Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1886-09-23
A PLEA FOR OPERATORS.

1t has been the custom among news
paper men for years, when they have
| failed in getting news to their papers
from distant points, or when they have
been ''scooped on the Rialto Horatio'' by
! the other fellow on "that blackmailing
Sheet" to fire loads of abuse at the tele-
graph operators on or near the scene o1
work, and assure their managers that
said operators were wholly to blame
Since the days, however, when practical
newspaper men, after years in the har-
ness themselves, have come to control
leading dailies, this class of excuses is
not SO potent as of yore. We clip the
following from the Omaha HeraId's
bright correspondent Tennis" touching
the late yacht races, to show how the
operator is damned, when the newspaper
man should be the victim:
The yacht races made lot of trouble for
the reporters in the matter of getting off
bulletins from Sandy Hook. That isn't far
from New York in miles, but by telegraph
~ eto OulCdSO. Lie QlgQG before
the t1rst trial race three reporters went down
to the Hook, put up at the operators house,
and by next morning had q mortgage on
him. The other men coming in the morn
ing perceived an immediate chillness in the
atmosphere, and although they warmed
things up with good deal of emphatic Ian
guage, they had no show there that day, not
even when they threatened to clean
out the office by force of arms if their dis
patches were not sent. The Associated Press
was one of the journalistic institutions that
was left out. Of COURSE when the
next race came off there had been
change at the Sandy Hook office, and dis
catches went as they were filed according to
the rules of the company. The Associated
Press did not propose to run any such risk,
however, and when the first of the interna-
tional races took place they had private
arrangement by which q wire and an opera
tor were at their service, SO that while to all
appearances the bulletins were going in
with the rest, and taking their chances, in
reality they were being ticked off over the
special wire ahead of everything else. The
regular newspaper correspondents don't
know yet how it was that the Associated
Press beat them 80 badly that day.
Few people have any idea of the amount
OF ingenuity that Is sometimes involved,
even In these days of nearly perfect tele-
graphic facilities, in getting information into
newspaper offices in time for use At all
important points the telegraph companies
are careful to keep ON duty men who are
able to perform feats in the way of getting
of press matter, even to the taking Of man
uscript that would have made Horace Gree
ley's compositors turn pale, dividing it up
among half dozen operators, and getting
1t into newspaper offices hundreds of miles
away an intelligent, consecutive story. but
fully half of the best news of the day hap
pens in at points not important, and the
special correspondents getting off a train
Just at evening in some small village davis
Journey from the city, where somebody has
mad the bad taste to commit murder, or do
some other interesting thing more likely
than not finds at the station shanty a man
In charge of the telegraph Office who has
never seen dispatch longer than twenty
words, and who is benignantly and patron
izingly ignorant of pretty much everything
except that his regular time for closing
comes in half an hour, and he hasn't had
any orders to keep open later than usual. A
dispatch addressed to the nearest district
manager, reading something like this: 81
shall have so many thousand words to send
to such and such paper tonight. Operator |
refuses to keep open and send it," handed
IN with tender of prepayment, generally I
defeats the early movement. The operator I
guesses he'll keep open. Once in a while he |
Is green and sends the message. The /
answer he gets back makes his hair 1
stand on end, and he will stay on /
duty till doom's day if the specials /
last that long. Occasionally it is impos- |
slble to get such a dispatch in before /
the closing hour, and then the only thing to !