The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-10-22
ON SECOND THOUGHT
BY JAY E. HOUSE
(From Philadelphia Public Ledgero
Atchison, kan, oct. IA.

vigil. Joe is managing editor these
ten Sears, and no longer covers the
run over which he tramped in the
days when Globe stuff crept into
every newspaper in the land. Nellie
Webb, the best loved woman in At
Gibson, her golden treSSes turned TO
snow, still sits at a front window IN
the Globe office and looks out upon
the life she has delineated Tor more
than thirty years. The others are
gone. Howe, ostensibly retired, lives
seven months of the year at Potato
Hill and five in Florida. Wherever he
chances to be he edits his magazine,
puts an occasional book between COW
ers and writes voluminously for vari-
Gus periodicals, but when he goes into
the office of the Globe it is as Wis
itor. Frances GarSide lives in New
York. Doc and Margie Tennal have
a newspaper OF their own. There were
others, of course. Cub reporters came
drifted in and out. But Howe and
Rank and Frances Garside and Nellie
Webb and Doc" and Margie Tennal
made" the Globe in the heyday of its
glory and gave to it both vogue and
distinction. The Globe was and is a
country newspaper printed in Mis-
souri, valley town of 5000 inhabi-
tants. It's ortrayal of world news
then was limited to two or three col
umnS of the afternoon report of the
crisp comment on the big" news of
the day, written in the Globe office.
For the most part it was a local news
paper pure and simple. Ninety per
cent of its news space was devoted to
the people and events of Atchison and
its contiguous territory, and dealt with
matters of intimate and personal in
terest to local readers of the Globe.
But it had subscribers in every civil
lied country in the world and it was
read daily by hundreds of persons who
had never been in Atchison and who
knew not single person featured in
its columns. And it was the most
widely and frequently quoted newspa-
per in the world.
The best reporting I have known
was done on the Globe. There was
cleverness about it ala certain quail
ity of reada bility-which lifted Globe
news up and set it apart. In effect,
every reporter was a free lance. His
only responsibility was that of comb
ing the town for news. He went where
he listed and wrote as he felt. There
were no policies to restrict him. Ex-
cept that he was expected to write the
truth in fair and decent fashion there
were no ethics to observe or weigh
him down. The Globe had no sacred
ibex; there was nobody to protect. And
so every item in the Globe expressed
the personality of the reporter who
wrote it. The stars of the paper all
grew up on it. They had been trained
by it's editor and he had impaired to
all of them not only his conception
of what the Globe should be, but his
own style and method of handling
news. In a general way the beats"
traversed by the various reporters
were common knowledge in Atchison'
but nobody could say to a certainty
of any item that ED" or Joe" or
Doc" or Fannie" had written it.
There were no idiosyncrasies of style
to mark the individual writer on the
Globe. They all wrote alike, or so
nearly alike that no layman could pick
out the individual contributions in the
days news. Reporters for the Globe
worked on their own Initiative and
picked up news wherever they found
it. Often two or three of them would
turn in the same item. If the facts
ir a given case had been presented in
each instances from a different angle,
two or three items covering it would
often appear in a single issue of the
paper. A popularity of the Globe was
that it had no headlines. Associated
Press items and the Globes one de-
partment, "Globe Sights" carried one
line headings. But the run of the
news was shoveled into the paper
without reference to its importance or
its value. The biggest news story of
the day was as likely to appear on the
eighth page as on the first. The fore
man of the composing room, who made
up the paper, dropped it into the most
convenient hole and let it ride.
1t was curious newspaper. It had
no editor, no managing editor, no city
editor, no advertising manager or So
licitor. They were all reporters. AS
proprietor of the paper Howe was edi-
.,1--.
tie at the job. In reality he was the
star reporter. He usually wrote col
umn of editorial matter when he came
to the office in the morning. BY 10
o'clock he was on the streets, which
he trampeC until the paper went to
press in the afternoon. Howe worked
the farmers who came to town. Glen
Rohrs harness shop. John Levin's
shoe shop and Bowen's drug store for
news. Those were his chief points of
contact, altho, like the others, he ram
bled all over town and into the ada
cent country. Farmers from the Mis-
souri, bottoms across the river were
his particular meat. doc" TennaTs
regular assignme tents were police court,
the colored folk, the poor white
trash" the Missouri river bridge and
the Central Branch shops. Joe Rank
covered the courthouse, meetings of
the city council, politics and the Of
fices of the lawyers and doctors along
Commercial street. Nellie Webb did
society, covered the stores and the
railway station. Frances Garside was
the only person then on the Globe
who had anything that might be re-
motely compared to an executive Job.
Miss Garside read all the copy" and
sent 1t upstairs to the composing room.
She did a good deal of reporting on
the side and was the author of auch
Of the gentle satire on family life
which made the G1Ohe
Lysander John Appleton. Kin Com
missioner General of the World, was a
famous frankenstein. But during the
rush hours Of the day she sat at a
desk and edited copy" doc" Ten
nal was the legs of the Globe. He
once turned in ISL items OF news in
one day. If DOC" turned in fewer
than seventyfive items of news he felt
he had done poor days work In
addition to covering the news of the
day. reporters on the Globe also So
lieited and turned in the advertising