IF YOU DIG DEEP ENOUGH YOU'LL GET YOUR GOOD STORY
BY FRED LOCKLEY, Assistant Publisher, Oregon Journal
[The article which follows is Mr. Lockle-y's summary of his address before a class in Newswriting in the School of Journalism of the University of Oregon. It was the purpose of the instructor to inspire the students with the spirit of a real mixer whose skill in the gathering of interesting newspaper stories is widely recognized. The article is printed in Oregon Exchanges in the hope that it will be of value to many newsgatherers who are on the lookout for ideas and who are willing to profit from the suggestions and experiences of others.]
IT IS what you are, as well as what you do, that determines whether or not you are to be a good reporter. You can’t put human interest into your story unless you yourself are interested in it. If news-getting and news-writing are drudgery to you, take up some other line of work. The man who is “a servant of duty and a slave of routine” cannot put originality and human interest into his work. If your job is merely a bread ticket, take up work that you like better. Writing, more than almost anything else, is an expression of one’s own personality. The secret of success in your work is to put your soul into your work. Work without soul is mechanical, dead. Hamilton Wright Mabie was right when he said, “The men who give their work character, distinction, perfection, are the men whose spirit is behind their hands, giving them a new dexterity. There is no kind of work, from the merest routine to the highest creative activity, which does not receive all that gives it quality from the spirit in which it is done. Work with out spirit is a body without soul,-there is no life in it. Everything that lacks spirit is mechanical; everything that contains spirit has life. To put spirit into one’s work is to vitalize it—to give it force, character, originality, distinction. It is to put the stamp of one’s own nature upon it and the living power of one’s soul into it.”
No Dearth of Material
In J. M. Barrie’s story of Sentimental Tommy, when Tommy apprenticed him self to an author, and was asked if he liked his work he said, “Where the heart is, there shall the treasure be also.” If you have real zest in your work, there will be no difficulty in finding plenty of material. Here in the West, human interest stuff lies all about us. Drop into any hotel, and almost every man you meet is a story. In the course of a month you will meet pioneers who have come west by ox-team, packers and freighters, prospectors who have made and lost for tunes—and are still following the golden lure. Sourdoughs from Alaska; cow-men who went to the Inland Empire when “the law of the forty-five” was the law of the land. You will meet reclamation engineers, forest rangers, men who hunt and trap wild animals for the government, and a score of other pioneer types.
Hunter's Good Story
Not long ago I dropped into conversation with one of the men who are en
gaged in killing predatory animals. “I
had a peculiar experience recently,” he
said; “I set a trap for a cougar. When
I made my rounds, both cougar and trap
were gone. The cougar’s tracks led to the
trap, which I had placed beneath a large
fir, but there were no outgoing tracks.
After hunting half an hour and circling
the tree in an ever-widening compass, I
came to the conclusion I had trapped a
winged cougar and that it had flown away
with the trap. I sat down on a log not
far distant to puzzle the matter out. I
happened to glance upward; and there,
near the top of the fir, I saw the cougar
hanging from a limb, while the log that
I had fastened to the trap was suspended
on the other side of the limb.
The
mystery was solved.”
