River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1900-09-06
JOURNALISM IN WAR TIMES.
The "ScorpIon" and 'Ladysmith
Lyre" Two Interesting
Publications.


The newspaper men who were sta
4icrcd at Key Wet, Fla, during the
| Spanish American war experienced
many dull days, remarks the Youths
Companion. The town was not fer
| tile in amusements. If the men worked
hard and made a lot of copy"
the censor likewise took off his
coat and knocked their elabor-
ate stories into so many cooked
hats. That accounts for the appear.
anee of the Scorpion-'Yolume 1, Num-
Der /, Only 0ne"-a little four-page pa
per which was printed at Key West,
June IS, 1898.
The Scorpion was published by the
| Amalgamated Association of His
| torians, Pencil Pushers, Launch Pilots,
| Fake Chasers and Porch Romaneers."
| Twenty-Five correspondents were con.
cerned in the enterprise, and accord
ing to the publishers notice, every
man was a managing editor. Natural
", the Scorpion declared itself to be
''the real thing in war journalism"
Its speciality was exclusive war news
/ hot from the cannon, by our trained
| corps of correspondents and carrier
| pigeons now at the front"
Some of the Correspondents at the
| front" in the service of great dailies
were VIGOROUSLY gifted with vivid
imaginations, but the competition be-
/ tween the newspapers was so keen that
anything these men forwarded, how
ever trivial or absurd, was given prom
inence. The Scorpion satirized such
men and their employers. For in
| stance, staring headlines that filled
| half the column introduced this "spe-
cial Dispatch purporting to come
from a famous correspondent:
Havana, June II. Il have just had
an important interview with Capt
Gen. Blanco, in the course of which he
forbade me publishing it,"
Another feature of the Scorpion was
dispatch that pretended to show the
methods of "the liberal and generous
censorship" dispatch which, OF
course, carried those methods to the
| pitch of absurdity. There were home
made advertisements in the Scorpion,
| too. Altogether, it was very lively
creation of it's sort. Probably it sol
aced the oppressive leisure of the news
| paper men, Just as the Ladysmith Tyre
| relieved the gloom that last winter,
when the Tyre appeared, must have
| brooded over that beleaguered village.
''The Ladysmith Tyre, said the pros
pectus in the first number, is published
| to supply a long-felt want. What you
| want in a besieged town, cut off from
| the world, is news which you can abso-
| lutely rely on as false. The rumors
that pass from tongue to tongue may,
for all you know, be occasionally true.
| Our news we guarantee to be false"
! But as "even in the best regulated
newspaper, some truths may unayod-
ably creep i'm the Tyre labeled the
| truths and published them in column
| by themselves
Born amid death and destruction,
the Lyre was alive with wit and gaiety.
| Dispatches received "by wireless teleg
| raphv from our own respondents" in
London and elsewhere frightened its
! pages. The contributors even dropped
| into poetry, sometimes in the manner
/ of Omar Khayyam-poetry that tells
| of the shell-proof holes to which the
townsmen Sften had to retreat:
! Wake for above Bulwan the coming day
/ Lights up the signal for the guns to play;
How sweet to know tbs but living tomb
/ Awaits you, and there's time to creep away.
Methought a voice within the cavern cried:
Look here, there amt no room for more
than ten,
And if you're late. you'll have to stop out
side"
The atmosphere that encompassed
the Tyre was one of danger, while the
home of the Scorpion was, at worst,
merely an uncomfortable place, yet
| both little papers were Characteristic,
and each was, in it's way, praise
worthy production. They illustrated
the Anglo-Saxon capacity for making
! the best of things.