Part 16 (1/2)

=272. Bringing a Story up to the Minute.=--The first requisite in rewriting is the necessity of making old news new, of bringing it up to the minute. No matter when the events occurred, they must be presented to the reader so that they shall seem current. Currency is all but a necessity to life, vigor, interest in a yesterday's event. Here is an item of news in point. Suppose the following story from an afternoon paper is given a reporter on a morning daily:

Charged with running his car thirty miles an hour,

Dr. Harry O. Smith, prominent city physician with

offices in the Vincennes Building, was arrested on

Kentucky Street this afternoon by Motorcycle

Policeman DuPre. After giving bonds for his

appearance to-morrow, Dr. Smith left in his machine

for Linwood, where he was going when stopped by

Policeman DuPre.

Concerning his arrest Dr. Smith refused to make any

other statement than that he was on his way to see a

patient.

The reporter cannot see Dr. Smith to obtain additional facts, because the doctor is out of town. Nor can he expect any more news, since the case will not come up until some hours after his paper will have been in the hands of its readers. It is also against journalistic rules to begin with ”Dr. Smith was arrested yesterday.” That _yesterday_ must be eliminated from the lead. Here is the method one rewrite man used to get out of the difficulty:

Even doctors will not be allowed to break the city

speed laws if one Cincinnati motorcycle policeman

has his way.

Another way in which he might have avoided the troublesome _yesterday_ would be:

One of the first cases on police docket this morning

will be the hearing of Dr. Harry O. Smith, prominent

Cincinnati physician with offices in the Vincennes

building, who was arrested on a charge of speeding

yesterday by Policeman DuPre.

Or he might have begun:

Whether the life of a sick patient is worth more

than that of a healthy pedestrian may be decided in

police court this morning.

In each of these rewrites it will be noted that the story has been brought down to the time of the appearance of the paper.

=273. New Features.=--The next thing to seek in the story to be rewritten is a new feature. Generally this is obtained in bringing the story up to date. If not, the reporter may examine, as in the ”follow-up,” to see whether the first story plays up the best feature, or whether it does not contain another feature equally good, or one possibly entirely overlooked. Failing here, he may look forward to probable developments, as an investigation following a wreck, a search by the police following a burglary, or an arraignment and trial following an arrest. Failing again, he may consider whether some cause or motive or agency for the fire or divorce or crime may not have gone unnoticed by the other man. Or best of all, he may try to relate the incident with similar events occurring recently, as in the case of a number of fires, burglaries, or explosions coming close upon each other. Whatever course he chooses, he should use his imagination to good advantage, taking care always to make his rewrite truthful. Here is the way a few rewrite men have presented their new old stories:

_Result Featured_

=DEFECTIVE BABY DIES=

The question whether his life should have been

fought for or whether it was right to let him die is

over, so far as the tiny, unnamed, six-days-old

defective son of Mrs. Anna Bollinger is concerned.

The child died at the German-American hospital,

Chicago, at 7:30 last night, with Dr. H. J.

Haiselden, chief of the hospital staff, standing

firmly to his position that he could not use his

science to prolong the life of so piteously

afflicted a creature.

_Connection with Preceding Events_

=WILD MAN CAUGHT=

The wild man who has been frightening school

children of Yonkers, scaring hunters in the woods,

and causing hurry calls to the police from timid

housewives, has been captured by the reserves of the

Second precinct. He was caught last night in Belmont

woods, near the Empire City race track.

_Entirely New Feature Played Up_

=TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL SUICIDE=

Ruth Camilla Fisher knew a country wherein her

beauty was specie of the realm. It was bounded by

the ninth and twelfth birthdays. Its inhabitants

consisted of Fritz, an adoring dachshund; ”papa,”

who was a member of the school board and a great

man; and innumerable gruff little boys, who,

ostensibly ignorant of her observation, spat through

vacant front teeth and turned gorgeous somersaults

for her admiration. She was happy and the jealous

green complexion of the feminine part of her world

bothered her not at all.

And unsuspectingly Ruth came singing across the

borders of her ain countree to the alien land of

knowledge and disillusionment. Though she knew she

came from G.o.d, it was gradually borne upon her that

her girl-mother wandered a little way on the path of

the Magdalenes.

She was an interloper who had no gospel sanction in

the world, no visible parents other than a

foster-father and a foster-mother. Perfectly

respectable little girls began to inform her so with

self-righteous airs and with the expertness of

surgeons to dissect her from the social scheme that

governs puss-wants-a-corner with the same iron rule

that in later life determines who shall be asked to

play bridge and who shall be outlawed.

”Your parents aren't your own,” was the taunt that

Ruth heard from playmates. Some of the little girls

added the poison of sympathy to the information. And

Ruth Camilla Fisher at 12 found herself a stranger

in a strange land.

She extradited herself Tuesday night with a revolver

shot in the temple. In the yard back of her

foster-parents' home at 5319 West Twenty-fifth

Street, Cicero, with one arm around the loyal Fritz,

she put the revolver to her head and pressed the

trigger....[48]

[48] _Chicago Tribune_, November 25, 1915.

=CROOK LISTS DANCERS' NAMES=

The modern dance craze has brought a lot of

informality into a heretofore very proper Chicago.

Women whose husbands work during the daytime have

considered it not at all improper to flock to the

afternoon the dansants in many downtown cafes, there

to fox-trot and one-step with good-looking strangers

whose introduction--if there was an

introduction--was procured in a sort of professional

way.

_Probable Effect_

Consequently there were about forty women in Chicago

who verged on total collapse yesterday if they

chanced to read of the terrible experience of Mrs.

Mercedes Fullenwider of 5432 Kimbark Avenue.

_Probable Motive_

=ELSIE THOMAS NOT A SUICIDE=

If a finger print can tell a story, the police may

be able to prove by to-morrow night that pretty

Elsie Thomas, whose lifeless body was found in her

room at 1916 Pennsylvania Street last night, was not

a suicide. In the opinion of her brother, Wallace

Thomas, who was on his way from Lindale to see her,

Hans Roehm, who had promised to marry her, may have

been responsible for her death from cyanide of

pota.s.sium.

=274. Condensation in Rewrites.=--It may be added in conclusion that though rewrites are made to seem fresh and new, they are nevertheless old news after all, and hence are not worth so much s.p.a.ce as the original story. Consequently, one will find that they usually run from half to a fourth the length of the original; so that in rewriting one need not hesitate--as the copy-readers tell the reporters--to ”cut every story to the bone.” One must be careful in rewriting, however, not merely to omit paragraphs in cutting down stories. Excision is not rewriting.

XIX. FEATURE STORIES

=275. What the Feature Story Is.=--The feature, or human interest, story is the newspaper man's invention for making stories of little news value interesting. The prime difference between the feature story and the normal information story we have been studying is that its news is a little less excellent and must be made good by the writer's ingenuity.

The exciting informational story on the first page claims the reader's attention by reason of the very dynamic power of its tidings, but the news of the feature story must have a touch of literary rouge on its face to make it attractive. This rouge generally is an adroit appeal to the emotions, and just as some maidens otherwise plain of feature may be made attractive, even beautiful, by a cosmetic touch accentuating a pleasing feature or concealing a defect, so the human interest story may be made fascinating by centering the interest in a single emotion and drawing the attention away from the staleness, the sameness, the lack of piquancy in the details. The emotion may be love, fear, hate, regret, curiosity, humor,--no matter what, provided it is unified about, is given the tone of, that feature.

=276. Difficulty.=--But just as it takes artists among women to dare successfully the lure of the rouge-dish, and just as so many, having ventured, make of their faces mere caricatures of the beauty they have sought, so only artists can handle the feature story. The difficulty lies chiefly in the temptation to overemphasize. In striving to make the story humorous, one goes too far, oversteps the limits of dignity, and like the ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville actor, produces an effect of disgust. Or in attempting to be pathetic, to excite a sympathetic tear, one is liable to induce mere derisive laughter. And a single misplaced word or a discordant phrase, like a mouse in a Sunday-school cla.s.s, will destroy the entire effect of what one would say. In no other kind of writing is restraint more needed.

=277. Two Types.=--Probably entire accuracy demands the statement that these remarks about the difficulty of the feature story apply more specifically to the human interest type, the type the purpose of which is largely to entertain. Certainly it is more difficult than the second, whose purpose is to instruct or inform. The one derives its interest from its appeal to the reader's curiosity, the other from its appeal to the emotions. The emotional type attracts the reader through its appeal to elemental instincts and feelings in men, as desire for food and life, vain grief for one lost, struggle for position in society, undeserved prosperity or misfortune, abnormal fear of death, stoicism in the face of danger, etc. The following is by Frank Ward O'Malley, of the _New York Sun_, a cla.s.sic of this type of human interest story:

=DEATH OF HAPPY GENE SHEEHAN=

Mrs. Catherine Sheehan stood in the darkened parlor

of her home at 361 West Fifteenth Street late

yesterday afternoon, and told her version of the

murder of her son Gene, the youthful policeman whom

a thug named Billy Morley shot in the forehead, down

under the Chatham Square elevated station early

yesterday morning. Gene's mother was thankful that

her boy hadn't killed Billy Morley before he died,

”because,” she said, ”I can say honestly, even now,

that I'd rather have Gene's dead body brought home

to me, as it will be to-night, than to have him come

to me and say, 'Mother, I had to kill a man this

morning.'”

”G.o.d comfort the poor wretch that killed the boy,”

the mother went on, ”because he is more unhappy

to-night than we are here. Maybe he was weak-minded

through drink. He couldn't have known Gene or he

wouldn't have killed him. Did they tell you at the

Oak Street Station that the other policemen called

Gene Happy Sheehan? Anything they told you about him

is true, because no one would lie about him. He was

always happy, and he was a fine-looking young man,

and he always had to duck his helmet when he walked

under the gas fixture in the hall, as he went out

the door.

”He was doing dance steps on the floor of the

bas.e.m.e.nt, after his dinner yesterday noon, for the

girls--his sisters, I mean--and he stopped of a

sudden when he saw the clock, and picked up his

helmet. Out on the street he made pretend to arrest

a little boy he knows, who was standing there,--to

see Gene come, out, I suppose,--and when the little

lad ran away laughing, I called out, 'You couldn't

catch Willie, Gene; you're getting fat.'

”'Yes, and old, mammy,' he said, him who is--who

was--only twenty-six--'so fat,' he said, 'that I'm

getting a new dress coat that'll make you proud when

you see me in it, mammy.' And he went over Fifteenth

Street whistling a tune and slapping his leg with a

folded newspaper. And he hasn't come back.

”But I saw him once after that, thank G.o.d, before he

was shot. It's strange, isn't it, that I hunted him

up on his beat late yesterday afternoon for the

first time in my life? I never go around where my

children are working or studying--one I sent through

college with what I earned at dressmaking and some

other little money I had, and he's now a teacher;

and the youngest I have at college now. I don't mean

that their father wouldn't send them if he could,

but he's an invalid, although he's got a position

lately that isn't too hard for him. I got Gene

prepared for college, too, but he wanted to go right

into an office in Wall Street. I got him in there,

but it was too quiet and tame for him, Lord have

mercy on his soul; and then, two years ago, he

wanted to go on the police force, and he went.

”After he went down the street yesterday I found a

little book on a chair, a little list of the streets

or something, that Gene had forgot. I knew how

particular they are about such things, and I didn't

want the boy to get in trouble, and so I threw on a

shawl and walked over through Chambers Street toward

the river to find him. He was standing on a corner

some place down there near the bridge clapping time

with his hands for a little newsy that was dancing;

but he stopped clapping, struck, Gene did, when he

saw me. He laughed when I handed him the little book

and told that was why I'd searched for him, patting

me on the shoulder when he laughed--patting me on

the shoulder.

”'It's a bad place for you here, Gene,' I said.

'Then it must be bad for you, too, mammy,' said he;

and as he walked to the end of his beat with me--it

was dark then--he said, 'They're lots of crooks

here, mother, and they know and hate me and they're

afraid of me'--proud, he said it--'but maybe they'll

get me some night.' He patted me on the back and

turned and walked east toward his death. Wasn't it

strange that Gene said that?

”You know how he was killed, of course, and how--Now

let me talk about it, children, if I want to. I

promised you, didn't I, that I wouldn't cry any more

or carry on? Well, it was five o'clock this morning

when a boy rang the bell here at the house and I

looked out the window and said, 'Is Gene dead?' 'No,

ma'am,' answered the lad, 'but they told me to tell

you he was hurt in a fire and is in the hospital.'

Jerry, my other boy, had opened the door for the lad

and was talking to him while I dressed a bit. And

then I walked down stairs and saw Jerry standing

silent under the gaslight, and I said again, 'Jerry,

is Gene dead?' And he said 'Yes,' and he went out.

”After a while I went down to the Oak Street Station

myself, because I couldn't wait for Jerry to come

back. The policemen all stopped talking when I came

in, and then one of them told me it was against the