Page:The Newspaper World.djvu/85

 74 The Newspaper World. ability, natural or acquired, they may possess. To supply a half-column report of a speech which would take six times as much space if reproduced fully, will test the powers of discrimination of the reporter to the utmost, and will caU into play all the knowledge he possesses of the subject with which the speaker has to deal, in order that he may give prominence to those passages which are of the greatest public interest. The exigencies of journalism do not admit of the reporter taking a verbatim note of the majority of the speeches to which he listens, and afterwards quietly sitting down, steadily going through his " note," deliberately making a selection of those passages which are most important, and weaving them into one harmonious whole. When the reporter is called upon to prepare a condensed report, he endeavors to take just as many notes as are needful for his purpose. To produce a condensed report successfully under these cir- cumstances, his observant and critical faculties must be constantly exercised throughout the proceedings he is re- porting. He must be prompt to seize upon the " points " made by the speaker, must describe his chief arguments, and give to the public the orator's main conclusions ; and such a report has to be handed in at his office for the printers within a very brief time of the close of the meet- ing. Speaking generally, it may be truly said that our reporters condense with success, and that the public owe much to the epitomized form in which statements of general import are presented to them. Complaints of public speakers on the score of inefficient condensation are few and far between, when they are reported by competent men ; indeed the reporter is not always to blame, for it sometimes happens that the sub-editor is compelled, owing to exigencies of space, to reduce, in a somewhat rough-and-ready fashion, some well-digested summary of a speech — to the dismay of the pains-taking