Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of Newspaper Writing

Part 5

Chapter 53,761 wordsPublic domain

=3. Rescues.=--(a) _Number of People Rescued._--When people are rescued from great danger in a fire their escape makes a very good feature. If many of them are rescued or escape very narrowly, the mere number of people saved deserves the first place, as:

(b) _Manner of Rescue._--But more often the manner of their escape interests us most. If a man slides down a rope for four stories to escape death by fire we are more interested in how he saved himself than in the fact that he didn't burn, and so we tell how he escaped, in the first line. In the same way, if unusual means are used to save one or more persons, the means of rescue is usually worth featuring. For example:

=4. Property Threatened.=--Death and injury are the commonest unexpected circumstances in fire stories, but they are not the only ones that may be worth featuring. There is an inconceivable number of things that may happen at a fire and overshadow all interest in the fire itself. A good feature may be found in the property that is threatened. Often the fire in itself is insignificant, but because of a high wind or other circumstances it threatens to spread to neighboring buildings or to devastate a large area. In such a case the amount of property threatened or endangered deserves a place in the very first line, especially if it exceeds the amount of property actually destroyed and if it can be put in a striking way; _i. e._, the entire waterfront district, or twenty-five dwelling houses, or $5,000,000 worth of property. When contrasted with the small amount of damage actually done, the amount that is threatened becomes more important. Thus:

=5. Fire Fighting.=--Not unusually a serious fire results from the fact that it was not checked for some reason or other during its earlier stages. Perhaps the whole thing might have been avoided, or, on the contrary, a big fire may be extinguished with unexpected ease or unusual skill. In rare cases this matter of very efficient or very inefficient fire fighting is of sufficient importance to take the first place in the lead. For example:

=6. Crowd.=--Not uncommonly in the city a tremendous crowd gathers to watch a fire and blocks traffic for hours. In the absence of other significant incidents--death, great loss, etc.--the reporter may begin his story with an account of the crowd present or the blockade of traffic. Such a beginning should always be used only as a last resort when a fire has no other interesting phase, for crowds always gather at fires and only a very serious blocking of traffic is worth reporting. Thus:

=7. Miscellaneous.=--There is an infinite number of things that may happen at a fire and overshadow the mere fire interest. These are the things that make one fire different from another, and whenever they are of sufficient importance they become the feature to be played up in the first line of the introduction. It would be impossible to enumerate all the unexpected things that might happen during a fire. It is this element of unexpected possibilities that makes the reporting of fires interesting, and an alert reporter is ever on the lookout for a new and unusual development in the fire to be used as the feature of his story. Here are the leads of a few fire stories clipped from the daily newspapers:

C. FIRE STORIES WITH MORE THAN ONE FEATURE

It would appear from the foregoing examples that almost every fire story has a feature. And so it usually has. The great majority of fires that are worth reporting at all have some unusual incident connected with them that overshadows the mere fire itself. Sometimes the features are not of great significance, but it is only as a last resort that a reporter begins his story with "Fire"--only when the most ordinary of fires is to be covered.

Unusual features are so common in connection with fires that very often a single fire has more than one unusual feature. Perhaps the cause of the fire is exceptionally striking and at the same time the amount of property destroyed is of great news value in itself. Or the time and some unexpected attendant circumstance are both worth the first place. In that case the reporter has to choose between the two features and begin with the one that seems to him to be the more striking. The other feature or features may often be arranged in the order of importance immediately after the most striking fact at the beginning, provided that this does not make the lead unduly complicated.

For instance, a cold storage warehouse burns and four firemen are overcome by the fumes from the ammonia pipes. Next door is a hospital and the flames frighten the patients almost into a panic. Either one of these incidents is worth the first line of the story. But which one is of the greater importance? Naturally the element of danger to human life must be considered first and the actual disabling of four firemen is of greater significance than a possible panic in the hospital. Following that line of logic our story would begin:

Such a lead would not be too complicated for practical purposes. But suppose that around the corner from the cold storage warehouse is a livery in which fifty horses are stabled. The flames frighten the horses and they break loose and stampede in the streets. The story now has three features of striking interest. It would be possible to combine them all in the lead and to begin in this way:

But see how far from the beginning the fire, the actual cause of it all, is placed. The fire is buried behind a mass of details and the reader is confused. The lead is not a happy one. The only thing to do is to break up the mass of details and put part of them immediately after the lead. The arrangement is a matter that must be left to the judgment of the reporter.

This, however, is an extreme case because the various features are so disconnected and separate. The reporter would have little trouble if the several features were more alike. For instance, if one of the walls of the building had fallen and killed three firemen the case would have been simpler. The death of these men so far overshadows the other unusual incidents that it drives them out of the lead altogether. For we do not care about horses and frightened patients when men are crushed beneath falling walls. All that we are concerned with in our lead now is the dead and injured--with a feature like this we can trust our readers to go into the story far enough to pick up the other interesting features; we would begin in this way:

The combination of dead and injured makes a good beginning, and it is always advisable to begin with such an enumeration whenever it is possible. Where the features are not so significant as death and injuries the matter of arranging more than one striking detail at the beginning of the lead becomes a greater problem. It must be left to one's own judgment and common sense. The lead must not be too long or complicated, and one must hesitate before burying the really important facts of the story behind several lines of more or less unusual details. Just as soon as the lead becomes at all confusing take out the details and put them into the story later.

VII

FAULTS IN NEWS STORIES

Before we go on to the consideration of other kinds of news stories it will be well to consider in greater detail the facts we have learned from writing up fires. Our fire stories should have taught us a number of things about the form of the news story. Let us sum them up.

=Paragraph Length.=--We have seen that newspaper writing has a characteristic style of its own. In the first place notice the length of a newspaper paragraph. Count the number of words in an average paragraph and compare it with the number of words in a literary paragraph. We find that the newspaper paragraph is much shorter. There is a reason for this. Imagine a 150-word literary paragraph set up in a newspaper. There are about seven words to the line in a newspaper column and one hundred and fifty words would make something over twenty lines. Try to picture a newspaper made up of twenty-line paragraphs; it would be extremely difficult to read. We glance over a newspaper hastily and our haste requires many breaks to help us in gathering the facts. Hence the paragraphs must be short; the very narrowness of the newspaper column causes them to be shortened. The average lead, you will find, contains less than fifty words and the paragraphs following it are not much longer.

=Sentence Length.=--Notice sentence lengths as compared with literary sentences. You will find that newspaper sentences usually fall into two classes: the sentences in the lead and the sentences in the body of the story. The first sentence is usually rather long--thirty to sixty words. But the sentences in the body of the story are much shorter than most literary sentences. Why is this? It results from exactly the same thing that makes the newspaper paragraphs short--the need of many breaks. Thus, after we finish a lead, we must fall into short sentences. They need not be choppy sentences, but they must be simple and easy to read.

THE LEAD AND THE BODY OF THE STORY

Our study of the fire story has shown that newspaper stories always have two separate and distinct parts: the lead and the body of the story. In writing the story a reporter must consider each part separately, although the reader does not distinguish between the two parts. Before writing a word the reporter must decide exactly what facts and details he is to put in the lead and exactly what fact he is going to play up in the first line, taking care to begin with the most interesting part of the story. After the lead is finished he writes the main body of the story in accordance with the rules of ordinary English composition. Each part must be separate and independent of the other.

=The Lead.=--The lead itself is always paragraphed separately. Usually it consists of a single sentence, although it is much better to break it into two than to make the sentence too long and complicated. As we have said before, the lead must not only tell the most interesting fact or incident in the story, but it must answer the natural questions that the reader immediately asks about this matter; i.e., when, where, what, why, who, and how. These questions must be answered briefly and concisely in their order of importance, and the most unusual answer or the most striking part of the story must precede all the rest. Beyond the answers to these questions there is no space for details in the lead. Every word must have a purpose and a necessary purpose or it must be cut out and relegated to the body of the story. No space should be given to explanations of minor importance. State the content of the news story as completely, accurately, and concisely as possible so that the reader may know just what happened, when it happened, where, to whom, and perhaps how and why it happened. Then begin a new paragraph and start the body of the story.

Many editors require that the lead consist of one long sentence and yet it must be grammatical. Many reporters forget all about English grammar in their attempt to crowd everything they know into one sentence. But mere quantity does not make the lead good; it must be grammatical and easy to read. The verb must have a grammatical subject and, if it is an _active_ verb, it must have a grammatical predicate. Clauses and modifiers must be attached in a way that cannot be overlooked. Dangling participles and absolute constructions should be shunned. All of the modifying clauses must be gathered together either before or after the principal clause. Everything must be compact and logical. Many papers disregard this matter, as will be seen in some of the extracts quoted in this book, but the best papers do not.

Every lead should be so constructed that it may stand alone and be self-sufficient. Never should a reporter trust to headlines to enlighten his readers upon the meaning of the lead--the exact reverse of this must be true. The story is written first and the headlines are written from the facts contained in the lead--and usually by another man. In writing the lead disregard the existence of headlines, for many readers do not read them at all. This is but an amplification of the old rule of composition that any piece of writing should be independent of its title. The title may be lost, but the essay must be clear without it.

There are many ways of beginning a lead in order to embody the feature in the first line. At first glance the operation of putting the emphasis of a sentence at the beginning, rather than at the end, may seem difficult, but with a clear idea of the rules of dependence in English grammar a reporter may transpose any clause to the beginning and thus play up the content of the clause. For instance, in this lead,

the striking feature of the story is buried--we do not get the unusual picture of a little group of people shivering in the street during a blinding snowstorm while they watch their homes burn. A simple transposition of the _while_-clause puts the feature in the first line. Thus:

The lead is not perfect now; it might be greatly improved, but it is better than before.

A few of the possible beginnings for a lead are:

1. _Noun._--The simplest beginning of a lead is of course the use of a noun as subject of the principal verb. For example, "Fire destroyed the residence of----" or "A flashlight setting fire to a lace curtain started a fire----" or "The Plaza Hotel had a few uncomfortable moments last night----" etc. The subject of the verb may of course have its modifiers--adjectives and phrases--but it should not be separated too widely from its verb. One point is to be noted in the use of a simple noun at the beginning; an article should not precede the noun if it can be avoided, for the very simple reason that an article is not worth the important space that it takes at the beginning of the lead. In the case of fire no article is necessary. In other cases it is usually possible to put in an adjective or some other word that will take the article's place. However, never begin a story like this: "Supreme Court of the United States decided----" or "Young man in evening dress was arrested last night----" or "House of John Smith was destroyed yesterday----". Obviously something is lacking and, if no other word will supply the lack, use the article, _the_ or _a_. When the _noun_-beginning is used the reporter must never forget that two or more nouns, however different, if subject of the same verb, require a plural verb. The verb may be active or passive, whichever is more convenient, but rarely is the object of an active verb put first--simply because English cannot bear this transposition of subject and predicate.

2. _Infinitive._--Other parts of speech aside from nouns may be subjects of verbs and so other parts of speech as subjects of the principal verb of the lead may be placed at the beginning of the lead. An infinitive with its object and modifier may occupy the first line as subject of the main verb; e.g.:

Here the infinitive "to rescue" and its object are the subject of the verb "was," and the construction is perfectly grammatical. Unfortunately the English language has another infinitive which very much resembles a present participle--the infinitive ending in _-ing_; e.g., _rescuing_. Without an article this part of speech must, of course, be used only as an adjective, but with an article it becomes an infinitive, to be treated as a noun; e.g., _the rescuing of_. It would be perfectly grammatical to begin the above lead in this way: "The rescuing of his own son ... was the work, etc." But it would be ungrammatical to begin it thus: "Rescuing his own son was the work, etc." For in the second case the word "rescuing," if used with an object, is not an infinitive but a participle, and must be used only as an adjective, thus: "Rescuing his own son, Fireman Casey performed his duty, etc.," or "In rescuing his own son, Fireman Casey performed his duty." The two uses should never be confused.

3. _Clause._--Another expression that may be used as subject of the lead's principal verb is a clause--usually a _that_-clause. For instance, "That the entire wholesale district was not destroyed by fire last night is due to, etc." Here the _that_-clause is subject of the verb is and the expression is entirely grammatical as well as very useful as a beginning.

4. _Prepositional Phrase._--When the feature of a story is an action rather than a thing, a noun can hardly be used to express it. Very often this lead may be handled by means of a prepositional phrase at the beginning. For example, one of the stories in the last chapter begins: "With her home on fire and with smoke swirling around her head, Mrs. John, etc." In this case the prepositional phrase modifies the subject and should not be far from it. Another variation of this is the prepositional phrase of time, modifying the verb; e.g., "During the wedding of Miss Mary Jones, last night, the house suddenly caught fire, etc." This beginning is effective if it is not overworked, but the reader should never be held back from the real facts of the story by a string of complicated phrases, intended to build up suspense.

5. _Participial Phrase._--Very much like the prepositional phrase beginning is the participial beginning. "Sliding down an eighty-foot extension ladder with a woman in his arms, Fireman John Casey rescued, etc." It must be borne in mind that the participial phrase must modify a noun and there should be no doubt in the reader's mind as to the noun that it modifies. It would of course be absurd to say "Sliding down an eighty-foot extension ladder, fire seriously burned John Casey----," but such things are often said. Never should this participial phrase be used as the subject of a verb, as "Returning home and finding her house in ashes was the unusual experience of Mrs. James, etc." The phrase must always modify a noun just like an adjective.