A HANDBOOK FOR REPORTERS, CORRESPONDENTSAND FREE-LANCE WRITERS WHO DESIRE TOCONTRIBUTE TO POPULAR MAGAZINES ANDMAGAZINE SECTIONS OF NEWSPAPERS
Author of "Newspaper Writing and Editing," and "Types of News Writing";Director of the Course in Journalism in the University of Wisconsin
BOSTON, NEW YORK, CHICAGO, SAN FRANCISCO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
This book is the result of twelve years' experience in teachinguniversity students to write special feature articles for newspapers andpopular magazines. By applying the methods outlined in the followingpages, young men and women have been able to prepare articles that havebeen accepted by many newspaper and magazine editors. The success thatthese students have achieved leads the author to believe that others whodesire to write special articles may be aided by the suggestions givenin this book.
Although innumerable books on short-story writing have been published,no attempt has hitherto been made to discuss in detail the writing ofspecial feature articles. In the absence of any generally acceptedmethod of approach to the subject, it has been necessary to work out asystematic classification of the various types of articles and of thedifferent kinds of titles, beginnings, and similar details, as well asto supply names by which to identify them.
A careful analysis of current practice in the writing of special featurestories and popular magazine articles is the basis of the methodspresented. In this analysis an effort has been made to show theapplication of the principles of composition to the writing of articles.Examples taken from representative newspapers and magazines are freelyused to illustrate the methods discussed. To encourage students toanalyze typical articles, the second part of the book is devoted to acollection of newspaper and magazine articles of various types, with anoutline for the analysis of them.
Particular emphasis is placed on methods of popularizing such knowledgeas is not available to the general reader. This has been done in thebelief that it is important for the average person to know of theprogress that is being made in every field of human endeavor, in orderthat he may, if possible, apply the results to his own affairs. Theproblem, therefore, is to show aspiring writers how to presentdiscoveries, inventions, new methods, and every significant advance inknowledge, in an accurate and attractive form.
To train students to write articles for newspapers and popular magazinesmay, perhaps, be regarded by some college instructors in composition asan undertaking scarcely worth their while. They would doubtless preferto encourage their students to write what is commonly called"literature." The fact remains, nevertheless, that the averageundergraduate cannot write anything that approximates literature,whereas experience has shown that many students can write acceptablepopular articles. Moreover, since the overwhelming majority of Americansread only newspapers and magazines, it is by no means an unimportanttask for our universities to train writers to supply the steady demandfor well-written articles. The late Walter Hines Page, founder of theWorld's Work and former editor of the Atlantic Monthly, presentedthe whole situation effectively in an article on "The Writer and theUniversity," when he wrote:
The journeymen writers write almost all that almost all Americansread. This is a fact that we love to fool ourselves about. We