Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1886-04-30
REPORTERS.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE WORK
THEY DO ON CITY PAPERS.
A Good Reporters Qualifications
Reporters Getting Beats" on
One Another-An Incident
of the Oregon Disaster.

The qualifications of a good reporter
must be above those of the
average of young men. He
must be largely endowed with the
shrewdness and insight which make the
successful detective, but above all he
must be gifted with what newspaper men
call "news-sense. Another qualifica-
ton is the faculty of rapid writing. Not
unfrequently, indeed, an emissary from
the composing-room stands at his side to
take the pages of his manuscript from him
as fast as he concludes the last word on
! the leaf. Reporters come to think moth
ing of writing their articles on railroad
trains, IN street cars and row-boats, in
telegraph offices, streets, saloons, and
restaurants, in all conceivable places,
and under every circumstance and degree
of inconvenience and discomfort.
The reporter and the country telegraph
operator are instructive foes, and it re-
quires every species of threat and bride
to induce the latt r to stay late at night
to send long press ii patch. Reporters
have been obliged to go into village
ballroom at midnight, and tear an I'M
willing telegraph operator from his part
ner to get an important dispatch through
| to his paper on time.
Many are the devices of the reporter to
'beat" his fellows, and get an exclusive
piece of news to his own paper. One of
the craft was sent a year or two ago to
get the particulars of a terrible tragedy
in a country town on Long Island The
place was distant eight miles from the
village where the railroad left him, and
he hired conveyance to take him to the
scene of the occurrence. Knowing that
reporters from all the other papers would
get to the village by the next train, he
hired every horse and every vehicle in
the village, and bowled gayly out in the
country with his long train of carts, wag-
ons, carriages, and buggies rafting be-
hind him like a particularly jolly kind
of funeral procession. He got back by
roundabout way just after the other re.
porters had started out on foot, and was
the only man who got the news through
in time for his paper the next morning.
The publisher of the paper gave him a
check for handsome sum to reward his
enterprise.
Another reporter, who was one of four
to obtain an important p:ece of news,
on Staten Island, late at night after the
ferryboats had stopped running, engaged
the captain of one of the boats, at an ex-
orbitant rate, to steam up and take him
over to New York, as there were no
available telegraph facilities on the
island. The agreement was that no
other person should be taken on the boat,
and the reporter congratulated himself
that his paper would have an exclusive
piece of news in the morning. He was
surprised the next day to read the story
in three other papers, and he afterward
learned that his three rivals had con-
ceaed themselves on the boat he had
paid for, and taken the trip with him.
During the excitement over the theft
of the remains of A. 7. Stewart, re-
porter won cheat" on all the other pa
pers by a stroke of ente prise and
knowledge of geography. Late at night
it was learned that there were important
developments in the case in little town
in New Jersey twenty miles from the
city. Reporters of all the papers but one
went over to Jersey City, to wait two
hours for a railroad train, by taking
which they might hope to get bare out
line of the news in time to telegraph it to
the morning papers. The other res
porter rushed down to the Battery,
and hired a tug-boat to take
him up the coast to point ops
posite the village. The. captain would
not go out for less than one hundred d 81
lars. sect me there in an hour All d
half" said the reporter, and ! II give
you hundred and fifty Just put On all
the steam you've got, and bold the
safety-valve DOWN. He got there within
the time, hired 4 man 1t tlie coast to
drive him to the village Ind sent col,
umn and half over the wires to New
York Before the raiIrBad train dragged