Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-08-02
9ai19 eagle
OUR NEW YORK LETTER.
GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF
REPORTERS FOR CITY PAPERS.

Each Great Daily Attracts Its Special
Class-The SUMS Men Chiefly New Eng
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. by the Editor of
The New York Evening Sun.
Especial Correspondence
New YORK, July i%-Thers are not far
from 500 reporters employed directly and in
directly by the New York daily newspapers
In this number are included only those who
are employed by the managing or city editors,
and who expect to receive daily assignments
for specified work, and who are expected to
do that work in accordance with the methods
that characterize the papers by which they
are employed Nearly all Of them are young
men. Very few of them e1peo make the
reporting of news life business. Some of
them earn not more than Sl2 or SIS week,
and work hard for that; some make $50 and
SIS week; now and then an exceptionally
fat assignment viii bring a reporter 500 for
seven days work. When it is known that to
earn 800 reporter who writes for the press,
for instance, must have written twelve and a
half columns Of matter, or q, 900 words, it will
be seen that there needs to be very lively pen
scratching before this sum can be earned.
1t is these reporters whose pencils record
the news Of the great city and its suburbs for
the daily press, and it is through their eyes
and their brains that the pictures OF life in
Che metropolis are presented daily to the citi-
kens
Where do these reporters come from? 1t
has been noticed by the city editors, who
hire almost all the reporters, that very
email proportion of the reporters are born
and bred New Workers. Why this should be
has never been satisfactorily explained. On
the staff of one city paper employing twenty
reporters there are only two native men
who were born in New York, and on the
staff of another employing about forty report
ers the proportion of New York men en-
ployed has averaged less than 10 per cent
Almost all of the reporters come from the
country towns. New England, especially
Connecticut furnishes very large proper
ton of the applicants for reporters desks,
and from the upper parts of New York come
another large quota. A few men drift here
from the west and south, and upon one paper,
The Herald, there has always been large
number of foreign born reporters.
There has always been a strong New Eng
land representation upon The Sum- and to a
less extent with The Tribune and Times
With The Sun, indeed, this New England
blood begins with the accomplished head Of
the paper Mr.. Dana is of New Hampshire
birth; two or three Of his most valued assist
ants are also from New England, while the
managing editor of The Evening Sun and the
city editors OF both The Morning and Even
ing Sun are New Haven men, and the edito-
rial staff Of the evening edition is, with one
exception, composed of Connecticut men.
This is not the result of design No man.
aging or city editor asks an applicant what
state he halls from, nor is the young man
who seeks a place ever requested to say
whether he is a college graduate or not
There seems to have been drift from GER
tain sections toward certain newspapers.
The majority of the reporters of the New
York press are young men, and by far the
greater proportion Of the applicants for
places come from young fellows just entering
manhood. Many of them have passed
through a preliminary experience upon the
tailies or weezies of the small towns, an ex-
perieAce that does not count for much, as the
methods of reporting upon the country pa
pers are radically different in many respects
from those with which the successful city re-
porter must conform.
As class, what are the intellectual and
moral characteristics of the New York re-
porters? As to their intellectual qualifica-
tions, their situations are the best guarantee.
1t takes a pretty bright fellow TO serve ac-
ceptably as a reporter upon a New York
newspaper. 1t takes an accomplished and
brilliant man to win high rank as reporter,
and upon every paper in New York there are
men receiving daily assignments to report
news who are learned, proficient in the use of
English. blessed with good Judgment, keen
judges of men and events, blessed with the
Sense of humor and the power to convey it to
Others, and i'll every respect men Of power
and of charm. If the reporters of New York
fail in anything it is in the lack of the sense
of the power and influence of their work and
the almost incomprehensible tendency to re-
gard reporting as only an entering wedge to
something else.
There are few men who have made re-
porting science or art. They havestuded its
mysteries and its laws, and have made it a
delight, and rich have been the rewards they
have gained thereby. But the great major
ity of New York reporters, while taking
pride in their work, yet look upon it as a
temporary affair, and each assignment that
the city editor gives is looked upon with an
eye to the space Chat it will yield, and thus
the effect upon the weeks pay, rather than
to its relation to one of the nobleSt and most
Influential of all the energies of the day. 1t
is probable that the yearning for independ
ence is at the bottom of this disposition to
regard the reporters life as temporary. Yet
no man who has to work for support and
something more has greater chance for in
dependence of action than he who has the |
qualification and desire TO be a great re-
porter, and with the demand that now exists |
for first class newspaper matter, the pecu- |
MARY rewards are most tempting.
As to the usual qualifications, it Is enough |
TO say that within the past fifteen years |
very great Improvement has taken place |
The majority Of the reporters are temperate |
men. They have TO be, and they have the |
desire to be. BohemianiSm is unknown. Very |
many of them are gentlemen by instinct and |
breeding, and by that l mean have been |
accustomed all their lives 10 the society Of |
those who have the retinementS and gentle |
ness that characterize the cultivated. There |
has appeared in the press this spring the /
name of gentleman as the best man at sew