The making of a newspaper man

Front matter

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Class PN4g74-

Chapter II

On Saturday a man who was employed on a Sunday paper in the city where my paper was published — I had begun to talk of it as ^^my'^ paper — came to get a story for Sunday morning. I didn't know it then, but that man was to cross and crisscross my life for several years — principally cross. He sat next to me at the table, and asked me if I was the ^^yap" who had been doing the trial for the ^* Gazette.'' I said I was. ^^ Pretty good for a rube !" he commented. I had asked the other city reporters about the chance for getting a job as a regular on the staff of some paper in the city. They told me jobs were scarce, that the penurious proprietors always filled up with a cheap jay from some college when a high-priced man was fired, and advised me, unanimously and profanely, to stick to the village or go on a farm.

It was a rotten business, anyhow, they said — and nothing, positively nothing, in it.

Still, the man from the Sunday paper seemed to have different ideas. He was older. He told me he had been in the business for fifteen years and was writing a book about it — a guide for aspirants. Of the book, more later; but I asked him if there was any chance to get a job. He told me confidentially there was going to be a shakeup on the paper I was reporting the trial for ; that he was going back over there as city editor, and that it wouldn't hurt any to go down and apply. He said he would put in a good word for me.

I could hardly wait for that trial to finish, although I was making six and eight dollars a day out of it. On the day after I sent in my last batch of copy I took the morning train to the city and hurried up to the newspaper office. I had often stood outside that office, which sheltered the biggest paper in the city and one of the biggest in the state, and wondered if ever I should get a chance to work on it and learn the business there. I asked a man in the counting room where the editor's office was. He looked at me curiously and told me it was up another flight. I climbed up, with my heart beating like a pneumatic riveter.

There was a door with frosted glass in it at the top of the dark stairs, and on the door the magic words ^* Editorial Rooms'' were painted. This was about half past eight in the morning. I knocked on the door. Nobody came. Then I pushed it open and found myself in a long room with the floor littered with torn newspapers, proofsheets, copy paper and all the numerous evidences of work the night before. Nobody was there.

I noticed a little coop in one corner of the room that held a desk and chair, and at the far end three other rooms. The doors to these rooms were labeled: ^^ Managing Editor," '^Editor" and ^^ Editorial Writers." The long room was crowded with old desks, and along one side there was a table built against the wall, on which there were heaps of the local papers.

That table was where we used to sleep when we were stuck for the long watch. I thought it a particularly untidy and uninviting place then. Six months later it often seemed to me the softest bed in the city. The door of the little coop in the corner of the big room was labeled ^^City Editor." I knew dimly he was the man I wanted to see.

I sat down and waited. Presently a boy came in and made a pretense of sweeping up the floor. He was not an attractive boy and not much younger than myself. He looked at the littered room with supreme disgust.

*^ These dubs must 'a' bin brought up in a barn," he said, ^Hhe way they throw stuff around."

''What dubs?" I ventured.

''These reporters," he answered. "They gimme a pain! Whatchu want!"

"I want to see the editor," I answered with such dignity as I could command.

He stopped sweeping. "Somethin' wrong in d^ pape?" he asked in a more respectful tone.

*^1 suppose some of them dubs has bin gittin' the wrong dope."

'*No/' I replied. ^'1 want to get a position on the staff."

* ' Nothin ' doin % ' ' he asserted. ^ ^ They 's firin ' instid of hirin'."

Then he went on sweeping and paid no further attention to me. I sat there for nearly three hours and not a person came into that room except another boy with a big bunch of newspapers. He threw them on a desk and walked out. It hadn't occurred to me that the paper I wanted to work for was a morning paper and that the men worked at night and slept in the daytime. That occurred to me a good many times later, but it didn't dawn on me then. I fancied it must be a snap to work there. They didn't go on until afternoon apparently; and, as everybody quit at six o'clock where I came from, that would mean only a short day. If I could only get a job I knew I should have an easy time.

About noon the door was pushed violently open and a short man with a gray mnstache came in. He was not much more than five feet tall, but he had a massive head and one of the most intelligent faces I have ever seen. He glanced at me and went into the room marked ' ' Editor. ' ^ I heard him moving about the room, and heard him also shout: ^*0h, boy!^' No boy came. He shouted again. Then he said, ^'Damn those boys! They are getting worse all the time ! ' ' and came out into the room where I was sitting. He looked round, took a copy of the morning paper from a desk and went back. If he noticed me at all I wasn't aware of it.

Nobody came in for another half hour. I could hear the man in the other room swinging back and forth in his chair, could hear newspapers rustling, hear him thump the desk a couple of times and knew from other sounds he was clipping things out of papers. Then I decided I might just as well talk to him as the city editor, who probably didn't get down for an hour or two; and I went timidly into his office. He was tilted away back in his chair, reading a paper and chewing vigorously on something I learned afterward was paper, for I saw him tear strips of it and pnt them into his mouth.

''Are you the editor f I asked.

''Yes,'^ he said, peering at me over the top of the paper. ' ' What do you want f ' '

'*! want a job/' I blurted.

''What kind of a job?''

"I want to be a reporter."

He had dropped the paper and was looking at me not unkindly.

"Have you ever had any experience!"

"No, sir — that is, not much. I have written some for my father's paper and I reported that murder trial for you."

He was interested.

"Are you the man who reported that murder trial 1"

"Yes, sir."

"Well," half to himself, "that wasn't so bad — not so bad. What's your name?"

I told him and he scribbled it down. "All right/' he said, picking up his paper and smiling at me pleasantly, ^^I'll speak to the city editor abont it. You will hear from him. Good morning.''

I suppose I walked out of that room, hut I don't know. It seemed to me I floated out and down those dingy stairs. I was certain I should get a place — and I caromed round the city in a dream until it came traintime.

When I got home I told my father I thought I could get a place on the local staff of the ^^ Gazette." He shrugged his shoulders. ^^All right," he said; ^^hut it's a poor business." For the next two days I was the first person at the post-office at mailtime and the last to leave. Then came a letter in the morning mail on the third day. It was from the city editor and said the editor had spoken to him of me ; that there was a vacancy on the local staff I could have; that if I wanted it I was to report to him a week from the following Sunday morning. The salary, he added, would be ten dollars a week.

I dashed down the street to my father's office. <<IVe got it/' I shouted to him as I burst into his office.

*'Got what?'' he asked.

"Got a job on the ^Gazette.' ''

**God help you!" he said, and turned to his writing.

20 THE MAKING OE A

Chapter III

Money is never particularly plentiful in the family of a country editor and our family was no exception. However, my friend, the young lawyer who had let me sub for him on the murder trial and who thus had really secured my job for me, advanced me some out of his scanty store on the check he would get for me at the end of the month ; and at two o ^clock on Sunday week — exactly on the minute — I walked again into that big room. I had been hanging round the foot of the stairs for an hour for fear I might be late.

There was a man in the little coop in the corner, writing in a black-covered book. Six or seven young men were sitting in the long room, smoking and talking about a scoop the opposition paper had that morning. They paid no attention to me. I stood for a minute and listened to them. From what I could gather it seemed certain there would be a hot time when the managing editor came in. Presently the man in the coop looked up and saw me.

**Do you want to see meV^ he asked.

**I want to see the city editor.'^

* * Go ahead, ' ^ he said. ^ * I am that unfortunate person.'' I guessed he was thinking about the scoop, too.

I told him my name and showed him his letter to me.

'^How do?'' he said, sticking out his hand. ^^I'U have an assignment for you presently."

Then he took me out into the big room and introduced me to the men there. They all greeted me pleasantly — and one man, older than the rest, with much cordiality. I didn't know why then, but I soon learned. My advent relieved him of the necessity of writing the local notices — the most despised job on the paper.

** Here's the trouble !" sang out the city editor, and the men all flocked round and looked at the black-covered book in which he was writing when I first came in. That black-covered book was the assignment book, and opposite each man's name were his assignments for the day. I waited until the men had copied off their tasks and then looked for mine. I was to see the colonel of a local regiment that had returned from camp that morning and get a story, and I was to report a sermon at night. Also, opposite my name was '4ocal notices.'^

I noticed that one man was assigned to do ^'police," another *^ railroads," another ^* hotels," and so on. I soon learned there were regular men on these assignments, as on ^^ courts and city hall" on weekdays, and ^^politicians" and ^^ theatres," and so on; and I wondered when I should get a chance at *^ theatres" or ** police," feeling myself well qualified to cope with either or both right off the bat. However, it wasn't long until I found out it would be some time before I got theatres or police, or anything but the dub assignments. No matter what I thought of my own abilities, the city editor positively refused to consider me except as a dub, who must be taught^ — and I am quite sure lie was right, looking back at it now.

The reporters interested me. Aside from the city reporters who were up in my village on the murder trial, they were the first real reporters I had ever seen. They were young, energetic, free-and-easy chaps, with a most amazing — to me — knowledge of all that was going on in the city, with the most contem]3tuous opinion of the big-wigs of the place of whom I had read for years and whom I imagined to be most remarkable citizens, free of opinion, full of youth and youthful cynicism, calling big politicians and city officials and merchants and others of the prominent by their first names, cocksure of every statement and bored by things that were new and marvelous to me. They all smoked and most of them drank a little. They knew the night life as well as the day life. They spoke familiarly with policemen and firemen. They knew the cafe-keepers and all the local characters of whom I had been reading — knew them intimately, it seemed — and disapproved of most of them. I wondered if I should ever get to the dizzy height of calling the chief of police *^ Jim" and referring to the mayor as ^^Cornie/'

What an underpaid, happy-go-lncky, careless and, in the case of several, brilliant crowd it was ! Not one of them had a cent, or expected to have one, except on payday. All lived from hand to mouth. All worked fourteen, sixteen, seventeen hours a day at the most grueling work, reporting on a paper in a small city where many yawning columns must be filled each day whether there is anything going on or not, and all loyal to the core to that paper, fighting its battles, working endlessly to put a scoop over on the opposition morning paper, laboring until four o'clock in the morning for from ten to fifteen dollars a week, doing anything that came along from a state convention to a church wedding.

Everything was grist that came to that mill and those boys were the millers. They are scattered now to all parts of the earth. Some have stuck to the newspaper business and some have left it; but they were a brave crowd of youngsters then and they took me up and made me one of them, and taught me the rudiments of my business. I worked with and against the best reporters in this country and abroad for many years, but I never found a crowd like that — my first colleagues, with whom I lived and borrowed and played and worked when I was both a cub and a dub — good friends, good reporters, good fellows!

I went up to see the colonel of the returned regiment. Much to my surprise, he did not seem awed when I told him so distinguished a journalist as a reporter for the ^^ Gazette'^ had vouchsafed to call on him, but asked rather shortly, ^'Well, what do you wantT' I told him and he gave me a long story, detailing the splendid achievements of his command and not omitting his own great part in the success of the affair. I hurried back to the office and wrote until my arm ached. When I turned in my copy the city editor looked at the bale of it and said : *'Gosh! What did he do? Kill somebody? I only wanted a couple of sticks. '^

26 THE MAKINGS OF A

"You wait,'^ I thouglit, "until you see now important that article is and tlien you'll change your opinion. ' ' However, he didn 't wait. With a sick heart, I saw him throw page after page of it on the floor. Next morning they printed about three inches of my article and not much of it resembled what I had written. That was a jolt, but I had a harder one. The sermon I was to report was by a returned missionary bishop. I argued that, inasmuch as they wanted a report at all, they must want a good one, and I labored hard making notes of the sermon and in transcribing them at the office. Then I got my second lesson. Sermons are covered only because nothing else much goes on in a small city on Sunday — or were in my cub days; and if any live news comes in the sermons are cut down. Some live news came in that night — a police case that involved somebody well known ; and next morning my report of the sermon was reduced about ninety per cent, when it appeared in type.

I didn't get to my room until four o'clock that morning, but I got up at seven and went out and bought a copy of the paper. I turned eagerly to the local pages and found my two little items. I was the proudest boy in the United States. To be sure they had not appreciated my articles at their full worth; but they printed some of them right in the paper, in the local sections, and I was a regular reporter on a regular paper ! I wouldn't have traded jobs with Charles A. Dana! I thought everybody was pointing me out as the brilliant young journalist of the ^* Gazette'' as I walked down to the office, where, by the way, I arrived three hours ahead of time and occupied my leisure in reading and rereading my contributions to the sum of the world's wisdom that morning. I have them yet, pasted in a scrapbook — 1>wo gems of English literature ! Nothing I have ever read or written compares with those two items — the one about the regiment and the other about the missionary bishop.

CHAPTEE IV

I soon discovered that all the ideas I had about the ease and dignity of the work of a reporter on a daily paper in a small city were entirely erroneous. We reported at the office at one o 'clock and took our afternoon assignments. These we were expected to have covered and the copy in before six. We reported again at seven-thirty and got our night assignments, and the copy for those was to be in by eleven or twelve. Then the proofs began coming and nobody could go until the last local proof was read and revised. This was generally about one or half past. Then the long- watch man stayed until four, catching that assignment two or three times a week and watching the police station and the fire alarm for any late crime or fire that might occur.

Expense bills were carefully scrutinized. No reporter was supposed to take a street car if his assignment was within a mile of the office unless there was a great rush, and all street cars stopped at midnight. Thus, if there was a late fire the reporter who had it was expected to run his mile and run back in time to catch the last form. If the fire was over a mile away, in a dangerous district, the city editor would allow a cab, but not too often, for the old man downstairs thought cabs and reporters not compatible with the economical conduct of his great organ of public opinion and instruction.

Naturally the new man on the staff was given the drudgery. He had to hold copy on proof and read the revises. He was stuck with the long watch oftener than anybody else. There were seven reporters and each man had a day off, thus leaving six to get all the news in a city of almost a hundred thousand people, and, as the paper was a big one, to write enough stuff to fill twenty-five or thirty columns — and sometimes more. I frequently had fourteen or fifteen assignments in a day — ^not big ones, but fourteen or fifteen places that had to be visited, whether they produced copy or not.

Then there were the ' ' local notices. ' ' How we hated those! They were advertisements, in news-paragraph style, that ran from ^yq to fifteen lines each and were inserted on the local pages. Each day had its quota and tabs telling what was to be written each day hung on hooks in the city editor's room. They were for shoe stores, drug stores, all kinds of stores ; and the advertising man guaranteed they would be ^* bright and snappy.'' Think of working all the afternoon and writing two columns of stuff, and then being obliged to go to the hook, get the tabs and write ^^ bright and snappy" items about Beegin's shoes and Boogin's bread, running from fiYQ to fifteen lines! Those ^^ local notices" gave me my first pause about the desirability of the newspaper business as a career.

Ten dollars a week, with no other revenue, is not a princely income. Still, under the coaching of my brethren, who were living on it, I soon (learned how to stretch that ten dollars to cover seven days. There was a good place where they sold yon for three dollars a ticket which entitled you to twenty-one meals. Inasmuch as we all slept late, we had an arrangement whereby the landlady left a luncheon on the table at midnight in lieu of breakfast. That settled the eating problem. By bunking together, two men could get a pretty fair room in those days for four dollars, or two dollars each. That used up half of the ten, but it provided the sterner necessaries. There was a friendly tailor who would make you a suit of clothes for twenty-six dollars — a dollar down and a dollar a week. I never knew how he did it; but that tailor had things calculated to such a nicety that at the end of the twenty-six weeks it was absolutely necessary to buy a new suit or have the old one drop off you in tatters — and we were always in debt to him. Taking out the tailor's dollar — ^which we did not always do, by the way — we had four dollars left for riotous living, shoes, laundry, tobacco and everything else. Of course some of the boys got twelve dollars and one or two fifteen. The city editor was a plntocrat — lie got twenty-five; and the assistant city editor, who was a reporter every day except the city editor's day off, got seventeen.

I remember the day I drew my first week's salary. The assistant city editor was at the cashier's window with me. The cashier, who was a good fellow and wonld advance a dollar or two in case of dire necessity, shoved our envelopes out face down. They were small manila envelopes, with the name of the recipient written across the middle and the sum within in figures on the upper left-hand corner. I took my ten with a fluttering heart. It was my first salary as a regular reporter. It meant, too, that I had made good enough to last a week, at any rate, and probably could worry through another week. The assistant city editor ostentatiously turned his envelope over and showed me that magnificent '^$17.00" on the corner. It was wealth beyond compare. '^My boy," he said in a very patronizing manner, ^4f you ever get so you can pull down that much you will be a real newspaper man/' I thought so too.

The city editor earned his twenty-five dollars. In addition to giving out the assignments and being responsible for the local, he was supervisor of the sporting pages and the theatrical news, read all the copy — there were no such persons as copy-readers then in the small cities — wrote the headlines, made up his pages and took the kicks from the managing editor when the opposition scooped us. He was a busy young person, with a sour Yiew of life and an inordinate desire for something that was exclusive, by which he meant something the other morning paper did not have. Likewise, he was always embroiled in bitter warfare with the foreman of the composing room, who was constantly trying to leave out some of his local, and as constantly at odds with the reporters, each of whom fought always to get space for his particular story or stories and gloomed darkly and talked of the decadence of the game when the city editor told him to make a quarter of a column of the yarn lie hoped to write a column about.

Everybody was eager and enthusiastic. All were bound up in their paper. They growled and talked privately of the penuriousness of the proprietor, and the cussedness of the city editor, and the malignant managing editor, and the f eeble-mindedness of the editor ; but they were ready and willing to fight when anybody else intimated their paper was not the greatest in the state. They worked incredibly hard for pittances, walking miles and miles in snow and rain and heat, and toiling long hours through the night ; but their complaints were all among themselves. To outsiders they were a gay and debonair bunch of young chaps, engaged in getting out the best paper of them all; and they took as much joy in *^ putting one over'^ on the opposition paper as they would in getting a thousand-dollar legacy. It was a good atmosphere to begin in. Likewise, it gave an experience of all sides of the business ; for there wasn't a man in the lot who couldn't write heads, read proof, read and edit telegrapli, make up, write advertising, write special articles and do any story passably well, no matter whether it was about a prize fight or a church convention.

The routine assignments were divided under broad general heads. There was a police man, a court man, a railroad man — and so on. My first regular assignment was ^^ railroads, undertakers and morgue. ' ' That meant that I was expected, in addition to any other assignments the city editor might wish me to cover, to visit all the railroad offices ; go to the station when the big trains were due; go to the big undertakers and copy the death certificates ; visit the morgue twice a day to see if any bodies were there and where they came from. It meant, also, a walk of six or seven miles each afternoon, for no reporter could use a street car, except at his own expense, on a routine assignment.

The city wasn 't much of a railroad centre ; so my duties consisted in visiting the railroad offices, where the agents invariably tried to hand out advertisements about excursions and such

36 THE MAiaNG OF A

in the guise of nevs — and rarely liad any real news — and visiting the stations and talking to the station master and dispatchers and other officials. These visits usually resulted in the exciting information that ^^Mr. McGuffin's special <?ar, Lotus, went east on Number Seventeen last night," though every time the brakeman or engineers or anybody else gave an excursion or a picnic I was expected to boom it for days. Then, after the little grist of local railroad items — occasionally there was a good story — I read the exchanges and clipped a dozen or so railroad items of general interest, which were pasted up and followed the local news under a headline like *^ Clicks from the Eails," or some other nifty caption.

Unless the death certificate was of some important person, when it was necessary to hunt up facts for an obituary, the news secured at the undertaker's shop was written in stereotyped form, giving the name, age, time of death and place of funeral of the deceased. These were run under a standing headline, **The Dead."

There were about twenty undertakers who must be visited each day, in widely separated sections of the city. If you took a chance and skipped one it was always certain the opposition railroad, undertakers-and-morgue man would visit that identical place that day and get a prominent death good for a spread obituary. After I had been on this run for a week I nearly lost my job by writing an obituary of some esteemed person and leaving out his name. It got into the paper that way and the scholarly managing editor threw fits and profanity all over the office.

Chapter V

It was before the days of typewriters or linotype machines and my writing was bad. How I envied one of our reporters who wrote a perfect hand and turned in copper-plate copy ! He was a great favorite with the printers and used to go up to the composing room and swap stories with them; while, whenever I went through those sacred precincts, the printers used to rap with their composing sticks on their cases, an emphatic and disconcerting sign of typographical disapproval. One day the foreman reported in the local room that Shorty Anderson, a printer, had thrown a '^take'' of my copy back on his desk, contemptuously saying: '^1 can't set that junk! It ain't copy. It's music — and I ain't got no music characters in my case."" And another time the chapel held a meeting to protest against my copy; but here Shorty