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'colyumists' and feature writers, prize contests and crossword puzzles. Even crusading, which was justified as a public service, has become passé. The Hearst-Pulitzer papers have come a long way since the days of their vivid competition; the Pulitzer papers perhaps owing to the fact that they are now administered as an estate for the heirs a little the farther. Excepting big headlines and a predilection for scandal, they have little in common with yellow journalism as they once exemplified it. They still crusade a little, out of habit, although they must know it is old-fashioned; but they do not fake, or break their necks to beat one another. When any newspaper nowadays deliberately distorts the facts, it is not to produce a sensation, but to serve some ulterior political or financial end. And since that kind of cheating is likely to be detected sooner or later, to the impairment of circulation and advertising, newspapers are chary of it. They depend for their revenue on popular favor, and the processes that make for their success are at least as democratic as the processes by which a man becomes President of these United States.

V

Underlying the changing standards and practices of the press is the mechanizing of the plant and the process of news-distribution. All the processes that go toward reducing the population of this country to an Arrow-collar level have worked their way with the newspaper, and are still at work. We see this in the editorial pages, where forthright expression of opinion has been subordinated to a recital of facts likely to be acceptable to a large circulation. Mechanical improvements have made possible larger circulations, and larger circulations have imposed a greater

common denominator of taste to please. The capital investment is larger, and the policy more conservative. Nowhere is this more evident than in the news columns.

The good reporter in this year of grace differs widely from the good reporter in the first decade of the century. Individual exploits have gone out of journalism as they have gone out of war. Those that I have sketched here as fairly characteristic of the day's work although, to be sure, some of them are high spots are obsolescent, perhaps quite obsolete. When the spur to get a scoop ceased to be felt, reporters began to work in groups instead of singly, against one another. If there are several ends of a story to be covered, the work is apportioned among them, and they get together later to share what they have gathered. If a celebrity is to be interviewed, it is done en masse. The technique of reporting is coöperative. There is no special initiative, because there is no real competition, in getting at the facts. And the facts, when written, must be in accord with a rigid formula. Everybody around a newspaper, excepting the sports writers, is pouring stuff into a mould.

The reporter of pugilism, horseracing, or tennis has a quite exceptional latitude. He is encouraged to express himself in ways little short of bizarre. The inhibitions and restrictions that fetter the news reporter do not affect him except perhaps in rare instances, when sporadic efforts are made to lace the sporting page within the corsets of the formula prevailing elsewhere. I do not know why these efforts have been unsuccessful. It is an interesting question. I do know that in this one department of your paper you will find a free run of slang and a racy expression of personal opinion; and it may be worth noting as something more than a coincidence that our Heywood Brouns

and our Ring Lardners are recruited from the sporting staffs of newspapers. No graduate from the local room may expect, unless he works a nearmiracle of self-expression, to receive any training for the kind of writing those fellows do.

There is a crop of writers, the Will Irwins and Samuel Hopkins Adamses and Ray Stannard Bakers, who came out of the news departments, but they emerged before the present rigidity of standardization set in. They are graduates of the old Sun, which stimulated reporting with a flavor and a difference, and which has now joined the melancholy array of gravestones in Mr. Munsey's cemetery. It may be set down with a good deal of certitude that present-day news-reporting will never make a good writer of any man or woman. Persons with the making of writers in them may pause for a moment in the local room, not for the training, but for the closer look at life it affords. They do pause there sometimes, but not for long. If they linger, it is at their peril.

Even the Supreme Court of the United States has now recognized that news is a commodity. At its best, newswriting may produce a lower order of literature, but I doubt it. I think that the speed and strict commercialism of the output must prevent that. Where is the 'controlled delirium' of the news room just before edition time, of which Julian Ralph used to tell us? Not even the sinking of a Titanic causes more than a ripple. The day's grist is gathered into the hopper, put through the mill, and comes out a standardized product; and about the process there is the precision, the good craftsmanship, and somewhat the quantity of Ford manufacture. The glamorous excitement and the pride of personal handiwork have gone out of it.

In one respect this is advantageous.

News is graded and valued much more accurately than in the old days. If you will pick up your competing morning newspapers, and glance at their first without pages, you will see that any prearrangement-they display the same news in their show-windows, with about the same emphasis. Although it is still impossible to define news satisfactorily, it is nevertheless possible to put it into a perspective, at any moment, which trained newspaper men will agree is the right perspective for that time and place. Its worth can be estimated as accurately as horsemen gauge the value of horseflesh.

On the reporter, however, the process of standardization has worked a hardship. I do not mean that he would be happier stealing telegrams and playing private detective, although he might. I do mean that his most valuable attributes, which formerly manifested themselves on occasion in such ways, tend now to atrophy. The establishment of a formula in composition makes him lazy. The lack of competition makes him flabby. He loses initiative, gets so he takes things for granted, ceases to inquire closely. He lacks that effective skepticism which goes to the root of things. He accepts listlessly the statements handed out to him by lawyers, well-meaning propagandists, and publicity agents.

Two instances have come under my observation recently which will serve to illustrate what I mean as regards press agents. The first was a speech by a famous railroad executive, delivered in New York City. In advance of the occasion a publicity bureau, calling itself a 'counselor in public relations,' - for this is the patter of the trade, the newspapers and to the news agencies a copy of the address, as it had been dictated to a stenographer. But when the railroad man found his audience responsive he departed, after the

- sent to

first few paragraphs, from the manuscript. He is noted for his sharp tongue, and he has pronounced opinions. The upshot was a much livelier and more interesting speech than he had intended to make. The reporters who were sent as a formality to the meeting, after verifying the fact that the speaker was there and was talking, went on their way with the prepared copy in their pockets; and the next morning no New York newspaper had the real news of the evening, although one of them printed the 'canned' speech in full.

The other instance was a news story about an industrial plant in which several deaths had occurred from poisoning. Rumors of this spread about New York, and one paper sent a man to investigate them. What he did was to apply for information to the publicity department of the plant, and he came back empty-handed, convinced that there was no story to be printed. Later another newspaper sent out a man who, it happened, was 'dated' in his reportorial training. He went first to the plant, and by inquiry on the spot got the facts. When finally he approached the publicity department and the of ficials of the corporation he had a list of deaths, compiled from the mortuary records, and what he got was a helpless admission that the story was true. It revealed an ugly condition, and it was news rather than an instance of crusading because a similar condition as revealed in other plants was the subject of widespread agitation; but the facts about this plant would never

VOL. 137- - NO. 6

have become public property, in all probability, if the modern tendency in reporting had been followed.

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This was a matter of news because it was under investigation by the Federal Government and the officials of two States; but when reports reached New York morning newspapers, during the investigations, of conditions in other plants, no reporter was sent out to investigate them. The conditions were described as similar to those under scrutiny, in that workers were dying, or had died, of poisoning; but they differed in that different poisons, not then under official investigation, were to blame. Why should a newspaper concerned mainly with circulation and advertising go out of its way to stir up this scandal, when it had in hand more scandal than it could print? To have done so would have been to undertake a crusade on its own initiative; and crusading, as we have noted, is passé.

Undoubtedly newspapers, in those days when they were quick on the trigger and crusaded on slight provocation, did grave injustice to individuals on many an occasion. They realized their power, and sometimes used it recklessly, sometimes for mere display. The present easy-going attitude is more comfortable for them and for their reporters, and certainly it is more comfortable for certain parts of the public. We have a politer daily journalism. It strives more earnestly to please, is more regardful of our wishes. Its morals are more urbane. Its temper is more flexible. It can see good in nearly anything.

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Backward and forward for the body's bread;

To meet, to love, to mate, and bring to birth

Other quick feet to patter past the head

Of that great Cat who sleeps upon the earth,

Then wakes and strikes, and roams the windy ways

Of town and country, slipping past the door

Of hut and hostel, like a ghost that preys

On the king's highways or the open moor.
Once when its prowling feet my house defiled
It took my caged bird and it spared my child.

III

Then, being minded healthily, I ran

Out in the sun and tilted up my chin

Till the light healed, as only sunlight can,

All the dark fears that midnight gathered in.

April was busy with her secret mirth

And flinging sentience from a golden sack;

Wherever Death had brought his prey to earth

She grew a lovelier thing behind his back.

So that I caught life to my heart again,

And laid the small bird gently in the ground,

Knowing the Cat had struck at it in vain:
Part of all color, one with all lovely sound
The bird had been, and I myself would be
Woman again though the Cat strike at me.

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