thousand miles away. The arrest of a man for speeding his automobile will cause more comment among his friends than the capture of a gang of automobile bandits that has terrorized another city. Local phases, or "local ends," as they are called, of events that take place some distance away quite overshadow in interest more important phases of the event itself. Every effort is made in the newspaper to bring events, ideas, and activities elsewhere into some local relation.
Interest in the Prominent. The interest which all readers have in what is familiar to them extends to persons, places, and things that they may not know personally but that they recognize as important or prominent. They like to read about men and women who are leaders in social, business, or political activities in the city, the state, the nation, or anywhere in the world, even though these persons exist for them only in name. A high position itself gives added importance to news concerning the person who occupies it, although many readers may not have heard of him before. Thus, in order to appeal to this general interest in the doings of persons of position, some less scrupulous reporters and editors describe the characters in their news stories as "prominent," "well-known," "a college graduate," "a beautiful young society girl," when the facts do not warrant it. Personages who are well known do not need such introduction; their names alone serve to identify them. The value of news concerning a person may be said to vary in direct proportion to his prominence. A slight accident to a candidate for the presidency of the United States attracts much more attention than a serious one to a candidate for Congress. A story of the wedding of the daughter of a multi-millionaire has thousands of readers because of the prominence of her father, whereas the account of the wedding of the cor-
