CHAPTER XV
MISCELLANEOUS LOCAL NEWS
Type of story. Although most local events have been included in the various classes of stories discussed in preceding chapters, there remain several forms of city news that require separate consideration. Much interesting, timely information is to be found in schools, public libraries, museums, parks, and various departments of city government. As activities supported by public money, these institutions should be of interest to every citizen. Real estate, building, manufacturing, and business matters also furnish news of considerable interest and importance. Besides this information, there are many little incidents in the daily life of every city that have no significance as news but that can be written up as entertaining stories. Hotels, railroad stations, docks, and street cars are frequently the scenes of little comedies and tragedies that the reporter with keen insight into human life and with ability to portray them, turns into readable sketches. Animals no less than persons may be the central figures in these stories.
Purpose. The aim in one class of these local stories is to furnish timely, significant information in attractive form concerning public institutions and business activities. The purpose of the other class is to entertain the reader with little glimpses of the life of the city. Constructive journalism undertakes to stimulate the interest of every citizen in municipal affairs and in public institutions by putting prominently before him from time to time significant information about them.
The utmost accuracy in presenting information of public affairs and business matters, it is needless to say, is absolutely essential. It is important to maintain the same standard of truthfulness in writing entertaining feature stories, not because their contents are of vital importance, but because a newspaper, in order to command the confidence of its readers, cannot present anything in its news columns that is not true. Fictitious details are no more justifiable in feature stories than in news stories.
Treatment. In order to interest the average reader in news of various municipal activities it is necessary to make the stories attractive in form and style. Striking facts and figures or unusual statements, featured at the beginning, catch the reader’s eye and lead him to read the story as long as its subject matter and style interest him. Effective use of statistics and comparisons is shown in the story “Public Schools Open,” p. 233. Two stories that begin with unusual statements are those entitled “School for Backward Children,” p. 235, and “New Feature in Manufacturing,” p. 243.
Since there is practically no news interest in entertaining feature stories, the reader’s attention is attracted and held by the way in which the story is told. Narrative and descriptive beginnings, conversation, suspense, humor and other devices used in short stories and novels are well adapted to these news stories.