Page:Herr Glessner Creel - Tricks of the Press (1911).djvu/7

 So far as possible I will refrain from the use of technical terms. There is one, though, that I'll be obliged to use and let us get clear on that. That is the word "story." In the newspaper world everything that is not an editorial or an advertisement is a "story." If I were to witness the accidental killing of a man on the street today and write it up for my paper, that would be a "story." A "story" is not necessarily a piece of fiction. I shall use the word in the newspaper sense, referring to actual happenings—not to fictitious ones.

In the same way, when I employ the word "newspaper," I shall have to mind the large newspapers, the news agencies and the press associations. For all matter not of local character, the small newspaper is dependent upon this source for its news. This applies in the same that the small or local merchant is dependent upon the wholesale houses or factories for Ids supplies. Everything appearing in the columns of your local papers, that does not concern the immediate vicinity, comes from the news or press associations, by mail or telegraph, is clipped from other papers. We shall consider the source of this news rather than its outlet.

Here's something that's true of all newspapers; When a cub starts to work—a cub is a young man or young woman just breaking into the business—he is taken before his managing editor and told this: "Your business here is to write the truth, the strict truth and all of it. If we catch you in ever so slight a deviation from the strict line of veracity, off comes your journalistic head." And they mean it. Practically every reporter starts to work with that admonition.

But now let's see: Few newspapers are owned by owned by men who have not other business interests. I don't know about your local papers. You do. Run over them mentally and see if this applies. We'll assume that the publisher of a newspaper is interested in traction stock. And thiscub, who has been hired to tell the truth, comes in with a story of over-crowding, or