Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/59

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refused to give her name, but was finally prevailed upon to do so.

The unconscious man was taken in an ambulance to St. Mary's Hospital, where it was found that he was suffering from a fractured skull. He was rushed to the operating room, but he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The only means of identifying him was a business card of a Broadway photographer with the name, "Oliver, Ithaca," written in pencil on the back. At this studio it was found that an elderly man had inquired this morning for Oliver Williams, a retoucher, who last week went to Ithaca, N. Y. At Williams' former rooming place it was learned that his uncle, Frank Dutcher, who answered to the description of the victim of the accident, had suffered from an attack of heart failure while visiting his nephew recently and had fallen unconscious on the doorstep. As the name of Frank Dutcher does not appear in the city directory, it is believed that the dead man was not a resident of this city but had come to pay his nephew a visit.


An analysis of this story shows how the reporter wove together all the important pieces of information which he had gathered by interviewing the policeman, the news-stand girl, the hospital superintendent, the clerk in the studio, and the landlady, none of whom are specifically mentioned as the sources of his information. In accordance with the instructions of the city editor, he "played up" the "feature" of the story, the bravery of the girl, by putting it at the beginning and by describing the accident in detail to show her heroism.

Following up the News. Many news stories, like the one just considered, do not exhaust the news possibilities of the event, but may be followed up in later