Newspaper Writing and Editing
Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
9781465659217
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Seven years’ experience in trying to train college students in methods of newspaper writing and editing has convinced the author of the need of text-books in journalism. Newspapers themselves supply the student with so miscellaneous a collection of good, bad, and mediocre work that, with an uncritical taste, he does not always discriminate in the character of the models which he selects to imitate. Lectures by experienced editors and writers, although fruitful of much inspiration and general information, seldom give the student sufficiently specific and detailed directions to guide him in his daily work. What he needs is a handbook containing typical examples of all of the kinds of newspaper work that he is likely to be called upon to do during the first years of his newspaper experience. These examples should be carefully selected from well-edited newspapers and should be analyzed to show the fundamental principles that underlie their construction. With such a book illustrative of current practices in newspaper making, he can study more intelligently the newspapers themselves and can assimilate more completely the advice and information given by newspaper men in active service. Furthermore, such a book, by giving specific suggestions with examples of their application, serves as a guide to aid the student in overcoming his difficulties as he does his work from day to day. It is to furnish a handbook and guide of this kind that the present text-book has been prepared. This book is adapted both for use in college classes in journalism and for study by persons interested in journalism who are not attending college. The needs of these two groups are not essentially different. Both desire to know the basic principles of newspaper writing and editing and to get the necessary training in the application of these fundamental principles to their own work. In each chapter, accordingly, explanation and exemplification are supplemented by material for practice work. To formulate a large number of rules for the writing of news stories, the editing of copy, the writing of headlines, and other kinds of newspaper work, is plainly impossible, even if it were desirable. Methods of newspaper making during the last fifty years have undergone so constant and rapid a readjustment to new conditions in the transmission of news, in mechanical production, and in the sources of income, that only a few traditions have remained unchanged. The tireless effort to secure novelty and variety in present-day journalism prevents the news story or the headline from becoming absolutely fixed in form or style. Instead of attempting to formulate dogmatic rules and directions, the author has undertaken to analyze current methods of newspaper work with the purpose of showing the reasons for them and the causes which have produced them. The examples selected to illustrate these methods have been taken from newspapers in all parts of the country and are intended to represent the general practices now prevailing. For obvious reasons names and addresses in most of these stories have been changed. To retain the newspaper form as far as possible, the examples have been printed between rules in column width.
