Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE.
There are few things concerning which the general public is more curious, and about which it knows less, than the inside of a metropolitan newspaper office. This curiosity is at least as healthy and legitimate as that regarding the north pole, yet there have been many more polar expeditions than books about the inner workings of the modern newspaper. As one-half of all intelligent young men and women in the United States are said to pass through a period when they imagine they would like to wield the pen, it ought to be an act of humanity to place in their hands a book that will tell just how the work of the best and largest daily papers is done.
It is strange that the American newspaper should have reached its present stage of maturity and national importance without having inspired a complete popular manual of journalistic methods. There are many brief treatises of practical value on the more obvious features of newspaper work, but hitherto no attempt has been made to present a detailed practical analysis of all the writing departments of a progressive city daily. The present volume aspires, in spite of its inevitable imperfections, to fill the vacant place. The aim has been to meet the needs both of those who seek to enter journalism and of those who have already embarked on a newspaper career. The book is also intended as an aid to students in certain collegiate courses and in schools of journalism.
The contents embody the observations of twenty years spent in more or less close connection with journalistic work, ranging from the onerous responsibilities of a printer's devil to the honorable labors of an editorial position, with the usual intervening steps as typesetter, proof-reader, college journalist, editor of a country weekly, correspondent of a large city paper, and then a decade on various Chicago dailies in the capacity of reporter, copy reader, telegraph editor, exchange reader, book reviewer, and editorial writer. It is impossible for such an old-timer to paint rainbow visions of the glory and power that await the youth who is about to make journalism his profession. The view presented in this volume is of the plain and matter-of-fact kind, inspiring no roseate dreams to be dispelled, yet trying to make note of the true inspiration that still quickens the pulse of the hurrying reporter and of the pale copy reader under his midnight electric bulb. If the newspaper employee of to-day cannot be much of a molder of public opinion, he can at least have the inspiration of realizing that he is a part of the greatest machine for photographing contemporary human life ever known in the world's history.
