TELEPHONE, TYPEWRITER AND TICKER
[By the time this reaches the readers of Oregon Exchanges, its author will have changed her name to Mrs. Harold McDonald. But that’s another story. As Lucile F. Saunders the writer is known to newspapermen and newspaperwomen all over Oregon and all over South America, having been for several months employed in the Buenos Aires headquarters of that newsgathering agency. She is now a rewrite woman on the United Press in New York City, where she has been since returning from the land of the Prensa and the pampas. Miss Saunders has given here a most interesting detailed description of newsgathering and news-distributing methods in the world’s greatest city.]
CANNED journalism of the New York variety is already familiar to readers of husky tomes put out in recent years by the larger papers, but the angle of the fellow right in the midst of the business of canning news seldom gets publicity. The article the Far West
the patient being at the other wire—patient because he has learned violence makes no when served across five miles
end of the long since impression of buzzing
wire.
Even
the
press
associations
have
adopted the ticker system, and the famil
ern newspaper man reads about is the
iar leased wire of the West has no place
finished product.
in the metropolis.
It is the rewrite man
with a telephone receiver glued to one
TICKER Wn>r.I_.r USED
ear, patiently yap, yap, yapping into the carbon-smudged, tissue-papered, tickered
In the United Prss office, for in stance, we distributed to all of New Jer sey, the principal New England cities and
angle. In the strictest sense of the word, I don’t think rewrite men exist in Oregon,
all of New York City and Brooklyn by means of three noisy printers such as used in Western Union offices.
mouthpiece who sees the system from a
even on the Portland dailies. The re write man there is the member of the
copy desk or local staff who chances to
The United Press, in tum, receives its
financial news neatly printed out by wire direct from the Dow Jones Financial
be least occupied when a hurry-up story
Agency, and for all of its New Jersey,
breaks just in time to make the first
Long Island, Westchester county, Brook
or second edition.
lyn, and Queens news, staff members merely had to consult the yards of copy
Seldom is it that the
reporter on the job has no time for grind ing out the major part of his own copy. REWRITER CABRIES Loan But in New York how different! It is the humble rewrite man who does the
slaving, while the reporter is held in re serve to run after exclusive hunches. And when he sets forth to run one of these
being ground out from the top of a mod est piece of furniture that resembles a bargain sale music cabinet done in golden oak. That cabinet was operated by the Standard News. Because the United Press did not also belong to the City News, protection on local stories came
from men working on space and sta
to its lair he encounters eleven dozen
tioned at the principal courts for city
other fellow-journalists legging it after the same exclusive tid-bit, which the City News ticker is probably already amply covering back in the local room. Mean
newspapers. Here again the rewrite man drew his share of the labor. The Associ ated Press, with its City News affilia tions, is completely fortified with tickers. Staff correspondents from both A. P. and U. P. go out only when the story is of such importance that a special angle
while one of its routine men is sweating in a stifling telephone booth painfully
dictating paragraph after paragraph to
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