Chapter 10

MAKING A MODERN NEWSPAPER.Some Secrets RevealedBy Alfred C. Harmsworth, Editor of theDaily Mail.

MAKING A MODERN NEWSPAPER.

Some Secrets RevealedBy Alfred C. Harmsworth, Editor of theDaily Mail.

FROM FOREST—

WHEN you casually and carelessly open your newspaper of a morning, how often do you realise, even if you are aware, that it is the product of a score of busy organisations, with tentacles spread over the whole world, the operation of which involves the best brains and machinery of the age; that unlimited capital and thought are devoted to its daily production; that its continual appearance has created a new class of men who work at night and sleep by day; that its distribution requires the use of special trains, and the gathering of its news the opening at night of telegraph, cable, and telephone offices; that the public appetite for reading is sweeping away vast Scandinavian and American forests for the manufacture of the wood pulp of which the paper itself is made; and that the very journal you are reading may have formed part of a growing tree a month ago!

In the days of wagers, the wool growing on a sheep's back was once converted into a dresscoat by dinner-time—and they dined at four o'clock then! In the last few years a not dissimilar experiment resulted in the conversion of a tree that was growing at dawn into a newspaper by luncheon.

Your daily newspaper is the best bargain you will ever make, and you make it every day. Do you grasp the fact that your newspaper is the most splendid example of co-operation imaginable—that it enables you to obtain for a few pence each week that which, if only one copy were printed, would cost you, for telegraphy, for brain work, for machinery and building and land, a thousand pounds a day or more? The Duke of Westminster or Mr. Astor might buy a better horse, picture, or theatre seat than you can, but your newspaper is as good as theirs.

According to Mr. Labouchere and some other folk, the mystery of the press is the secret of its power. Yet I venture to think that if I lift the curtain a little—nay more, if I take the public behind the scenes for a short while—I shall be increasing rather than endangering the respect in which the newspaper press is very properly held in this country.

In the days when many newspapers were small sheets, produced in dark alleys, under the charge of disreputable ne'er-do-wells, who veiled a vast amount of vulgarity under the name of Bohemianism, it was doubtless a wise thing to surround the press with mystery. The less the public knew about a newspaper office the better for the newspaper. But to-day the public press is the concentration of all that is best in thought and all that is most modern in mechanism.

—TO FLEET STREET.A three mile roll of paper.

—TO FLEET STREET.

A three mile roll of paper.

HOW THE NEWS COMES—BY CABLE, TELEGRAPH, TELEPHONE, ETC.

How the news comes

The internal construction of a newspaper office is almost as complicated as that of a battleship—the duties of a modern editor as onerous as those of the man in the conning tower.

Let us take a hasty glance at the inside life of a journal.

A newspaper office is one of the few business establishments in which the human machinery is at work the whole twenty-four hours round. The business department, which requires the same staff as is needed in an insurance office or bank, starts its operations, as a rule, at nine in the morning, when the heads and clerks of the advertising, circulation, and other departments assemble.

With them arrives the first of the editorial staff. He, in the case of one newspaper with which I am acquainted, relieves the colleague who has been on duty since the previous midnight. It is his duty to open the editorial letters, to watch the news of the day, to see whether the particular journal on which he is engaged has gained or lost by comparison with its competitors in the collection of news, and to arrange matters generally for the coming of his co-workers, the foreign editor, and others, who assemble at eleven o'clock.

By this hour many of the reporters are already engaged in their multifarious engagements in various parts of the metropolis. The preparation of the next day's paper goes on steadily until five o'clock, when there is usually a brief conference of the editorial powers that be on the policy to be adopted on any particular event, and the methods required for obtaining any particular news or other features, and then, at six o'clock, the hard work of the day commences.

JUST OUT!

The clerks, who have been receiving and checking advertisements all day, have sent them to the printing department, where advertisers' announcements are being put into print as rapidly as nimble fingers can operate quick machinery, and then,save for the presence of one or two clerks, the advertisement and commercial side of a newspaper "shuts down" for the day. The sub-editors appear, reporters come in with the results of their day's labours, news arrives by the tape and other news machines in a constantly increasing quantity for the next nine hours. First comes the news from China or India. The Indian correspondent puts his telegram on the wire at eight or nine o'clock in Bombay, which is equal to four o'clock in the afternoon in London; and this difference of time, even allowing a couple of hours for transmission, makes him always first in the field with his news. But, on the other hand, the American news will not arrive until very late indeed, for when it is seven o'clock in the evening at New York it is midnight here.

"How do you manage to find all the little pieces of news to put into your paper?" is a question that must have been asked of every journalist.

That is not the difficulty. One's heaviest task is the keeping out of the items of news. On an average day it is safe to estimate that twice or thrice as much intelligence comes to a newspaper as it can possibly use. At times like, say, the last Jubilee, or at any moment of public excitement, news pours in in a manner appalling to contemplate.

OLD STYLE.(Setting type by hand at 10 words per minute.)

OLD STYLE.

(Setting type by hand at 10 words per minute.)

The wonder is that there are so few mistakes in journals. When it is remembered that those who handle and pass the news have often but a second to decide as to its accuracy, that it often comes from parts of the world to which it is impossible to refer speedily by telegram, that it frequently consists of statements made by public men, who may disavow them when put to the test—when it is remembered that the sub-editor has to contend with the errors of shorthand, of the telegraph, the electric cable, and the telephone, I think that British newspapers, and London metropolitan newspapers in particular, are an object lesson to the world in accuracy. Laborious publications like theArmy List, and theLondon Gazette, which are compiled by a leisurely Government staff, contain as many errors in proportion as the hastily produced modern newspaper.

NEW STYLE.(Setting type by machinery at 40 words per minute.)

NEW STYLE.

(Setting type by machinery at 40 words per minute.)

Accuracy, indeed, may be considered to be the feature of English journalism. The stress of newspaper competition in New York induces the younger journals to rush anything into type that comes to hand, and the American public does not seem to mind it.

But I pity the English journal which should print one or two items of false news. The average Briton, who is a plodding, painstaking man, takes his newspaper as seriously as his breakfast, and one or two mistakes in his newspaper, or his eggs, would make him change his caterer. He has no sympathy for "enterprise" which leads him astray. And from this fact arises one of the differences between the English and the American newspaper. From the American aspect, ours is dull, slow, stupid, and behind the times. On the other hand our journals are typical of the painstaking, plodding nature of our people, and, like our public buildings, are often much better than they look.

DISTRIBUTING CARTS WAITING FOR THE EVENING PAPER TO COME FROM THE MACHINES.

To return to our visit to the newspaper office. All the evening long as news arrives it is cut down and measured as to its importance, corrected, given its proper heading, and sent upstairs by pneumatic or other lifts to the composing department. Towards eleven o'clock at night every brain isconcentrated on its task. At one o'clock the worst is over. There is time for a cigar or a cigarette. One may be waiting for important news from a war correspondent, or merely keeping the paper open for any news that may arrive between one and three in the morning.

CYCLIST DISTRIBUTORS "LOADING UP."

The type is first set into columns by machinery, corrected and re-corrected; these columns are then made up into pages, which are again corrected, each page being tightly screwed into an iron frame (I am purposely using no technicalities). A papier maché or other mould is then taken of each page, and into this mask (or matrix) hot metal is poured, and the pages come out in the form of curved plates ready for fixing on the machines. It is a difficult process to explain without ocular demonstration, and I have been so long accustomed to the work that I have lost all sense of its beauty and ingenuity.

Towards three o'clock in the morning all the curved plates have been fixed on the machines; final proof copies—that is to say, first impressions of the paper—have been passed; the machines start, and up come complete copies of the paper as you see it at the breakfast table, the club, or in the railway train.

The first complete copies are carefully scanned by dozens of eager eyes in the hope of finding some tiny blunder which it is not too late to remove.

Each of these modern printing presses depicted here has a nominal capacity of 48,000, or 96,000 copies per hour, according to the size of the paper.

THE MACHINE WHICH EATS PAPER AT THE RATE OF 20 MILES AN HOUR.

It is a speed truly terrific. The carts that are waiting outside the newspaper office in the night seem to be filled almost by magic. One hears the machinery start; a few minutes later the race for the distributing agents and the railway trains begins. Upstairs such of the editorial staff as havenot gone home are enjoying the same kind of chat at the conclusion of their labours as other men do at their clubs. Nor are we newspaper men clubless even at that hour. The Press Club, hard by Fleet Street, keeps its doors open for journalists until five a.m.; and for the printers and others there are special hostelries open to them, and to them only, by legal enactment. Railway companies, too, provide trains for us, though not so many as they should, thus enabling us to get away from the city to the pure air of the suburbs at a time when all the world is sleeping.

HOW THE PAPERS COME UP FROM THE "INFERNAL REGIONS."

Newspapers are commercial concerns, and their proprietors are as anxious to attractively stock their columns as tradesmen their shop windows. We do not say so in our journals, but privately we are entirely aware that we are racing each other for attractive news. As to what does or does not sell in a newspaper, always an important question, opinions differ greatly. I doubt whether any two editors of metropolitan daily journals would agree on that point, the fact being that what pleases one audience does not necessarily interest another. Sometimes a newspaper will adopt a feature that has proved successful in a contemporary with most disappointing results in its own case. Now and then a particular feature will spread throughout the whole press. At one time the public is bent upon foreign news, at another time upon matters purely domestic, but I think all are agreed that the average metropolitan reader nowadays turns to his foreign news before he reads anything else. Two or three years ago there appeared to be a positive craze for sporting intelligence. To-day mere sporting news seems to have lost much of its attraction. The year before last the amount of cricket in the evening journals was a source of amazement. This year I venture to think cricket will reach its proper level.

PAPERS BEING TURNED OUT COMPLETE, FOLDED, COUNTED, AND READY FOR THE AGENTS—AT THE RATE OF 48,000 COPIES PER HOUR.

But that every section of the public values the quick and accurate publication of news is obvious. The desire for speed increaseseach year, and it is now recognised that the main object of a modern newspaper organisation is the collection of news and the accurate and speedy publication thereof. Incidentally it may be mentioned that of the quickness with which this is performed by the press, the evening journals in particular, few of the public have the least appreciation. I have known the verdict of a trial, the result of a cricket match, or a boat race, published to the world withinten secondsof the arrival of the news in the newspaper office. The statement seems incredible, but the thing can be done in more than one newspaper office in London and the provinces.

AN EDITORIAL CONCLAVE.(Deciding the policy of the paper.)

AN EDITORIAL CONCLAVE.

(Deciding the policy of the paper.)

I have asked for and obtained an item of news from New York in seven minutes. In this space of time was comprised the writing of my question in London, its transmission to New York, the writing of the news there, and the telegraphing of it back to London.

The British evening journals, and more especially those of the provinces, and Scotland, are, in my opinion, ahead of the world in the rapidity with which they publish accurate information.

We newspaper men love to chat among ourselves of great examples of the publication of exclusive news, "beats" and "scoops," we call them. One of the most successful was that achieved by thePall Mall Gazettewhen it announced, in the teeth of press and official denials innumerable, the resignation of Mr. Gladstone. I was in the United States at the time, and can truly say that for well-nigh a month thePall Mall Gazettewas advertised day after day by a contradictory telegram in every paper in the United States. It is said that £500 was paid for that item of intelligence. It would have been cheap at £5,000.

Another great achievement was the publication by theNew York Worldof news of the sinking of H.M.S.Victoria. It is not pleasant for the British journalist to remember that the full account first appeared in a journal published on the other side of the Atlantic, and that that account was retransmitted to England. Then among other sensational news victories were those of theTimescorrespondent at Pekin, in the recent Far Eastern imbroglio, and of Mr. Archibald Forbes at the time of the Franco-Prussian war.

The present generation has almost forgotten a great newspaper development of a generation back. Nearly thirty years ago the whole world was wondering whathad become of Dr. Livingstone. Many attempts were made to find him; there were private and semi-official hunts for the missing missionary, but without avail. Then theDaily Telegraphand theNew York Heralddespatched Mr. Stanley, who found him at Ujiji. Next to the splendid war work of Sir W. H. Russell during the Crimea, Stanley's work was the best expeditionary journey of the century. More recently we have seen great feats of newspaper enterprise, both in this country and the United States, grow out of the Hispano-American war. War news will probably always be a newspaper's greatest luxury.

FLEET STREET BEFORE DAWN.

TheSheffield Daily Telegraphdid a very big thing in 1867. I extract an account of the accomplishment from a recent publication:

"At that time, although few outsiders suspected it, there existed in Sheffield a British Vehmgericht—of which a man named Broadhead, secretary of the Sawgrinders' Union, was president—for the secret trial and punishment of non-unionist workmen. TheTelegraph, acting on private and dearly-bought information, attacked this organisation, Sir William Leng, of course, finding the money, and often personally conducting the necessary investigations. It was a delicate as well as a dangerous task, as he soon found to his cost.

"One of his reporters was bludgeoned and left for dead in one of the principal streets of the town, and in broad daylight. The house in which another lodged was blown up with gunpowder. His own life was threatened day by day, and often many times a day. His leaders were written with a revolver on his desk and another strapped to his hip, and for nearly a year he never went abroad unarmed. At length the famous Royal Commission of 1867 was appointed, with the result that the secret horrors Sir William had so fearlessly denounced were dragged into the light of day. All England stood aghast, and the arch-villain Broadhead, together with Crookes, Hallam, and others of his tools, made full confession in order to save their own miserable necks. The power of the terrible tribunal was broken for ever; but the exposure cost theTelegraph, from first to last, some eighteen thousand pounds."

Sir William Leng's daring calls to mind that of Mr. Ross, ofBlack and White, who as a young man went through an experience that, while it proved a stepping-stone to his fortune (for he made nearly £1,000 by his exclusive telegrams to the press), thrilled the world for a very long time. The following is an account of the matter given me by a friend of his:—

In the memorable winter of 1880, when the snow lay so deep along the lines of the North that trains passed through tunnels of ice, and towns were isolated for days, a gruesome incident happened.

The Earl of Balcarres died at Florence, and the body, having been embalmed, was conveyed by tedious stages to Aberdeen, thence to be consigned to the mausoleum which formed part of the magnificent mansion at Dunecht, upon which the deceased Earl had spent twenty years of thought and "tons of money."

A hearse, of the lugubrious type one is accustomed to see in country towns, had been sent to await the belated train at Aberdeen, and the body was duly transferred, not without difficulty, for the bulk of the suite of coffins was a little greater than village hearses are made to meet. The weary ten mile journey was undertakenin the dark, amid a downfall of snow, over the bleak road that leads from the granite city to the village of Skene. Progress was slow, the night grew darker and stormier; the snow drifted in wreaths across the road; the horses became exhausted; the men in charge did their utmost for a time, but it seemed as if, in the words of the national poet, "the De'il had business on his hand." Hearse and horses became embedded in a bank of snow, and further effort was futile; the body had to be abandoned for the night.

On the following day the storm abated, assistance arrived, the vehicle was extricated, and the body was conveyed to Dunecht. There the funeral service was conducted in the chapel which is built over the family vault, and with little ceremony and few attendants the body was deposited on one of the shelves of the underground structure which was intended to be the tomb of the family to which its first tenant, the noble Earl, belonged.

A CORNER OF MESSRS. W. H. SMITH AND SON'S HEADQUARTERS IN LONDON AT 3.30 A.M.

The weird circumstances attending the Lord Balcarres' death and funeral were almost fittingly followed by events of unparalleled mystery. Twelve months almost to a day had transpired when a heavy odour of spices attracted the attention of the servants moving about the mansion. On examination it was found that the huge slab of stone which covered the doorway leading into the vault had been disturbed. The stone—seemingly heavy enough to require the strength of a dozen men to move it—had been lifted, the vault had been entered, the coffin "pinched" forward till it rested on the floor, the lid had been torn off, the two inner cases had been rent, the body removed, and the floor of the vault was strewn with the red sawdust by which the embalming fluid had been absorbed. Here was a mystery indeed.

The first hint of what had happened appeared in the papers on Saturday. The young Earl was telegraphed for, and outposts of police were established round the house, with instructions that no one was to be admitted, and no information was to be vouchsafed. One enterprising young journalist—Mr. W. D. Ross—who at that time was editing the principal evening paper in Aberdeen, resolved to break the silence by which his contemporaries were baffled. He secured the co-operation of one of the servants on the estate to whom he was known, and, deeming boldness best, found his way to the house, and demanded an audience of the Earl. The housekeeper, after some demur, consented. Plain-spoken tact was necessary in dealing with so delicate a matter; so when the Earl appeared, the young man explained that he was there as the representative of theTimes(of which he was then the correspondent) to consult the young peer's wishes as to what should be said about this mysterious matter, with a view to obviate malicious and mistaken versions.

Lord Balcarres wisely accepted this considerate method, and, despite the orders that had been issued, gave special facilities to the pressman to examine the vault and obtain the facts so far as they could be obtained at the time. The first result was that Mr. Ross secured the monopoly of information, and also the monopoly of the telegraph wires at Aberdeen, and on Monday morning all the papers throughout the country published columns on the Dunecht mystery. It was this publicity that eventuallresulted in the partial elucidation of the mystery.

REPORTERS GLEANING "FULLEST DETAILS OF THE CRIME."

For days and weeks the telegraph officials at Aberdeen were kept busy transmitting the reams of "copy" which, in his capacity of half detective and half reporter, this young man had prepared. Mr. Ross probed the matter minutely, and, apart from his important police work, so thoroughly was his newspaper task accomplished, that over thirty leading daily papers passed their correspondence into his hands. Through the various phases of the mystery, ample orders and handsome revenue poured into him, since sub-editors put no stint on the quantities of matter of vital interest furnished for the public under the heading of "The Dunecht Outrage." The sensation was kept up by speculation, searches by bloodhounds, police investigations, arrests, body-snatching theories, suggestions of black-mail, of malice, and every kind of motive, for twelve months.

During this time, the newspaper man, whose detective work was considered of the greatest value by the police, became an important medium between the parties supposed to be concerned and the detective staff of the city, a position of very considerable personal danger.

Then the interest died away, till in July of 1882, eighteen months after the rifling of the tomb, the body was found buried in the leaf mould that lay in the dry bed of a little rivulet that at one time had run through the grounds at Dunecht.

Public interest was again kept at high tension by the curiosity of the people to account for the motive of the outrage. Then came the apprehension of suspected persons, afterwards liberated, and finally of one named Souter, who was convicted in the High Court at Edinburgh and sentenced to penal servitude. The conviction hardly met the justice of the case, for it was obvious that there must have been a group of grave-robbers at work.

One of the most curious things about the case was that the police informed Mr. Ross that they believed it was the intention of the guilty parties to make a confession, and that they had elected to make him the medium of it. It was actually arranged that the parties were to travel to Aberdeen by a certain train to reveal the whole mystery, but for reasons that have never transpired this plan was subject to sudden eclipse, and to this day the mystery remains as much a mystery as ever. The unfortunate man Souter, whose actualguilt was greatly doubted, called upon Mr. Ross the moment he was set at liberty, and through him communicated to the Press a circumstantial repudiation of his own responsibility, and promised that what he knew about the crime and the criminals would ultimately be revealed when considerations of honour which had kept him silent could be removed.

This is the story of the famous mystery which formed one of the most thrilling newspaper sensations of modern times, and which created for the present manager ofBlack and Whitea reputation for enterprise which has lasted till to-day.

IN THE EDITOR'S PRIVATE OFFICE—"I HAVE AN IMPORTANT SECRET TO SELL!"

Of a hundred interesting sides of newspaper life I have been unable to say anything. The dangers of war correspondents—thehumours of the society column, and the people who want to get into it—the financial editor—the lady journalist—the parliamentary staff—the descriptive reporter—the newspaper artist—the£ s. d.of journalism—each and all of these, and many more, would make a paper of considerable interest; and Mr. Joseph Hatton should write his "Journalistic London" anew, for the whole newspaper position has changed since his last edition.

The sub-editor and the descriptive reporter appear to me to be the men upon whom the chief work of the journalism of the future will fall. In France, where they do many things well, such masters as Zola have raised descriptive newspaper writing to the level of an art. Here, save in the case of war correspondence and parliamentary work, we have not specialised much as yet. A descriptive reporter, as one of the artists who has illustrated this little chat of mine suggests, may be sent out to describe a murder trial, a fire, an execution, or interview a great novelist!

We shall improve by-and-by. The old verbatim reporter will always remain, but he must give way to the descriptive writer in many matters.

Touching the question of the publishing of great secrets—such as that of Mr. Gladstone's retirement already referred to—I claim for the newspaper press of Britain that it refrains from publishing news calculated to needlessly injure or offend. How well do we know the fair visitant who comes to us with some great scandal to sell, and who becomes almost indignant when she is politely shown out. Women, I fear, are more versed in this matter than men.

Out with the River Police.SOME DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A NEWS-GATHERER.

Out with the River Police.

SOME DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A NEWS-GATHERER.

A murder trial.A railway accident.A political meeting.An execution.A colliery disaster.Interviewing a distinguished novelist.A fire.

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