Three
fourths of the way through, the writer rose, went to the file-board and
ran through a dozen newspapers. He was seeking a ratio, a perspective.
He wished to determine how much, in a news sense, the death of the son
of an obscure East-Side plasterer was worth. On his return he tore up
all that he had written, and substituted a curt paragraph, without
character or color, which he turned in. He had gauged the value of the
tragedy accurately, in the light of his study of news files.
Greenough showed the paragraph (which failed to appear at all in the
overcrowded paper of next morning) to Mr. Gordon.
"The new man doesn't start well," he remarked. "Too little imaginative
interest."
"Isn't it knowledge rather than lack of interest?" suggested the
managing editor.
"It may come to the same thing. If he knows too much to get really
interested, he'll be a dull reporter."
"I doubt whether you'll find him dull," smiled Mr. Gordon. "But he may
find his job dull. In that case, of course he'd better find another."
Indeed, that was the danger which, for weeks to follow, Banneker
skirted. Police news, petty and formal, made up his day's work. Had he
sought beneath the surface of it the underlying elements, and striven to
express these, his matter as it came to the desk, however slight the
technical news value might have been, would have afforded the watchful
copy-readers, trained to that special selectiveness as only The Ledger
could train its men, opportunity of judging what potentialities might
lurk beneath the crudities of the "cub.
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