Small Town Men; Big Town Time
By Sam Baddon, Northwest Editor of the Oregon Journal.
TO give big circuit service on small time stuff is the function of the Northwest editor, of the state editor, the country editor, the correspondence editor, or various other things he is frequently called. But whatever he may be called he is the man who handles and manhandles the news sent by the up-state and "sister state" country correspondents, by telegraph, by telephone and by mail, to the Portland daily newspaper.
In consideration of the country correspondent, the representative of the big daily who himself lives in a community large enough to support a daily paper or papers of its own, must be eliminated. In such daily paper towns, the Northwest editor is able to get the services of at least fairly well trained newspaper men, who once they become accustomed to the requirements and style of the metropolitan paper they represent, may be depended upon for protection on all big stories and for good clean copy.
But in the real country towns—in the rural districts and the scattered communities—it becomes a difficult matter to establish satisfactory cooperative relations between the desk man in the city and the correspondent in the hay field. This is not necessarily because of lack of sympathy and desire for unity of purpose between the editor and his correspondents, but because of a number of circumstances developed in no other branch of metropolitan newspaper making.
Small town correspondents are recruited from all walks of life—farmers, school teachers (men and women), high school students, commercial club secretaries, ministers, store keepers, et al. Few of them the editor ever meets personally, this circumstance adding to the difficulties of getting efficient service.
The correspondent, however, enters upon his new duties with glittering journalistic ambitions and high hopes. He has his letter of instructions and his ready-addressed envelopes for the dispatch of news, and he can't see how he can go wrong.
So over in Sweetpea Center Bill Bobbin 's cow falls down the well, and breaks its leg. An event of considerable importance to Bobbins and the community, to say nothing of the cow, and the correspondent in his ardor to do the right thing by his Portland paper, forgets all about his letter of instructions, breaks for the nearest telegraph office and before the North west editor can head him of, one hundred or two hundred or three hundred words of telegraph tolls have been added to the Portland paper's account from Sweetpea Center.
The Northwest editor then gently but firmly informs the correspondent that he has "spilled the beans"; that his story should have been sent by mail.
The next week the Sweetpea Center bank cashier disappears with $5000 of the bank's money and the minister's daughter, and the correspondent, three or four days later, sends his laboriously composed story by mail.
Again the Northwest editor gently but firmly informs the correspondent that the story should have been sent by wire.
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