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TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1948 THE DAILY TIMES-GAZETTE y PAGE THREL * Reporters All Over World 'File News For Times-Gazette On-The-Spo t Coverage Provides Stories Daily Over Busy Telytypes By ROBERT NOBLE Telegraph Editor, Times-Gazette A riot flares in Bogota, Colom- bia ., . . A plane crashes at Shan- mon, Eire ... A little boy is drown- ed at Yale, BC. . .. A cat is res- cued from a skyscraper flagpole in Des Moines , . . There's a grade crossing crash with three killed at Medicine Hat . . , Greek soldiers battle with guerrillas near Lamia, some 100 miles northwest of Athens. World happenings to the North, East, West and South from The Times-Gazette office and, within a period of minutes in some cases, this news comes into the busy tele- graph desk of your daily newspaper. The word NEWS. itself was chosen to indicate the directions from which reports of these world hap- penings converge on the distribut- ing point which is any daily news- paper anywhere -- thus we get N orth, E ast, W est, S outh, Has Direct Leased Wire Over the leased wires of The Canadian Press, Canada's national co-operative news gathering serv- ice which feeds national and world- wide stories into 93 daily news- papers across Canada, the news comes directly into the office of The Times-Gazette. Through the news allies of The Canadian Press -- The Associated Press and Reuters News Agency-- the widest possible news coverage from form ce: eighbors of the de- O'Mara can't work like a reporter assigned by a city editor to get out and get a story for his paper. A staff reporter on a single news- paper has a time limit only crowded by his own paper's deadline--the time of going to press. O'Mara is working for 93 editors from Halifax to Vancouver, all with different deadlines--all peculiarly impatient to get complete details before they "put. the Paper to bed." me Is Important A story laid down too late is use- less and, on occasion, can bring new combinations of unprintable words from the mouths of other- wise docile editors known &s good family men and good citizens. So O'Mara has to keep at all times a | knowledge of the ments of many newspapers. time require- If Toronto knows the story is coming and gets a little worried as time slips by the London bureau |chief will receive a terse message {from the New York bureau remind- ing him that Mom's into English, informs him that "To- ronto head office is pressing for | Michael story." "Tto Pressing for Soho,"--which, translated O'Mara's Soho murder Well, O'Mara pounds out his story and hands it to an editor who edits | it into cables if going out on "dead | "running" stories, meaning they are spot" time when papers in Canada being fed to the wire and to the |For that reason, news of Oshawa | earlier starting time on Monday is because of the heavy run of week- end copy and the earlier start Sat- urday is because of an' earlier deadline when the paper is rushed to the streets and to subscribers at slightly earlier times. Hours before most business people in Oshawa are settling down to their day's work, the teletypes start the run of mews on the previous night's sports events. The Times- Gazette sports department has cov- ered fully all local events, but the » | doings in international sport, reports of fights, columnistic chatter, team standings and records are cleared on the early wire. Stories Pile In Then starts the run of "budget" news, of which the telegraph editor has been advised beforehand by means of a list on the wire. This | "budget" run consists of the known stories on hand or coming at the CP bureau in Toronto, most of which are "day leads" of inter- [national stories like the Italian | elections, strife in Palestine, a gen- | eral story on the previous day's ses- | sfon of parliament, a feature or two | from London--things like that. While these stories are running jon the teletype they are often in- | terrupted by "bulletins" or "flash- | es"--top priority stories. Sometimes stories come in as fires, plane crashes and riots. This, on the surface, appears a morbid occupation and has led to a belief that the whole day is spoiled for a wire editor if he doesn't find fatal- ities in wholesale lots. This belief was probably inspired by movie versions of newspaper of- fices, a distortion which the general public is rapidly learning to accept as not being even closely related fo actual practice in newsrooms. But human nature being what it is and the desire of most news- paper readers to digest details of the untidy side of life, it is ex- tremely necessary for editors to fashion news play .for -the day on the accepted practice of placing at the top of his budget the "big" story. It is unfortunate that on too many days the "big" story is af sensational nature, of tragedy-- thirty souls lost on aa ocean air- liner--twenty persons burned to death in an- old folks' home--or the killing of a truly great man like Mohandas K. Gandhi, It is unfortunate, too, that, if as charged, the "search for dead" is the start of a day on the telegraph desk, it is an easy search that is offen too quickly gratified. ;; It might be explained that edi- tors also search for good "dress up' stories -- humorous items, "good news" pieces like wage boosts, price reductions and general improve- ment programs. When these are found they are utilized to-the ut- most to balance the news play which often can get top heavy with tragedy. Often a "good news" piece cap- tures' the banner line on page one if it is "big" enough. But it has to be big news to be hurled at the reader in larger type than used in headlines telling of a shipwreck, an earthquake, or of a giant plane plunging into mid-ocean., | Local News Always Important The Times-Gazette aims to be, | first of £11, a good local newspaper. Bo, Here is a general scene of the newsroom through which all local, Dominion and world news is channelled. Thousands of words contained in hundreds of news stories pass through this department daily. x | telegraph desk as the event is tak- land the surrounding area gets a ing place. A recent case of this was large allotment of available news when the British budget was space daily. Telegraph mews, of | brought down outlining the new au- | necessity, must be selected with a |sterity program. The story started |view to including only top yarns of to move shortly after Sir Stafford is given to events of interest every- here in the world. Telephone, trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific cables and radio-telephone are uti- lized in speeding this news from the are on their "off" period--usually between 2 and 5 am. If, however, it is a "live period," the story goes without the cable abbreviation and is fed via trans-Atlantic cable to actual spot where it was obtained by reporters to the telegraph desk set' well back in The Times-Gazette newsroom. . The three large news services mentioned maintain bureaux in various parts of the world in stra- tegic locatiohs where news breaks can be quickly co-ordinated and sped over the wires. Canadian Press, for instance, has a bureau in New York, located in busy Rockefeller Plaza and situated directly above the New York offices of Associated Press. > Y Has London Bureau Canadian Press also maintains a large London bureau which chan- 2els a great budget of world news. to the New York bureau and thence to Toronto, head office of the or- ganization. There is a CP bureau in Australia, a correspondent in New Zealand. Other men in different parts of the Empire keep constant watch for CP. Associated Press and Reuters gather much of the foreign news a a The Canadian Press bureau in Nev | ork. Story Hamdled Quickly The New York filing editor trans- fers it quickly to the direct wire to Toronto and it comes in over the teletype to head office. transfer with any minor editing is made and the story then comes in over the teletype of The Times- Gazette and 'newspapers in other cities which have CP service, A fast The Times-Gazette teletype ma- chines, over which O'Mara's story arrives, carry a steady stream of news to the telegraph editor's desk from 5 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily. So much comes in during the run of day that it would be impossible to include everything due to space limitations. newspapers. selection of news for good balance and to Include all "top" stories is of extreme importance. This applies to all For this reason the Perhaps the editor throws out a story telling of a drunken brawl in Chicago cafe as of little interest | Cripps began talking to members |of Parliament and the story came | along progressively, thus enabling afternoon editions of Canadian newspapers to get a fairly complete report before they closed off for the day., But all stories over the teletype are not big, although every one is important to some class of readers and must (therefore be carefully considered. Between bulletifiliigon train wrecks and flashes on dis- asters, comes the routine run--the produce markets report, movement of ships in the marine report, Win- nipeg and Chicago grain quotations, livestock prices--and the one story that is front page news everywhere every day, the weather. Telegraph editors have been ac- cused of being a strange breed who start the day off "looking for dead." This means, in the parlance of newspaperdom, that they search out early run of copy for disaster stories -- train wrecks, explosions, | general interest, or of particular interest to this district. It would be impossible to give the definite number of reporters scat | | tered over the whole world who at [this moment are gathering news | which will be 'provided for Time- | Gazette readers tomorrow. They | would include every Associated | Press staff writer and correspond- | ent, every Reuters reporter, and every Canadian Press staff writer in Canada and abroad. One thing is certain--if a painter falls off a roof in Keokuk between now and next edition we'll have a report of it on our desk tomorrow morning. If Joe Blow of Kokomo In 1928, when The Times- Gazette's first rotary press was® officially started E. N. Sinclair, by the late Mayor Robert D. Preston, this picture was taken. Pushing the | president of The Times Publishing Company Ltd.; A. R. Alloway, now starting button is the late Dr. T. E. Kaiser, Left to right are the late W. | president of The Times-Gazette; Mayor Preston and Dr. Kaiser. i 2 or fo ; the late -C. M. Mundy, K.C., then M.L.A.; T. L.- Wilson wins a sweepstake prize, we'll know of that too. And if there's an Arab shot in Palestine or cross words spoken between Russian and Am- erican soldiers in Vienna, we'll be able to tell yop all about it--and we'll give you quotes on what the soldiers said to one another. That's the way it is on a tele- graph desk. y Pd in this section. But: the Soho mur- der rates space and gets it. Editing For Print The story is "handled" by putting in the necessary capitalization and cutting to size for space reasons. The trick in this, of course, is to {edit it down (if necessary) so as | 2 | to retain all the salient points and | ¢ yet save space. Little editing is needed because after Canadian | Press editors have had a go at a story that was written by a crack reporter who has also had consider- able editing experience himself-- well, it's a pretty "tight" story. A headline must be written for the story. Usually the size of the headline is determined by the news value of the story although this is 20t always adhered to because sometimes a story will be crowded into the paper at the ldst minute when, make-up does. not permit anything but a small headline--the main factor is to "get it in." Good headlines must tell stories, must be written so that if the busy shared with CP and, through agree- ment, CP channels much of the news gathered in its areas of cov- erage to AP and Reuters for world- wide distribution to the thousands of 'daily newspapers which they serve, The coverage thus afforded in this great link is possibly the, most comprehensive ever maintained in the history of journalism. It means that for Oshawa newspaper read- ers the receiving point for all this news gathered by hundreds of ace reporters on assignment by three mighty news gathering organiza- tions is the newsroom of The Times-Gazette as a link in' the chain, How C.P. Reporter Works To give an idea of how it works, let's tag along with a Canadian Press reporter in the London bur- eau and follow him through on a story. Let's suppose that Michael O'Mara--known in all CP inter- office messages as MOM--has been assigned by the bureau chief to ferret out the news on a murder in Soho. d O'Mara tabs Scotland Yard, may- be talks to the taxi driver who remembers driving the victim tb her apartment house a 2 am. He even (at 4 am. on Saturdays and Mon- tours the neighborhood where the |days, the telegraph desk itself slaying occurred just to pick up a [swings into action at 6:30 am. little first-hand descriptive stuff /Mondays and Saturdays and 7 a.m. and, while at it, gets a few angles [on the other days of the week. The ~ GREETINGS and BEST WISHE reader does not want to read the story itself he can get the gist of it | % : by skimming over the headlines. re While the teletypes start operat- ry ing at 5 a.m, four days weekly and Harry Cowley, plant superintendent of The Times-Gazette, is shown above in his office. Mr. Cowley has charge of the mechanical staff con- cerned with the production of the mewspaper. In the construction of the new addition to the Times-Gazette Building, Oshawa Wood Products 'Company was chosen to supply 'much of the mat- erial used in the erection of the building. . . . It is | WISH TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY OF EXTENDING - MY - | CONGRATULATIONS AND SINCERE GOOD WISHES 'TO THE OSHAWA TIMES LIMITED 7 H. MOSIER sumer wena Oshawa Wood Products Co. 160 KING W. PHONE 4505) our sincere hope that our daily newspaper, which has shown such rapid growth in service and stature PS during the years, will long continue to advance with Oshawa . . . ever supporting vigorously the just causes of our people... constantly maintaining the high principles for which it has become so favor- "ably known. RELE N- * Al34yS OASIW