The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1898-05-18
OUR NEW YORK LETTER
ONE cA.lT NEWSPAPER EDITOR WHO
IS SERVING IN THE RANKS.

VIII the War with Spain Work ~ Great
q Revelation In journalism M the Civil
War Dids = Few War Beats Yet = An
| Accident.
NEW YORK. May is.-[Special. $50 far
as known. the editor Of only one OF the
New York daily papers has gone 10 be a
soldier boy. He is Erwin Wardman, the
young, sanguine, athletic editor OF Tie
Press
Mr. wariman is member Of Troop A,
national guard, New York, and private
| at that When called 70 Hampstead
| Plains. he went without a protest with
the rest Of the troop and has been
doing private's duty ever since, not only
sleeping under tent In the frightfully
rainy. nasty weather that has been such
a steady feature Of the now famous Camp
Black out on Long Island, drilling earnest.
ly every day. serving his turn as guard
mount and obeying all the orders given
with all the promptness of one who had
never given an order of any sort himself,
but likewise laboring hours at a time at
back breaking work with the pick and
shovel
Mr. Wardman Is a clubman as well as
an editor and he has probably never had
To do as much hard manual labor in his
life ms he has been Obliged To since the be-
ginning of his thus far brief army camp
experience. But, while he is the only New
York editor so far recorded as taking ac-
tive part in the preliminaries to HOSTILE
ties he is not the only clubman in the list
by a very great majority. Camp Black
contains many of them who are sharing
experiences identical in every way with
farmer boys, clerks and artisans, and II
the testimony of those who ought to know
is of value the clubmen are acquitting
themselves quite as well as any among the
citizen soldiers.
Mr. Wardman is one Of the younger
men among those who guide the policy OF
New York dailies, being not over 80 at the
most and of that personal temperament
that impels its owner to earn the title
hustler" for himself He was one Of
those who left The Tribune to join The
Press when its present owners bought the
paper some two or three years ago. Like
many of those now prominent in the New
York newspaper world, he belongs to the
generation that has risen since the close of
tIt war puOh Pfpoio ds No ustu w
get our war news from in the sixties
would look mighty strange and behind
the times both TO editors and readers of
these days as indeed they well might.
Great Change In journalism.
Ii is hard to realize the tremendous
change wrought in American newspapers
by the civil war Those who were old
enough TO be newspaper readers before
Sumter was fired upon are almost star
tied when they occasionally see a copy of
a modern newspaper alongside one of 40
years ago. The science of headline build
ing was then almost unknown, such lines
"a News From the Front and --latest
War Intelligence being thought quite de.
scriptive and ingenious enough until hos
Utilities had been going on for long time.
Before the surrender of Appomattox
there was a great change, but the most
graphic and deliberately put up civil war
headings were far less effective than have
now long been thought necessary for news
of the tamest sort. Compared with some
of the captional creations of today the old
time heads were like the blazing of tai.
low dip by the side Of the 80. 900. 900 can
die power electric searchlight that has
been set up at Sandy Hook to ilumine
New York harbor so that no hostile fleet
may enter in.
The greatest lesson taught to the news
papers by the civil war was the use of the
telegraph News was sent by wire before
1861 to be sure. but only sparingly, and
IL was so much of novelty that the head
ing News by Telegraph was almost al
ways set in much larger type than the
news headings themselves, and the entire
report for each day in the metropolitan
papers was often got into less than a col.
umn space Everything was sent lin
skeleton" of course-that is, with the
small words the IA, of and the
like left out to be filled in by the editor
! This practice, indeed was continued long
after the war in telegraphc news matter.
| and many curious unintentional misstate.
! ments of fact resulted I'm consequence.
| though there were some among the New
| York papers whose war correspondents
sent their dispatches In full. regardless OF
the tolls, which were then many times
| larger than now
Newspaper Beats.
| Down to date the number of great beats
! on war news has been surprisingly small
! since the present war broke out. but should
| the contest continue long there will doubt
! less be many such fruits of superior enter
prise and lucky accident. With all the
money that has been expended in the ef-
fort to get first intelligence since the block
ade of Cuba was begun first news of any
thing really important has been claimed
only three times. The Herald being the
claimant twice and The World once.
OF these three beats The Herald's on
| the bombardment OF Matanzas was the
cleanest piece Of work, and in spite Of the
claim by other papers that it was only an &c.
cident the general sense OF newspaper men
seems to be that the news was got to The
Herald first simply because The Herald
dispatch boat adopted the apparently OBJ
| vious course of following the flagship. The
other two beats had to do with Dewey's
victory at Manila, The Herald scoring be
cause of its report sent by correspondent
who stood on the bridge of Dewey's dag
ship while the shooting was going on and
F, The World getting the first positive infor
nation as to the final result OF the attach
.by cable from it's Hongkong man