no line in*all the immeasurable output of the daily Press—each so idly read, so lightly thrown from the reader’s mind —but has drained some of the vitality of him from whom it came.” That is the newspaper life. EDITING THE NEWS OF THE DAY A special staff is required for editing all the news of the day. The duty of the sub-editors is to correct, co-ordinate, and, when necessarv, abbreviate the news supplied by the reporters! It is much easier to write a loose, long report than to tell a vivid story briefly, and the natural tendency of most writers is to exceed the allotted space. All .he work of sub-editing, whether it be on city, provincial, or foreign news, must be done under great pressure, for the simple reason that a mass of materiaL good and indifferent, must be handled in almost record time. Occasionally, apparently stupid errors are made, but generally the work represents a high standard of efficiency. The newspaper life is not a bed of roses.