The Cecil Whig., 1886-05-15
REPORTERS.
Something About the Work They
Do on City Papers.

|
ca, Getting Beats On One Another
An Incident of the steamship Oregon
Disaster.
The qualifications of good reporter
must be above those of the average of
young men. He must be largely en-
| dowed 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 qualification is the faculty Of
rapid writing. Not intrequenty, 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 nothing of
writing their articles on railroad trains,
in street cars and rowboats, in Telegraph
offices, streets, saloons and restaurants,
in all conceivable places, and under
every circumstance and degree of in
convenience and discomfort.
The reporter and the country tele-
graph operator are instructive foes, and
it requires every species of threat and
bride to induce the latter to stay late at
night to send long press despatch.
Reporters have been obliged to go into
village ball room at midnight, and
tear an unwilling telegraph operator
from his partner to get an important
despatch through to his paper on time.
Many are the devices of the reporter
to "beat" his fellows, and get an exclu-
sive piece of news to his own paper. One
of the craft was sent a year or two ago
to get the particulars of terrible trag-
edy in country town on Long Island.
The place was distant eight miles from
the village where the railroad left him,
and he hired a conveyance to take him
to the scene OF the occurrence. Know
ing 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, wagons, carriages, and
buggies rattling behind him like par
ticularly jolly kind of funeral process
sion. He got back by a round about
way just after the other reporters 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 piece of
news, on Staten Island late at night,
after the ferry boats had stopped run
ming, engaged the captain of one of the
boats at a exorbitant rate to steam up
and take him over to New York, as
there were no available telegraph facili-
ties on the island. The agreement was
that no other person should be taken
on the boat, and the reporter congrat-
ulated 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 pa
pers, and he afterward learned that his
three rivals had concealed 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. T. Stewart a re-
porter won 'beat" on all the other
papers by stroke of enterprise and a
knowledge Of geography. Late at
night it was learned that there were i'm
portant developments in the case in
little town in New Jersey, twenty miles
from the city. Reporters Of all the pa
pers but one went over to Jersey City
to wait two hours for railroad train,
by taking which they might hope to
get bare outline of the news in time
to telegraph it to the morning papers.
The other reporter rushed down to the
Battery and hired tugboat to take
him up the coast to a point opposite
the village. The captain would not 90
out for less than one hundred dollars.
"Get me there in an hour and a-half, !"
said the reporter, "and I'll give you a
hundred and fifty Just put on all the
steam you've got, and I'll ho.d the
safety valve down T. He got there
within tie time, hired a man at the
coast to drive him to the village and
sent column and a-half over the wires
to New York before the railroad train
dragged into the place bringing the
other reporters an hour too late to send
anything to their papers.
When the news of the loss Of he
steamship Oregon reached the office of
one New York daily, three indefatiga-
BILE news gatherers-Thos. B. Fielders,
William Kennedy and f. Tracy
Bronson-were sent to the scene of the
| disaster under the charge of Bronson
in tugboat hired by him for that pur-
pose. The boat met the steamer
Fulda, which had the rescued passen-
gers on board, and, contrary to the
provisions of the law, the reporters
were allowed to board her before the
health officer had arrived. The tug in
the meantime kept in the immediate
vicinity of the steamer, ready to take
three journalists on board directly they
had finished their mission. But, alas
for the plans of the longest headed
journalist Bronson's scheme failed O
success. When the officers learned