The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1891-03-18
WOMEN AS JOURNALISTS.
They Must Have the Qualifications of
Good Reporters.

There are always young ladies who
desire to write for the newspapers and
to become professional journalists, and
the chief way in which they try to get
on newspaper is by sending in con-
tributions of stories and essays and
poems, says an exchange. These may
be very good in their way, but are not
plain, everyday sort of newspaper
work. Nowadays a newspaper woman
is often reporter. Once in a while
there will be more noted individual
who has graduated out of the city de-
partment into the editorial or purely
literary, but the newspaper woman
par excellence is a reporter. In order
to be a reporter woman must know
an item when she sees it, and be able
to relate it evenly, correctly and con-
cisely. If she is sent to report meet
ing she must know instinctively what
to write and what to leave out-this
instinct is really her divine af1atus.
Furthermore, she must be able to 60
around alone without having man to
carry her bag and a man to help her
over the cutters. She must be brave
about going out alone at night and she
must learn as every working woman
ought to learn sensibly, that a modest
woman, as Lady Montague said, has
often to be both deaf and blind. Again,
she must have tact, and still again,
tremendous sense of justice that will
enable her to write fairly of friend as
well as foe, and she must know that
the newspaper is not vehicle for per-
sonal spites, animosities or spleen, any
more than it is for gush or the vaunt-
| ing or aggrandizement of people be-
yond their Just merits. She must also
know how to unite common-sense En-
glish, shorn of fineness and to do her
work quickly. In a newspaper office
no one has time to wait for inspiration.
| The cry of copy is spur enough for
most writers, and it is the constant
cry in a composing-room.
Apropos of this the writer is tempted
to tell story at the expense of love-
ly and gifted lady who began a few
years ago a career as a society re-
porter. Every week her copy went tc
the editor beautifully written and
faultless. considered as copy from the
printers point of view. But any little
suggestion she wanted to make she rur
in along with the article in the follow
ing fashion: Mr.. and Mrs. Browne
Smyth gave on Monday an elegan
blue dinner of fourteen covers. Fol
goodness sake spell her name SIN.
last week it went in Smi, ant
she was as mad as hops about it. Mrs
Indigo Blueblood has sent out card
for ball, at which she will INTRODUCES
into society her lovely daughter. CThi
is all right This Mrs. Blueblood ha
some sense and doesn't in the leas
mind seeing her name in print. 1T
the other Mrs. Bluebloood we had tn
fuss with. Mrs Uptown gives pin
tea as soon as Lent is over. DON
stick her down at the tail end of th
column, whatever you do. want t
: please her. anyhow, because last wee
She just went in as one of the man
others.
1t it had not been for the discrim
mating editorial blue pencil. that fast
ion and society column would have bee
delicious reading on Sunday mornin
since a printer ''follows copy" and
parenthesis on the paragraphs brin
plain parenthesis is to him, and it
s nothing more.