Tonopah daily bonanza. [volume] (Tonopah, Nev.) 1906-1929, 1911-03-20
WILL irwin
ANSWERS QUESTION
WHAT is NEWS?''

What is News?" This question
is answered by Will Irwin in this
weeks issue of Golfers Weekly in
his fifth article on the American
newspaper. The article attempts
to define what Charles Dudley War
ner declared with emphasis is in
definable.
News, he says, is the intellectual
craving and the commercial need to
the modern world. Tramp sailing
ships, he says, when taking on the
pilot after a long cruise, call for the
newspapers long before they ask for
fruit and vegetables, as in old days.
Whenever we Americans, says Irwin,
set up new mining camp, an edi-
tor, his type slung on burro back,
comes in with the missionaries,
evangel himself of civilization.
He tells the story of the publica-
ton of the "Call-Chronicle-E Exam,
iner" on the morning following the
earthquake and fire in San Fran
cisco in 1906. The automobile hur-
rying through the crowd distributing
the combined edition of the three
San Francisco newspapers printed
in Oakland on the Tribune presses
was more sought after than the
wagons carrying food and blankets.
OF news" he says:
I'VE need it, we crave it; this
nerve of the modern world trans
mits thought and impulse from the
brain of humanity to it's muscles;
the complex organism of modern
society could not more move without
it than man could move without
filaments and ganglia. On the COM
mercial and practical side, the man
of even small affairs must read
news in the newspapers every day
to keep informed on the thousand
and one activities in the social
structure which affect his business.
On the intellectual and spiritual
side, it is-save for the church
alone-our principal outlook on the
higher intelligence. The thought of
legislature, university, study, and
pulpit comes to the common man
first-and usually last-in the form
of news. The tedious business of
teaching reading in public schools
has become chiefly a training to
consume newspapers. We must go
far up in the scale of culture be-
fore we find an intellectual equip
/ ment more a debtor to the formal
education of school and college than
to the haphazard education of news.
Automatically, then, the quality
of news, its freedom from undue
bias and faint, is supremacy i'm
portant. Could one slant or faint
all news at it's source, he would
vitiate all public intelligence Could
one raise the standard of all news
at its source, he would correspond
ingly elevate public intelligence. And
| since it is so vital, we must stop
here to consider what news is, before
we consider what, in the ideal,
should be the attitude of writer
and editor toward his product" 4
Millions of men and women pass
through the days doing the same
things day after day. Millions of
things happened every other day.
In telling about them a listener
is bored. They follow the establish
ed order of things; but, tell a man
of something unusual that has hap
pened, and Immediately he asks fol-
more particulars. His news sense
| is alert.
| When man or nature violates
the established order-there is
news says the Irwin article. "The
departure may work for good and
progress or for evil and degeneracy;
it makes no difference. Bleriot's
flight across the English channe
was news as much as the ThaW
murder One was a departure up
ward the other downward Hin
Missy says Mr.. Dooley, we NIGH
write tn dom iv all tn converts "
the worruld on tn back iv a post
&age stamp, while Scanlan'i
bad boy is good FIR column ann!
time he goes dhrunk an thrie,
to kill polisman.' A convent, be
ing the segregation of extremel.
good and obedient persons, follows
the established order with grea
strictness; Scanlan's boy character
istically departs from it.
"The fact that mankind will con
sumo an undue amount of new
about crime and disorder is only