The suburban citizen., 1900-11-17
HINTS FOR LOCAL REPORTERS.
DON'T Crowd the Unimportant Details to
the Front.


the Front.
The temptation TO crowd unimpor-
tant details to the front is always be-
fore the reporter for a purely local pa
per in a small city. To yield is to lose
perspective and to impair the vivid
ness of the story.
Local dignitaries, local scenes and
local musicians are IN view before the
real proceedings begin and the re-
porter often discusses them at some
length at the opening Of his account
Of the lecture, or political meeting, OF
other public function
He does this partly because 1t is
habit partly because he may feel the
need of making copy and has nothing
else in sight and partly because the
local people expect to receive this kind
Of attention.
The visiting reporter IS more likely
to pass over uncssontial preliminary
details and bring out at once the spirit
Of the meeting and the things Of real
importance and genuine interest to the
reader,
A close comparison Of different re.
ports of the same events long ago con-
vinced me that the visiting reporter
for an out Of town paper, regardless Of
comparative ability, usually wrote a
better story than the man for the home
paper who lived on the ground and ap'
parently had a decided advantage in
his knowledge of the place and the
people. Why this was the case it was
hard to discover. 1 could only feel the
fact and wonder why it should be so.
One night 1 went to a town fifty
miles away and was a visiting report
er myself, sitting by the side of the
man who was doing the meeting for
the local paper. We were waiting for
the beginning of a political debate in
which the whole Congressional Dis
trict was intensely interested.
1 looked at the scene, without doing
so consciously, from the standpoint of
the whole district, and had little to
write until the debaters took the plat
form and the struggle began. The re-
porter for the local paper, on the con-
trary, was busy from the time Of his
arrival.
He described the stand gave the
names Of the committeeman in charge
Of its construction, catalogued the
local dignitaries seated in public view,
and laboriously ground out a compli.
pent to the band in this fashion:
"While waiting for the exercises to
begin Professor Gustav ranged his
band of fourteen pieces, in their new
uniforms, on the platform and played
Q selection from Bohemian Girl which
was received with tremendous APP
plause.
"The band shows remarkable i'm
provement Of late, and the suits made
a handsome appearance. The band re.
sponded to an encore, giving Sweet
Summer Days with its attractive
clarinet solo, which was artistically
played by Henry Dunn, formerly of
the regimental band at Fort Crook"
l glanced at this copy and the secret
5i so many of my own failures at home
stood revealed. Not one in a thousand
cared for those fourteen band men,
even "in their new uniforms" at that
stage Of the proceedings. They want
ed to be spared that wait at the be-
ginning. They wanted the debaters
brought on at once, and the sparks
from their clashing forensic swords to
brighten the report at the very outset.
After 1t was all over plenty of space
could be found at the tail end of the
report for the people on the stand who
ought to be mentioned and for the
band that played selections from "Bo-
hemian Grip and made such q brave
appearance in new uniforms. .-Michi-
gan Bulletin.