Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/199

 through its own personality and through its connection with other

activities carries prima facie evidence of its probable reliability or of the extent to which its statements must be discounted. The tests for authoritativeness must next' be applied to that

very large section of the newspaper that carries with it no visible guarantee of a faithful portrayal of current events and that is evidently the work of the local reporter, or the local correspon dent. Here the historian finds a mass of material that bears

evidence of haste and inaccuracy. Fortunately for him, many of these errors are quickly detected, and it is possible to classify them

according to their source and thus be prepared to recognize other errors of the respective classes. It may be thought that many of the errors found in the press

are connected with the source from which the information is de rived, yet this is probably true only to a slight extent. Reporters are assigned the work of collecting the localnews and they obtain it from various well-recognized sources of information. Every

intelligent, responsible reporter to -day intends to indicate in some way in his report the source of his authority for the in

formation or news given the public. This is done not only be cause reporters are themselves becoming more responsible, but because of the growing demand on the part of the reading public that all news must be authoritative. The reporter who thus in

cludes in his report the source of his information has a near kin ship with the historian who supports his statements with a foot note.

The first important source of information for the local reporter comes from the group made up of the court houses, the police

courts, hospitals, the morgue, the undertaker, places of amuse ment, hotel registers, and steamboat offices. These form a regular, well-recognized supply ofnews that differs each day as regards the

names of the individuals involved but that after all remains in essentials a somewhat stable element in the day's work. No new

crimes are committed ; the decisions in civil suits are based on

precedent; the emphasis may shift from theatre to moving 1 “ Mr. A. is registered at the Commodore;” “ Lord B. was seen by a representative of the Times on the tug that met the Caronia ; ” - the illus trations are innumerable in which the reporter in very definite, although in

inconspicuous ways, indicates the source of the report