The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-21
How to Read The Age-Herald
By RALPH R. SILVER
STATE NEWS

in art or anything else. They are read able because they appeal to the patriot ism and national pride and for any read CT who has neither of these the way to read them Is to get some red blood into your veins and be an American.
 The second appeal applies in general to the stories of commercial civic and industrial Improvements, stories of tri- umphs in arts and science and civiliza- tion in other states and cities of the un- ion, in other nations and in other conti- nents A reader is interested in a news story of some industry in some other city, state or county if he should happen , to be interested or connected In some way with the same industry or one of its al lied forms in his home town. He is in terested in a story of a great school sys- tenn because he Is more or less interested in local school system; he is interested in story from some other city of some civic improvement, story of certain re- 1 ligious activities, a story of other state officials actions a story of some prom | inent mans idea on questions of the day. given in a public address or in au inter view, he Ia interested In all these things and many thousands of more things be- | cause there Is some condition or some | circumstance or some events concerning | himself or his neighbor or his own com munity, something local to the reader, with which he either contrasts or com pares. invo1untarily. the facts and cir cumstances of these stories
 The third appeal Is the human inter est appeal. It is probably the least un- derstood the hardest to define and of the widest scope of the three. A newspaper man Is often heard to speak of somethins. as "eood human interest stuff and many of the highest paid newspaper men in the profession are valuable merely because they have the ability to discern and tell a human interest story"
 The term is so flexible that to define 1t accurately would be almost an impos- sibiity; but in the main 1t means that something is interesting to somebody be- cause that something happened to a hu- man being There is no particularly im- portant story in barn burning down and destroying a dozen horses but 1t is a tre- mendous story if it happens to be a. ten ement house and & half dozen children are burned. Humans are greatly inter- ested in themselves and outside of them selves they are most interested in another or their own species. It Is no .big'' story If rich man Is hailed into court and fined Sl0o for exceeding the automobile speed laws; 1t Is great big story if an aged man, poor and destitute, is hailed into court and sent to the work house for six months because he tried to steal
  a loaf of bread to stop the knawing bangs or hunger in the stomachs of himself and his feeble old wife. human being in trouble and distress is always very in- teresting to other human beings who are n little more fortunate In spite of what the cynics say, the milk of human kind ness flows in every humans veins and human interest story always discovers it. This appeal applies just as much to iocal and state news as to telegraph news.
 | The object in attempting to define these appeals 10 readers was to show why A reader Of telegraph news exists. It can | then he stated that by studying these ex plantations of why telegraph news Is in terestlng 10 somebody else. any would he newspaper reader can soon tell how this same news would be interesting to him | self nun CThe article next Sunday will be How To Read The Age-Herald-Sport News.'D