White Pine news. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1920-1923, 1923-10-28
BABBLINC BROOKS
IN THE DESERT

We'll known citizen well known
couple well known" this, that and
the other thing.
There is not a newspaper run by a
newspaper man on earth that hasn't
a list of tabooed words and express
sions, but I guess I'm about the only
person following that vocation and
nominally a newspaper nan to taboo
the words well known"
Since the day when BENJAMIN
Franklin published the first Ameri-
can newspaper there has been a con-
| stantly increasing crop of stereo-
typed phrases and expressions. Sew
eral of them are being worked out
and only a memory. 1t was about
thirty years ago that Another Pion-
Ger Gone had its greatest play as a
heading, and you see it occasionally
yet. You seldom see the rash act
used in case of a suicide, though
used last week facetiously in refer
ring TO race suicide, expecting to
cause my perhaps scarce readers to
smile inwardly or to get a rise out
of somemody. Last sad rites APP
pears to have had it's day and you
seldom see it.. Yet there are still
some writers who do not think they
have writer anything unless they
have made use of all the time hon
ored stereotyped phrases in the
category, but you sec them used oft
ener pei capita in E!y--"rer capita
referring to the number of news
writer's here-than in the average
town.
In all the years that | have been
a proprietor or held editorial posi-
tions 1 have never knowingly allow
ed the phrase well known" to get
q few times in the proofs, the copy
of which did not pass through my
hands. and then rather than put the
printer to :he trouble to reset the
line l have let it go.
The true definition of well Known
in a newspaper personal is that tho
writer does moi know the party and
he is put down as a well known citi~
en- lis origin was in the city papers.
1t not being n country office express
sion.
Some few years ago it was a rule
of the city papers that a hotel re,
porter must not write a personal
about an arrival without saying what
his line of business, profession or
vocation was. If John Jones were a
hardware merchant, the reporter
must at least find out that he were
some kind of q business man and say
so. else the personal would not get
in the paper. If somebody else were
a lawyer, that must be put in. The
same if a banker or whatever he was.
same time instructed their clerks to
get every personal possible in the
papers, and when asked what the
guests vocation or business was the
clerk fell to taking these and half
the time getting them wrong. Book
keepers would be put down as attor-
neys, attorneys az bankers, bankers
as newspaper publishers, ard all the
fantastic mixups possible to imagine.
That did not worry the clerks in the
| slightest, but it got the reporters in
to hot water and kept them there all
the time, SO finally they dropped onto
that phrase well known citizen" the
actual fact Of the case being that
neither the clerk nor the reporter
knew what the mans business was
or who he was so they put him down
as a well known citizen"
So to this day in nine cases out of
ten when you see in any newspaper
that So-and-So, q well known citi-
zen" OF such a place is in
town, just take it from me that