Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/424

Rh 406 REPORTING the necessary reporting staff. In other cases individual newspapers put themselves on the same footing as the London newspapers by engaging separate staffs of reporters. This is the arrangement now. Parliamentary reporting is much fuller in the leading provincial newspapers than it is in most of the London papers, though the reports for the former have in all cases to be telegraphed to them. The mode in which parliamentary reporting is carried out deserves some description. It has been said that the manager of the Morning Chronicle early in the century laid the foundation of the present system when he divided the work of reporting debates among a staff of reporters. That is exactly what is done now. The " gallery," as it is familiarly called, is arranged with boxes for note-takers overlooking the floor of the House, and with seats behind for other note-takers who are waiting to take their turn. The Times has three of the front boxes one for the chief of its staff of reporters, one for a summary writer, and one for the note-taker engaged in the full report. Most of the other London papers have each two boxes one for a summary writer, the other for a reporter. Each of the press agencies has two boxes. Hansard has one. The rest are occupied by provincial newspapers or by combina- tions of those newspapers. The staff of reporters attached to each paper or combination of papers numbers from six to sixteen shorthand writers. If, for the purpose of describing the work of parliamentary reporting, a staff of eight be assumed, the process can be made clear. One other preliminary point should be kept in mind : an expert and intelligent reporter can transcribe from his notes as much matter as that contained in a column of the Times in rather less than an hour and a half. The staff of eight men may have turns of a quarter of an hour or of half an hour, or of any other length of time that may be agreed upon. The House of Commons begins its ordinary sitting at a quarter to four. At that time reporter No. 1 takes his place in the box and notes all that passes in the House. At four, assuming quarter hour turns, No. 2 relieves him ; at a quarter past four No. 3 relieves No. 2, and at half past four No. 4 relieves No. 3. It will thus be seen that the eight reporters will cover a period of two hours, and that each of them has an hour and three quarters in which to extend his notes. If he has had a quarter of an hour's note-taking of an important speaker he will have about three-quarters of a column of matter to write, and this he can do easily and have some time for rest before he has to take another "turn." In the case of an important debate extending far into the night, or into the morning, the " turns " are shortened. Instead of a quarter of an hour, each reporter takes ten minutes, or five, or even three. The reporters go from the box to a writing room and there transcribe their notes, their " copy " being gathered by messengers attached to their paper, and carried by them to the printers. In the case of the provincial newspapers, the " copy " has to be telegraphed over the " special " or other wires, before it can reach the hands of sub-editors or compositors. That, however, is no affair of the reporter's. He has to produce his report with as much rapidity as he can. In the case of the Times his efforts are seconded by what is in practice an annihilation of the space between the House of Commons and the office of the paper. The reporter reads out from his notes to an operator on a telephonic wire, who speaks what he hears through that wire to the office of the paper. When it is received there it is spoken off again to a compositor at a composing machine; and thus it is most commonly in type and ready for printing long before the reporter's "copy" could have been received from the House of Parlia- ment. The telephone is also used in a similar way by some of the newspapers which have special wires. The latest parts of the report of a night's sitting are spoken through the telephone to the point from which the special wire starts, and they are promptly telegraphed to the newspaper for which they are intended. Thus it often happens that the finishing passages of a report of a late sitting in the House of Commons are actually in type in a newspaper office 400 miles away, before the members who have taken part in the proceedings have got on their greatcoats for their walk home. Parliamentary reporting, important as it is, yet forms a small part of the reporting which is done by the news- papers. All the public expositions of our complicated and busy social and national system are reported with a fulness, and on the whole with an amount of accuracy, that are surprising. Every newspaper of importance in the provinces has a more or less numerous staff of reporters at its command. In some cases, papers have separate staffs in different parts of the country. It is the business of these gentlemen to report all that is worth reporting for their journal. In the case of a long and important speech or meeting they will take turns in the reporting of it in the same way as turns are taken in the Houses of Parliament. But no newspaper is able to confine its reporting to events in its own neighbourhood. It must give to the public full accounts of speeches of prominent public men, no matter where they are delivered. Sometimes a reporter is sent far away to do this work. In such a case he usually joins for the occasion the staff of one of the newspapers of the neighbourhood ; or he and other reporters from a distance make up a staff to do the work. Again the system of turns comes in. But, for the most part, speeches of statesmen in different parts of the country are reported for newspapers at a distance by one or other of the news agencies, which send down staffs of reporters for the work. In some cases, all these modes of working are seen together there are representatives of individual newspapers from far and near, and there are the staffs of the news agencies. During Mr Gladstone's Midlothian campaign he had seldom fewer than seventy reporters in his train. As a rule, reporters are shorthand writers. That became a necessity when the demand for reporting greatly in- creased, and when the very words of a speaker had to be given. But what is spoken of as verbatim reporting is in no sense the best. It is a necessity, but to a great extent is merely mechanical. The reporter has acquired dexterity in shorthand writing, and he can read his notes fluently. Far more is required for that better reporting which conveys to the public the full sense of what a speaker has said without giving all his superfluous words. This is an art which is not universally acquired by reporters. They have learned to depend so much upon their notes that they do not learn to exercise their brains. There is much report- ing which shortens speeches by wholesale excisions rather than by judicious and intelligent compression. It would, however, be unjust to pass over the many proofs of high intelligence which the reporting in our newspapers contains. The task of the reporter is often not easy. He has, to use a familiar adage, to make many silk purses out of sovs' ears ; and he does it patiently and well so well that the author of the material operated upon is often inclined to take all the credit to himself. So far, the reporting which has been spoken of is that by which speeches and debates are produced in print for the public informa- tion. But there is another kind of reporting which ought not to be passed over. What is commonly called " descriptive reporting " has in some cases nearly shouldered the reporting of speeches out of newspapers. Is there a royal progress, or a military display, or a pageant of any kind the descriptive reporter is called into requisition. He has to describe as best he can all that happens.