Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/478

Rh. In addition to this there had to be nine miles of trestle work put up."

"That must have taken a good deal of timber," said the reporter.

"Yes, about 10,000,000 feet of cedar and tamarack."

"How about that 123 miles of road on the other side of the tunnel?"

"That is also being worked upon with all possible dispatch. You see the tunnel will be the meeting point for the two opposite forces."

"When will the whole road be finished, do you think?"

"Oh, before the end of 1883, without doubt. Good day."

This seems to be an excellent example of how reporters frequently let the readers see the wheels go around in the gathering of a news story. For publication, one would say, the reporter is overemphasized, and the reporter did not really get down to the type of information or conversation which called for so thorough-going a resort to direct discourse. Finally, if all this is news, it was deserving of more prominence, a bigger heading, and more detail. If it is not news, the reporter should have followed it up with questions that would have brought out the "features" in the wake of the news and produced a colorful story. The article apparently comes under the head of missed opportunity.

Reporting of the mid-nineties is exemplified in the Oregonian's news story of the plunge of a Milwaukie electric car into the Willamette river in November 1893.

Modern newswriting was becoming standard in Oregon at that time, and the form used in describing this disaster would pass muster today. The story is introduced, appropriately, by what has become known as the "accident" lead, characterized by the summarizing of the main facts followed by a list of the casualties. This type of lead, it is observed, has been appropriated rather heavily for other types of news besides accidents, being employed by newswriters for any article in which a list of names of reasonable length is an important detail. Here is the way the story started:

"Portland's second street railway catastrophe within a year occurred early yesterday morning, when the electric car Inez, bound from Milwaukie to this city, plunged through the open draw of the Madison-street bridge and sank in the river. There were 18 or 20 passengers aboard when the car started to cross the bridge, and all but seven of them saved their lives by leaping from the vehicle as it dived. Five corpses have been recovered from the water, and a man and boy are missing. The dead are:"