Evening star., 1898-10-22
GETTING THE NEWS
How the New York Papers Keep Tab
on ALI Events.
WORK OF THE HEADQUARTERS MAN
Informed of Everything Going On
in the Big Town.
NJ LATERAL FOR STORIES
Special Correspondence of The Evening star.

special Correspondence of The Evening star
NEW YORK, October p, 1895
oid-time New Workers frequently express
| surprise over the fashion with which the
| New York newspapers of today dish up the
| city's criminal news. Their surprise finds
| various methods of expression. In the first
place, they find 1t difficult to understand
! the mingled sensationalism, penny-dre L.
fulism and levity of the newspapers ORE
| sentiments of criminal happenings. but most
| OF all they wonder how such a great mass
| OF news concerning every possible daily
| occurrence that comes within the purview
| of the metropolitan police is sifted down.
| shaped up, thrown into form for reading
! Illustrated and embodied in a series of
complete published stories in the afternoon
| or morning newspapers. A very large por-
! ton OF the local news space of the New
| York papers is devoted to accounts Of tre
| performances of professional or amateur
| criminals and it is natural enough that
the newspapers constituencies should Won
| der bit over the sources of the news
papers information as to criminal occur
rences, their methods of running down
| criminal facts and piecing them together
the character of the men who perform
| this work. and so on.
SupposinS some drunken longshoraman
| takes ii into his head about midnight to-
| night to push his wife over to the next
world, how do you fellows find out about
II IN time to have an account of it in the
morning papers?'' is an example of a uuas-
| ton that the New York newspaper man
is often asked by acquaintance to whom
| the making of a newspaper is an unopened
volume. To avoid a long story, the New
York newspaper man generally slaves off
such question by replying, "Headqudr-
ters man 'ud cover it,"
Headquarters man? Who's the head
| quarters man? What headquarters? is
| the way the layman generally follows Up
his first query. "Wouldn't the editors that
work nights down at your newspaper Of
flee have to wait for some chap to drop in
and tell EN- about the murder before they q
know anything about it? If they don't
know anything about it how can they seId
one of you reporter people out to get an
account of the murder? Or do the re-
porterS just drift around and hit upon
these things accidentally?'
At this point the newspaper man usually
yields to the inevitable and hastily sketches
the modern New York newspapers meth
DDS Of covering police news.
Headquarters Man.
The newspapers "hea dquarters man. is
the pivot of the system. Up to within
few years ago the headquarters man was
| the hardest\ worked reporter on a New
York newspaper. He still earns his pay,
but he hasn't had of late years so much
running about to perform for 1t. 1t was
the business of the old-time headquarters
man to personally run down and write up
every bit of police news taken off the
hook at the Mulberry street institution
that looked promising and worth story,
and the headquarters man of that period
was generally fit to enter a six-day pedes-
trian match at moments notice, so vast
was the amount of leg exercise mis- job eN-
acted of him. The headquarters man of
| S.f y -lr
talking through his telephone to the city
editor of his paper. He is rarely called
upon to chase a story himself, but his
| judgment to whether story off the
hook is worth the chasing by a reporter
at his papers office is implicitly relied
upon by the city editor. If 1t were rot
necessary to have at police headquarters
man with what is called a nose for
news and a trained appreciation of the
possibilities of a story" the newspaper of
today could well keep a small boy. capable
of manipulating a telephone at the central
police Institution. The crack men of the
| newspapers reportoriai staffs, however
are assigned to the task of covering head
quarters" They are all men of great ex-
perience in New York, who know practi-
cally every foot of the town, from the
Battery to High bridge and several Of
them still in the harness have been report
ing police news for the same newspapers
| for upwards of a quarter of a century.
After Police News.
Almost the entire block of dingy, ram
shackle buildings across the way from the
headquarters building of the New York
police in Mulberry street is devoted to Of
fees for the headquarters men of the New
York newspapers, morning and evening.
If the morning paper publishes an after
noon edition the evening paper man occu-
pies his papers headquarters Office in this
police newspaper row from Z o'clock In the
~ aln in, thn 1irley
that is to say, when he is not out covering
nearby happenings, such as day fires in
the Broadway business district or other oc-
currences that do not take him too far
away from his station. When the evening
paper man leaves the office at o'clock the
night police man, the reporter for the
morning paper, takes possession and holds
down the office until he gets the good
night" from the night city editor at
o'clock the next morning. The night po-
lice reporters Of the different newspapers
take their regular tricks of staying on
from until Z o'clock in the morning, the
hour of relief by the afternoon paper brt-
gade of police reporters, that the big
headquarters building across the way is
never entirely uncovered by trained
alert newspaper man.
Sometimes the headquarters man does
not enter the headquarters building across
the way from his office for as much as a
week or ten days at a time The head
quarters mans small office boy is his thor
OughIy competent medium OF communlna-
ton with the headquarters building. The
small boys job consists entirely in taking
slips from the headquarters blotter. An
account of every arrest made in New York
is telephoned, with details. to central head
quarters, and all of this data is entered by
the headquarters desk sergeant upon a
huge blotter. Often these entries mount up
into the hundreds in a single day. The
big blotter'' is constantly open to the in
spection of the headquarters mems small
office boys. These lads copy the entries,
just as they are set down by the desk ser
geant. upon slips of paper, and carry them
over to their respective bosses" The
headquarters mans office boy makes a trip
over to the desk sergeants office in the
headquarters building every ten minutes.
and he always fetches back few oe these
slips that he has copied from the big blot
ter.
Nose for News.
The headquarters man runs over the slips
and it is up to him." as the saying goes,
to determine which of the slips contain
the workable germs of good police
stories He throws into his waste paper
basket a great majority of the slips brought