News Writing Part 16

=272. Bringing a Story up to the Minute.=--The first requisite in rewriting is the necessity of making old news new, of bringing it up to the minute. No matter when the events occurred, they must be presented to the reader so that they shall seem current. Currency is all but a necessity to life, vigor, interest in a yesterday's event. Here is an item of news in point. Suppose the following story from an afternoon paper is given a reporter on a morning daily:

Charged with running his car thirty miles an hour, Dr. Harry O. Smith, prominent city physician with offices in the Vincennes Building, was arrested on Kentucky Street this afternoon by Motorcycle Policeman DuPre. After giving bonds for his appearance to-morrow, Dr. Smith left in his machine for Linwood, where he was going when stopped by Policeman DuPre. Concerning his arrest Dr. Smith refused to make any other statement than that he was on his way to see a patient.

The reporter cannot see Dr. Smith to obtain additional facts, because the doctor is out of town. Nor can he expect any more news, since the case will not come up until some hours after his paper will have been in the hands of its readers. It is also against journalistic rules to begin with "Dr. Smith was arrested yesterday." That _yesterday_ must be eliminated from the lead. Here is the method one rewrite man used to get out of the difficulty:

Even doctors will not be allowed to break the city speed laws if one Cincinnati motorcycle policeman has his way.

Another way in which he might have avoided the troublesome _yesterday_ would be:

One of the first cases on police docket this morning will be the hearing of Dr. Harry O. Smith, prominent Cincinnati physician with offices in the Vincennes building, who was arrested on a charge of speeding yesterday by Policeman DuPre.

Or he might have begun:

Whether the life of a sick patient is worth more than that of a healthy pedestrian may be decided in police court this morning.

In each of these rewrites it will be noted that the story has been brought down to the time of the appearance of the paper.

=273. New Features.=--The next thing to seek in the story to be rewritten is a new feature. Generally this is obtained in bringing the story up to date. If not, the reporter may examine, as in the "follow-up," to see whether the first story plays up the best feature, or whether it does not contain another feature equally good, or one possibly entirely overlooked. Failing here, he may look forward to probable developments, as an investigation following a wreck, a search by the police following a burglary, or an arraignment and trial following an arrest. Failing again, he may consider whether some cause or motive or agency for the fire or divorce or crime may not have gone unnoticed by the other man. Or best of all, he may try to relate the incident with similar events occurring recently, as in the case of a number of fires, burglaries, or explosions coming close upon each other. Whatever course he chooses, he should use his imagination to good advantage, taking care always to make his rewrite truthful. Here is the way a few rewrite men have presented their new old stories:

_Result Featured_

=DEFECTIVE BABY DIES= The question whether his life should have been fought for or whether it was right to let him die is over, so far as the tiny, unnamed, six-days-old defective son of Mrs. Anna Bollinger is concerned. The child died at the German-American hospital, Chicago, at 7:30 last night, with Dr. H. J. Haiselden, chief of the hospital staff, standing firmly to his position that he could not use his science to prolong the life of so piteously afflicted a creature.

_Connection with Preceding Events_

=WILD MAN CAUGHT= The wild man who has been frightening school children of Yonkers, scaring hunters in the woods, and causing hurry calls to the police from timid housewives, has been captured by the reserves of the Second precinct. He was caught last night in Belmont woods, near the Empire City race track.

_Entirely New Feature Played Up_

=TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL SUICIDE= Ruth Camilla Fisher knew a country wherein her beauty was specie of the realm. It was bounded by the ninth and twelfth birthdays. Its inhabitants consisted of Fritz, an adoring dachshund; "papa," who was a member of the school board and a great man; and innumerable gruff little boys, who, ostensibly ignorant of her observation, spat through vacant front teeth and turned gorgeous somersaults for her admiration. She was happy and the jealous green complexion of the feminine part of her world bothered her not at all. And unsuspectingly Ruth came singing across the borders of her ain countree to the alien land of knowledge and disillusionment. Though she knew she came from G.o.d, it was gradually borne upon her that her girl-mother wandered a little way on the path of the Magdalenes. She was an interloper who had no gospel sanction in the world, no visible parents other than a foster-father and a foster-mother. Perfectly respectable little girls began to inform her so with self-righteous airs and with the expertness of surgeons to dissect her from the social scheme that governs puss-wants-a-corner with the same iron rule that in later life determines who shall be asked to play bridge and who shall be outlawed. "Your parents aren't your own," was the taunt that Ruth heard from playmates. Some of the little girls added the poison of sympathy to the information. And Ruth Camilla Fisher at 12 found herself a stranger in a strange land. She extradited herself Tuesday night with a revolver shot in the temple. In the yard back of her foster-parents' home at 5319 West Twenty-fifth Street, Cicero, with one arm around the loyal Fritz, she put the revolver to her head and pressed the trigger....[48]

[48] _Chicago Tribune_, November 25, 1915.

=CROOK LISTS DANCERS' NAMES= The modern dance craze has brought a lot of informality into a heretofore very proper Chicago. Women whose husbands work during the daytime have considered it not at all improper to flock to the afternoon the dansants in many downtown cafes, there to fox-trot and one-step with good-looking strangers whose introduction--if there was an introduction--was procured in a sort of professional way.

_Probable Effect_

Consequently there were about forty women in Chicago who verged on total collapse yesterday if they chanced to read of the terrible experience of Mrs. Mercedes Fullenwider of 5432 Kimbark Avenue.

_Probable Motive_

=ELSIE THOMAS NOT A SUICIDE= If a finger print can tell a story, the police may be able to prove by to-morrow night that pretty Elsie Thomas, whose lifeless body was found in her room at 1916 Pennsylvania Street last night, was not a suicide. In the opinion of her brother, Wallace Thomas, who was on his way from Lindale to see her, Hans Roehm, who had promised to marry her, may have been responsible for her death from cyanide of pota.s.sium.

=274. Condensation in Rewrites.=--It may be added in conclusion that though rewrites are made to seem fresh and new, they are nevertheless old news after all, and hence are not worth so much s.p.a.ce as the original story. Consequently, one will find that they usually run from half to a fourth the length of the original; so that in rewriting one need not hesitate--as the copy-readers tell the reporters--to "cut every story to the bone." One must be careful in rewriting, however, not merely to omit paragraphs in cutting down stories. Excision is not rewriting.

XIX. FEATURE STORIES

=275. What the Feature Story Is.=--The feature, or human interest, story is the newspaper man's invention for making stories of little news value interesting. The prime difference between the feature story and the normal information story we have been studying is that its news is a little less excellent and must be made good by the writer's ingenuity.

The exciting informational story on the first page claims the reader's attention by reason of the very dynamic power of its tidings, but the news of the feature story must have a touch of literary rouge on its face to make it attractive. This rouge generally is an adroit appeal to the emotions, and just as some maidens otherwise plain of feature may be made attractive, even beautiful, by a cosmetic touch accentuating a pleasing feature or concealing a defect, so the human interest story may be made fascinating by centering the interest in a single emotion and drawing the attention away from the staleness, the sameness, the lack of piquancy in the details. The emotion may be love, fear, hate, regret, curiosity, humor,--no matter what, provided it is unified about, is given the tone of, that feature.

=276. Difficulty.=--But just as it takes artists among women to dare successfully the lure of the rouge-dish, and just as so many, having ventured, make of their faces mere caricatures of the beauty they have sought, so only artists can handle the feature story. The difficulty lies chiefly in the temptation to overemphasize. In striving to make the story humorous, one goes too far, oversteps the limits of dignity, and like the ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville actor, produces an effect of disgust. Or in attempting to be pathetic, to excite a sympathetic tear, one is liable to induce mere derisive laughter. And a single misplaced word or a discordant phrase, like a mouse in a Sunday-school cla.s.s, will destroy the entire effect of what one would say. In no other kind of writing is restraint more needed.

=277. Two Types.=--Probably entire accuracy demands the statement that these remarks about the difficulty of the feature story apply more specifically to the human interest type, the type the purpose of which is largely to entertain. Certainly it is more difficult than the second, whose purpose is to instruct or inform. The one derives its interest from its appeal to the reader's curiosity, the other from its appeal to the emotions. The emotional type attracts the reader through its appeal to elemental instincts and feelings in men, as desire for food and life, vain grief for one lost, struggle for position in society, undeserved prosperity or misfortune, abnormal fear of death, stoicism in the face of danger, etc. The following is by Frank Ward O'Malley, of the _New York Sun_, a cla.s.sic of this type of human interest story:

=DEATH OF HAPPY GENE SHEEHAN= Mrs. Catherine Sheehan stood in the darkened parlor of her home at 361 West Fifteenth Street late yesterday afternoon, and told her version of the murder of her son Gene, the youthful policeman whom a thug named Billy Morley shot in the forehead, down under the Chatham Square elevated station early yesterday morning. Gene's mother was thankful that her boy hadn't killed Billy Morley before he died, "because," she said, "I can say honestly, even now, that I'd rather have Gene's dead body brought home to me, as it will be to-night, than to have him come to me and say, 'Mother, I had to kill a man this morning.'" "G.o.d comfort the poor wretch that killed the boy," the mother went on, "because he is more unhappy to-night than we are here. Maybe he was weak-minded through drink. He couldn't have known Gene or he wouldn't have killed him. Did they tell you at the Oak Street Station that the other policemen called Gene Happy Sheehan? Anything they told you about him is true, because no one would lie about him. He was always happy, and he was a fine-looking young man, and he always had to duck his helmet when he walked under the gas fixture in the hall, as he went out the door. "He was doing dance steps on the floor of the bas.e.m.e.nt, after his dinner yesterday noon, for the girls--his sisters, I mean--and he stopped of a sudden when he saw the clock, and picked up his helmet. Out on the street he made pretend to arrest a little boy he knows, who was standing there,--to see Gene come, out, I suppose,--and when the little lad ran away laughing, I called out, 'You couldn't catch Willie, Gene; you're getting fat.' "'Yes, and old, mammy,' he said, him who is--who was--only twenty-six--'so fat,' he said, 'that I'm getting a new dress coat that'll make you proud when you see me in it, mammy.' And he went over Fifteenth Street whistling a tune and slapping his leg with a folded newspaper. And he hasn't come back. "But I saw him once after that, thank G.o.d, before he was shot. It's strange, isn't it, that I hunted him up on his beat late yesterday afternoon for the first time in my life? I never go around where my children are working or studying--one I sent through college with what I earned at dressmaking and some other little money I had, and he's now a teacher; and the youngest I have at college now. I don't mean that their father wouldn't send them if he could, but he's an invalid, although he's got a position lately that isn't too hard for him. I got Gene prepared for college, too, but he wanted to go right into an office in Wall Street. I got him in there, but it was too quiet and tame for him, Lord have mercy on his soul; and then, two years ago, he wanted to go on the police force, and he went. "After he went down the street yesterday I found a little book on a chair, a little list of the streets or something, that Gene had forgot. I knew how particular they are about such things, and I didn't want the boy to get in trouble, and so I threw on a shawl and walked over through Chambers Street toward the river to find him. He was standing on a corner some place down there near the bridge clapping time with his hands for a little newsy that was dancing; but he stopped clapping, struck, Gene did, when he saw me. He laughed when I handed him the little book and told that was why I'd searched for him, patting me on the shoulder when he laughed--patting me on the shoulder. "'It's a bad place for you here, Gene,' I said. 'Then it must be bad for you, too, mammy,' said he; and as he walked to the end of his beat with me--it was dark then--he said, 'They're lots of crooks here, mother, and they know and hate me and they're afraid of me'--proud, he said it--'but maybe they'll get me some night.' He patted me on the back and turned and walked east toward his death. Wasn't it strange that Gene said that? "You know how he was killed, of course, and how--Now let me talk about it, children, if I want to. I promised you, didn't I, that I wouldn't cry any more or carry on? Well, it was five o'clock this morning when a boy rang the bell here at the house and I looked out the window and said, 'Is Gene dead?' 'No, ma'am,' answered the lad, 'but they told me to tell you he was hurt in a fire and is in the hospital.' Jerry, my other boy, had opened the door for the lad and was talking to him while I dressed a bit. And then I walked down stairs and saw Jerry standing silent under the gaslight, and I said again, 'Jerry, is Gene dead?' And he said 'Yes,' and he went out. "After a while I went down to the Oak Street Station myself, because I couldn't wait for Jerry to come back. The policemen all stopped talking when I came in, and then one of them told me it was against the rules to show me Gene at that time. But I knew the policeman only thought I'd break down, but I promised him I wouldn't carry on, and he took me into a room to let me see Gene. It was Gene. "I know to-day how they killed him. The poor boy that shot him was standing in Chatham Square arguing with another man when Gene told him to move on. When the young man wouldn't, but only answered back, Gene shoved him, and the young man pulled a revolver and shot Gene in the face, and he died before Father Rafferty, of St. James's, got to him, G.o.d rest his soul. A lot of policemen heard the shot, and they all came running with their pistols and clubs in their hands. Policeman Laux--I'll never forget his name or any of the others that ran to help Gene--came down the Bowery and ran out into the middle of the square where Gene lay. "When the man that shot Gene saw the policeman coming, he crouched down and shot at Policeman Laux, but, thank G.o.d, he missed him. Then policemen named Harrington and Rourke and Moran and Kehoe chased the man all around the streets there, some heading him off when he tried to run into that street that goes off at an angle--East Broadway, isn't it? A big crowd had come out of Chinatown now and was chasing the man, too, until Policemen Rourke and Kehoe got him backed up against a wall. When Policeman Kehoe came up close, the man shot his pistol right at Kehoe and the bullet grazed Kehoe's helmet. "All the policemen jumped at the man then, and one of them knocked the pistol out of his hand with a blow of a club. They beat him, this Billy Morley, so Jerry says his name is, but they had to because he fought so hard. They told me this evening that it will go hard with the unfortunate murderer, because Jerry says that when a man named Frank O'Hare, who was arrested this evening charged with stealing cloth or something, was being taken to headquarters, he told Detective Gegan that he and a one-armed man who answered to the description of Morley, the young man who killed Gene, had a drink last night in a saloon at Twenty-second Street and Avenue A, and that when the one-armed man was leaving the saloon he turned and said, 'Boys, I'm going out now to bang a guy with b.u.t.tons.' "They haven't brought me Gene's body yet. Coroner Shrady, so my Jerry says, held Billy Morley, the murderer, without letting him get out on bail, and I suppose that in a case like this they have to do a lot of things before they can let me have the body here. If Gene only hadn't died before Father Rafferty got to him, I'd be happier. He didn't need to make his confession, you know, but it would have been better, wouldn't it? He wasn't bad, and he went to ma.s.s on Sunday without being told; and even in Lent, when we always say the rosary out loud in the dining-room every night, Gene himself said to me the day after Ash Wednesday, 'If you want to say the rosary at noon, mammy, before I go out, instead of at night when I can't be here, we'll do it.' "G.o.d will see that Gene's happy to-night, won't he, after Gene said that?" the mother asked as she walked out into the hallway with her black-robed daughters grouped behind her. "I know he will," she said, "and I'll--" She stopped with an arm resting on the banister to support her. "I--I know I promised you, girls," said Gene's mother, "that I'd try not to cry any more, but I can't help it." And she turned toward the wall and covered her face with her ap.r.o.n.[49]

[49] Frank Ward O'Malley in the _New York Sun_; reprinted in _The Outlook_, lx.x.xvii, 527-529.

=278. Informational Type.=--The second type of feature story, the informational, is the one we find most frequently in the feature section of the editorial page and the Sunday edition. It includes such subjects as, "How to Jiu-jitsu a Holdup Man," "Why Hot Water Dissolves Things,"

"Duties of an International Spy," "Feminism and the Baby Crop," "Why Dogs Wag their Tails," "The World's Highest Salaried Choir Boy," etc.

Stories of new inventions and discoveries, accounts of the lives of famous and infamous men, of barbaric and court life, methods for lowering the high cost of living, explanations of the workings of the parcel post system, facts telling the effects of the European war,--these are some of the kinds of news included. Timeliness is not essential, but is valuable, as in the publication of Halloween, Christmas, Easter, and vacation stories at their appropriate seasons.

=279. Sources.=--The sources of feature stories are everywhere,--on the street, in the club, at church, in the court room, on the athletic field, in reference books and government publications, in the journals of fas.h.i.+on, anywhere that an observing reporter will look. Old settlers and residents, particularly on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, are good for stories of the town or state as it used to be fifty years ago; and their photographs add to the value of their stories. Travelers just returned from foreign countries or from distant sections of the United States provide good feature copy. Educational journals, forestry publications, mining statistics, geological surveys, court decisions, all furnish valuable data. The only requirement in obtaining information is personal observation and investigation.

=280. Form.=--The form of the feature story is anomalous. It has none.

One is at liberty to begin in any way likely to attract the reader, and to continue in any way that will hold him. Possibly informal leads are the rule rather than the exception--leads that will arrest attention by telling enough of the story to excite curiosity without giving all the details. Note the suspensive effect of the following leads:

=SAM DREAMS OF ROBBERS= Two big black-bearded robbers, armed to the hat-band and vowing to blow his appet.i.te away from his personality if he uttered a tweet, walked into the mind of Samuel Shuster on Wednesday night as he lay snoring in his four-post bed at No. 11 Market Street. One placed a large warty hand around Samuel's windpipe and began to play it, and the other with a furtive look up and down stage reached into his pocket and drew forth $350. With a scream, two yowls, and a tiger, Samuel awoke....

=FIXES BROKEN LEG WITH NAILS= Capt. Patrick Rogers of truck company No. 2 found a man leaning against the quarters at Was.h.i.+ngton and Clinton Streets early yesterday and demanded what he was doing. "I broke my leg getting off a car," said the stranger. "Gimme a hammer and some nails and I'll fix it." ...

=AMERICAN WASTE= If it were not for our industrial wastefulness, it is a fair guess that the income of the United States would be sixteen times--Well, do you know that America burns up forty thousand tons of paper a day, worth fifty dollars a ton? That alone is $2,000,000 a day wasted....

=FINDS WOMAN DEAD IN BARN= Stephen Garrity of 1124 Seventy-third street stepped into a deserted barn at Seventy-fourth street and Ashland avenue yesterday afternoon to get out of the wind and light his pipe. He was just about to apply a lighted match to the pipe when he saw the form of a woman hanging to one of the rafters. A long black silk-lined coat hung so that Garrity could see a black skirt, a white waist, and black shoes. The woman had a fair complexion and brown hair. The match burned Garrity's fingers and went out....

=281. Suspense Story.=--In some feature stories the writers attempt to hold their readers' interest by making the narrative suspensive throughout.

="MISSOURI" IN CHICAGO= "Missouri" Perkins is sixteen and hails from Kansas City. This morning he walked into the office of the Postal Telegraph Company on Dearborn Street and asked for a job. The manager happened to want a messenger boy just at that moment and gave him a message to deliver in a hurry. "Here's your chance, my boy," said the manager. "These people have been kicking about undelivered messages. Now don't come back until you deliver it." A while afterward the telephone rang. On the other end of the wire was a building watchman, somewhat terrified. "Have you got a boy they call 'Missouri?'" inquired the watchman. "We did have ten minutes ago," replied the manager. The watchman continued: "That 'Missouri' feller came over here and said he had to go to one of the offices. We don't allow no one up at that office at this hour and I told him he couldn't go." "Yes, yes," said the manager. "Well," said the watchman, "he said he would go, and I had to pull my gun on him." "But you didn't shoot my messenger," exclaimed the manager. "No," meekly came the response over the wire, "but I want my gun back."

=282. Uniqueness of Style.=--Again, a writer will resort to uniqueness of form or style to get his effect.

=HIS WIFE, SHE WENT AWAY= =And He Did a Little Entertaining, Which Leads Up to This Story= Mrs. Gladys I. Fick visited in California. Mr. Fick entertained while she was away. Mrs. Fick found it out. And got a divorce. Yesterday.

=283. Unity of Impression.=--Most frequently, however, the effort is to obtain unity of impression through close adherence to a single tone or effect. The story by Frank Ward O'Malley on page 225 has already been cited as an excellent story of pathos, and the following may be examined as a portrayal of childish loyalty:

=SILENT ABOUT BULLET IN BRAIN= A tragedy of childhood featuring the loyalty of 10-year-old Stephen Stec to his three years younger brother Albert, even when he felt death near, was brought out at Kenosha hospital to-day. X-ray pictures showed that the older boy had a bullet from a revolver embedded to a distance of three inches in the brain matter. The boy was shot by his younger brother Sunday afternoon, but after they had agreed to keep secret the story of the shooting, Stephen, with the stoicism of a Spartan, had refused to tell the story. When the X-ray picture revealed his secret he sobbed out, "He didn't mean to do it." Then he told the story. ="Just Tired Out," He Says= The two boys had been left at home alone on Sunday afternoon. Their father, Albert Stec, a prosperous market man, had warned them never to touch a revolver which lay in a drawer. Little Albert, not yet 6 years old, got the weapon, pointed it at the brother, and pulled the trigger. The bullet entered the back of the other boy's head. The mother, on her return home, found the boy on the floor with his little brother keeping a vigil. "I'm just tired out," the boy told his mother. She put him to bed and tucked him away under the covers. With the little brother playing about the bed he went off to sleep. =Physician Stumbles Onto Secret= Monday morning he appeared sick and remained at home from school. In the afternoon his mother became worried when he failed to recover from drowsiness which had overtaken him and she called Dr. J. N. Pait. The physician made an examination of the boy, but found nothing to account for his condition. Then he rubbed his hand over his head. The telltale blood revealed the fact that the boy had been injured. With the little brother holding on to his coat the boy walked bravely to an automobile and was taken to the Kenosha hospital, where the X-ray machine revealed his secret. =All Functions Remain Normal= This afternoon at the hospital it was declared that the boy showed no sign of fever and that his pulse was normal. "The case is a most remarkable one," declared Dr. Pait. "The boy is cheerful and every organ of the body is performing its functions, but at that there is the bullet in his brain. We expect sudden collapse in the case, but a boy as brave as he is should live." The little fellow made no complaint and when the smaller brother was brought to the hospital their greeting was of a most tender nature. "That big machine gave it away," was the way the injured boy broke the story of his seeming faithlessness to his trust.[50]

[50] _Chicago Tribune_, March 3, 1915.

=284. Feature Story Writers.=--Feature stories in the Sunday supplement are written generally by a regular staff of writers. Some of the staff are office men on the pay-roll of the papers. Others are regular contributors who fill certain amounts of s.p.a.ce each week or month. Still others, specialists in their lines, write only occasionally, but deal in a scholarly, exhaustive way with their subjects. The feature stories in the news columns are written generally by the stronger men on the regular staff of reporters. Some papers have regular feature men on whom they rely for human interest stories. And any newspaper man who can handle such stories well may be sure of a place at an advanced salary over the ordinary reporter. Feature stories are coming more and more into prominence on the large dailies because of their appeal to all cla.s.ses of society, and the beginner, as soon as he becomes acquainted with his surroundings and gains dexterity in the handling of news, is advised to try his hand at the human interest type. It will pay, and success in this field will give a much desired prestige.

XX. CORRESPONDENCE STORIES

=285. Correspondence Work.=--In style and construction correspondence stories are not different from the preceding types of news stories. They are taken up for separate examination because their value as news is reckoned differently, because the transmission of them by mail, telegraph, and telephone is individual, and because so many reporters have to know how to handle correspondence work. Statistics show that 20,000 of the 25,000 newspapers in the United States are country papers; and it is from the reporters on these weeklies and small dailies that the big journals obtain most of their state and sectional news. In addition, every large daily has in the chief cities its representatives who, while often engaged in regular reporting, nevertheless do work of a correspondence nature. It is highly advisable, therefore, that every newspaper man, because probably some day he may have to do correspondence work, should know how to gather, write, and file such stories.

=286. Estimating the Worth of News.=--A correspondent is both like and unlike a regular reporter--like, in that in his district he is the paper's representative and upon him depends the accurate or inaccurate publication of news; unlike, in that he is comparatively free from supervision and direction, and hence must be discriminating in judging news. It is the correspondent especially who must have the proverbial "nose for news," who must know the difference between information that is nationally and merely locally interesting, who must be able to tell when a column story in a local paper is not worth a stick in a journal a hundred miles away. The best way to develop this discrimination in appreciation of news is to put oneself in imagination in the place of a resident of Boston or Atlanta or Chicago, where the paper is published, and ask oneself if such-and-such an item of news would be interesting were one reading the paper there. For example, one has just learned that Andrew Jones, the local blacksmith, has had an explosion of powder in his shop, causing a loss of a hundred dollars, with no insurance. One should ask oneself if this story would be worth while to readers who know nothing of Andrew Jones or the town where the accident has occurred. Manifestly not; and the story should not be sent. But if one learns that the accident was caused by the premature explosion of a bomb Jones was making for the destruction of a bridge on the Great Southern and Northern Railway, then the information is of more than local interest and should immediately be telegraphed with full details. Every correspondent should recognize such differences in news values, for papers pay, not according to the amount of copy they receive, but according to the amount they publish. And on the other hand, when correspondents telegraph too many useless items, editors sometimes reverse charges on the unwise writers.