Las Vegas optic., 1912-07-17

taught how to write lucidly and with
force, how to gather news. and how,
above ali things. to be accurate.
The newspaper is daily scott for
its inaccuracy, but 1t is far more ac-
curate than the world about it. The
variations from extract facts which
take place in newspaper reports. has
tily gathered by men questioning will
ling and unwilling witnesses-and
one is as dangerous as the other
do not vary from the truth as much
as testimony in court where witnes.
ses are all under oath. and the graf
r. eliciting information by examina-
tinn has been settled and developed
through generations
Mr.. Pulitzer wisely held that there
should be no collegiate test for ad-
mission to the School OF Journalism.
The development Of the profession is
not yet ready for this, for one thing
end for another in the practice Of an
art every year which separates man
from adolescence diminishes his pow
er to ACQUIRE the art. Every reporter
knows that every year which separ-
ates him from 20 has made little
more difficult the task of acquiring
that capacity for seeing facts coolly
and feeling emotion hotly, which is the
elimination of reporting. The School
of journalism. for the present, at
least, must be an undergraduate de-
partment taking its students from the
high school.
The first year must be college
year. BY the second year differentia-
ton in the training in English begins,
with first training in clear and accur-
ate writing In the third year, with
this training in journalism as writing,
there is to begin training in journal.
ism as reporting.
He has written to, space; he is now
to write to time. Taking the events
of great city capable of being re-
ported by one who represents only a
school, and not a newspaper, and ad-
ding to this the various forms of work
which a reporter does, there will be
for three hours a week assignments
in which men will go out to do a par
ticular task of reporting, come back
to write their account within defin-
lite space of time, aware that If they
are five minutes late, either in the
return or in the completion of the
task, all their toll is waste.
He will spend an occasional night
editing the Associated Press manifold,
and he will be expected not to object
(since it is one of the future hazards
of his occupation) if, after working
until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, he
is expected to be present at the usual
hour of recitations the next morning.
No man is long in journalism unless
he finds that he has the power to treat
an occasional nights sleep as neglig-
ible, and it is better for man to find
out whether he is equal to this or not
while he is paying tuition than after
he begins to be paid salary.
BY the time the technical practice
Of the course is completed man will
have written in all journalistic forms,
and upon the same subjects treated in
the daily newspapers; he will have
gone through a wide range of report
ing; he will have grown familiar with
the task of gathering news under
somewhat greater difficulties than
those of the average reporter, and he
will have learned, what will be a life
long possession to him in his profes-
sion; a great city.
Among the sons of men there is
none who really knows great city
except the man who has been re-
porter in it. He has sounded it's
depths. He has come to know the
house of crime, the house Of worship,
and the house of festival. He has
seen in motion the greater and the
lesser wheels of administrative ma
chinery He has learned how to reach
that supreme potentate, the police SER
geant, behind his desk, and how to
unravel and knit together the varying
tales of bystanders.
THE streets are known to him, bar
ed in the gray morn when the vast
commissary of a great city is con-
verging on the markets; thronged by
the rising and ebbing tides of those
who go to their work and return from
it; suddenly empty in mid-eye as the
tide-sweep strips the estuary of its
water and full again when the thea
ters empty.