The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1891-03-04
WOMEN AS JOURNALISTS.
The Necessary qualifications Of a
Good Reporter.


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 a 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 a reporter. Once in a while
there will be a 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 d
to be a reporter a woman must know
an item when she sees it, and be able
to relate IL evenly, correctly and con-
cisely. If she is sent to report a meet
ing she must know instinctively what
to write and what to leave out-this
instinct is really her divine afiatus.
Furthermore, she must be able to
60 around alone without having a
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 en-
sibly. that a modest woman, as Lady
Montague said, has often to be both
deaf aud blind. Again, she must have
tact, aud still again, a tremendous
sense o. justice that will enable her to
write fairly of friend as well as foe,
and she must know that the news
paper is not a vehicle for personal
spites, animosities or spleen, any
more than it is for gush or the vaunt-
ing or ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of people be-
yond their just merits. She must also
know how to unite common n
English, shorn of fineness and to do
her work quickly. In a newspaper
office no one has time TO wait for in
spiration. 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 Tempt
ed to tell q story at the expense of a
lovely and gifted lady who began a
few years ago a career as a society re-
porter. Every week her copy went to
the editor beautifully written and
faultless, considered as copy from the
printers point of view. But any little
suggestion she wanted to make she
ran in along with the article in the
following fashion:-"Mr. and Mrs.
Browne Smythe gave on Monday
an elegant dinner of fourteen covers.
For goodness sake spell her name
Smy-last week it went in Smi, and she
was as mad as hops about i'll Mrs.
Indigo Blueblood has sent out cards
for a ball at which she will introduce
into society her lovely daughter. This
is all right. This Mrs. Blueblood has
some sense aud doesn't in the least
mind seeing her name in print. It's
the other Mrs. Blueblood we had the
fuss with. Mrs. Uptown gives a pink
tea as soon as Lent is over. Don't
stick her down at the tall end of the
column, whatever you do. | want to
please her anyhow, because last week
she just went in as one OF the ''many
others"l
If it had not been for the discrimi-
mating editorial blue pencil, that
fashion and society column would
have been delicious reading on Sun
day morning-since a printer follows
copy and a parenthesis OF the para
graphs brim, a plain parenthesis is to
| him, and it is nothing more.
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