X REPORTS OF SPEECHES

Every profession has its disagreeable tasks; journalism has perhaps more disagreeable tasks than any other profession. All of a reporter's work is not concerned with running down thrilling stories and writing them up in a whirl of breathless interest. Our readers demand other kinds of news, and it is the reporter's task to satisfy them faithfully. There is probably no phase of the work that is quite so irksome as the reporting of speeches, lectures, sermons, etc., and there is probably no phase of the work about which most reporters have fewer definite rules or ideas. Read the reports of the same speech in two different papers and note the difference. They seldom contain the same things and more seldom do they tell what the speaker said, in the way and the spirit in which he said it. It is irksome work and difficult work to condense an hour's talk into three stickfuls, and few reporters know exactly how to go about it.

The report of a speech or a sermon or a lecture may come to a newspaper office in one of two ways. A copy of it may be sent to the paper or the reporter may have to go to hear the address and take notes on it. Very often the speaker kindly sends a printed or typewritten copy of his speech to the editor a few days in advance with the permission to release it—or print it—on a certain date, after the speech has been delivered in public. If the speech is to be printed in full, the task is a mere matter of editing and does not trouble the reporter. Very few speeches receive so much space. The others must be condensed and put in shape for printing.

After all, the usual way to get a speech is to go to the public delivery of the speech and bring back a report of it. At first sight this is a difficult task and green reporters come back with a very poor resumé. However, a word or two of advice from the editor or some bitter experience eases the way. Some advice may be given here to prepare the would-be reporter beforehand.

Some reporters who know shorthand prefer to make a stenographic report of the entire speech and rearrange and condense it in the office. This method is advisable only in the case of speeches of the greatest importance; it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since the account includes at most only a part of the speech. The best way, doubtless, to get a speech is to take notes on it. And yet this must be done properly or there is a danger of misinterpretation of statements or of undue emphasis upon any single part of the speech. The report of a speech should be as well balanced and logical as the speech itself, differing from the original only in length and the omission of details. The speech report must be accurate and truthful or the speaker may appear at the office in a day or two with blood in his eye. A few rules may be suggested as an aid to accuracy and truthfulness.

In the first place, do not try to get all the speech; do not try to get more than a small part of it—the important part. There are two ways of doing this. If the speech is well arranged and orderly it is easy to tell when the speaker has finished one sub-division and is beginning another. Each division and subdivision will naturally contain a topic sentence. Watch for the topic sentences and get them down with the briefest necessary explanation to make them clear. Political speeches or impromptu talks are, on the other hand, not always so logically arranged. Sometimes it is possible to get the topic sentences, but more often it is not. Then watch for the interesting or striking statements. You will be aided in this by the audience about you. Whenever the speaker says anything unusually striking or of more than ordinary interest the audience will show it by signs of assent or dissent. Watch for these signs, even for applause—and take down the statement that was the cause. If the statement interested the original audience it will interest your readers. Naturally, mere oratorical trivialities must not be mistaken for striking statements.

When you get back to the office to write up the report of the speech you will feel the need of direct quotations—in fact, the length of your report will be determined by the number of direct quotations that you have to use in it—as well as by editorial dictum. It would be entirely wrong to quote any expressions of your own because they are somewhat like the speaker's statements, and it is impossible to quote anything less than a complete sentence in the report of a speech. Hence you will need complete sentences taken down verbatim in the exact words of the speaker. Make it a point to get complete sentences as you listen to the speech. Whenever a striking statement or an interesting part of the speech seems worth putting in your story get it down completely. You will find yourself writing most of the time because, while you are writing down one important sentence, the speaker will be uttering several more in explanation and may say something else of interest before you have finished writing down his first statement. Strict attention, a quick pencil, and a good memory are needed for this kind of work, but the reporting of speeches will lose its terrors after you have had a very small amount of practice.

Just as any news story begins with a lead and plays up its most striking fact in the first line, the report of a speech usually begins with the speaker's most striking or most important statement. As you are listening to his words watch for something striking for the lead—something that will catch the reader's eye and interest him. But you must exercise great care in selecting the statement for the lead. Theoretically and practically it must be something in strict accordance with the entire content of the speech and, if possible, it should be the one statement that sums up the whole speech in the most concise way. Somewhere in the discourse, at the beginning, at the end, or in some emphatic place, the speaker will usually sum up his complete ideas on the subject in a striking, concise way. Watch for this summary and get it down for the lead. However, there may be times when this summary, though concise, will be of little interest to the average reader and you will be forced to use some other striking statement. Then it is perfectly permissible to take any striking statement in the speech and use it for the lead, provided that the statement is directly connected with the rest of the discourse. But be fair to the speaker. Do not play up some chance remark as illustrative of the entire utterance; don't bring in an aside as the most interesting thing in his speech. If a preacher forgets himself to the extent of expressing a chance political opinion, it would obviously be unfair to him for you to play up that remark as the summary of his sermon. Your readers would get a false impression and the preacher would be angry. If he considers the chance remark of real importance in his sermon he will back it up with other statements that will give you an excuse for using it. In brief, watch for the most interesting and most striking statement in the entire speech, and in selecting this statement be fair and just and try to avoid giving a false impression of the speaker or of the speech. If you follow this rule you will never be in any danger of getting your paper into difficulties.

Another rule in reporting lectures, speeches, etc., applies to the writing of all newspaper stories. Write your report at once while the speech is still fresh in your mind. Your report must preserve the logic and continuity of the speech—it must be a fair resumé. Your notes will be at best mere jottings of chance sentences here and there. Do not allow them to get cold and lose their continuity. Write the report at once.

The writing of the report of a speech, lecture, or sermon is the same whether it is taken from a printed or stenographic copy of the discourse or from notes. It is perhaps easier to write from your notes because you have the important parts of the speech picked out, ready for use, by the aid of the rest of the audience. Before you can resumé a printed copy of the speech you must go through it and pick out the important sentences which you wish to quote and decide upon the most striking statement for the lead. There is no definite rule that can be followed in this except to take the topic sentences whenever they are stated with sufficient clearness. When you have decided on the statements that you wish to quote you have really reduced the speech to a form practically identical with the notes taken from verbal utterance, and the writing in either case is the same.

The lead of the report is very much like the lead of any other news story—for the report of a speech is really a news story. As soon as the speech is mentioned, the reader unconsciously asks a number of questions about it and the reporter must answer them in the first sentence. As in any other news story the questions are: What? Who? Where? When? and perhaps How? and Why? Reduced to the case of the speech report, they amount to what did he say, who said it, where did he say it, when, and perhaps how and why did he say it. You may answer the what by giving the subject of the discourse or by giving a striking statement in it. In every report the answer to some one of the questions is of greater interest and must be placed in the first line. If the speaker is of more than ordinary prominence his name makes a good beginning. If an ordinary person makes a speech at some meeting of prominence the when or where takes precedence over his name. But in most cases the reporter will find that none of these things is of sufficient importance for the beginning. Most public utterances that he will be called upon to report will be made by ordinary men in ordinary places and at ordinary times, and the most interesting part of the story will be what was said. Sometimes it suffices to give the title of the speech, but more often a striking statement from the speech makes the best beginning. However, although the speaker, the time, the place, etc., are overshadowed in importance by the subject or content of what the speaker says, they must be included in the same sentence with the title or striking statement. That is, in short, we catch the reader's interest with a striking statement from the speech and then delay the rest of the report while we tell who said it, when, where, etc. The necessity of this is obvious.

In accordance with the foregoing there are several possible ways in which to begin the lead of the report of any speech. It would be wrong to say that any one is more common or better than the others; the choice of the beginning must rest with the reporter. And yet there are various things to be noted in connection with each of these beginnings.

1. Direct Quotation Beginning.—Sentence.—The quotation that is to have the first line must of course be the most striking or the most interesting statement in the speech. If it consists of a single sentence—and it cannot be less than a sentence—the report may begin thus:

"Participation in government is not only the privilege, but the right, of every American citizen and should be considered a duty," said the Rev. Frederick W. Hamilton, president of Tufts College, who spoke on "The Political Duties of the American Citizen" at the monthly men's neighborhood meeting in the Roxbury Neighborhood House last night.—Boston Herald.

Here the reporter has given us a sentence that is practically a summary of the speech, has told us who said it, when and where, and has completed the paragraph with the title of the speech. Sometimes the title of the speech is not of great importance and its place in the lead may be given to a little summary as in the following:

"The modern man isn't afraid of hell," was the concise explanation which W. Lathrop Meaker gave in Franklin Union Hall yesterday afternoon and evening of the fact that the churches are losing their grip on the average man.—New York Sun.

A question which embodies the content of a speech may often be quoted at the beginning; thus:

"Will the Baptist church continue to maintain an attitude of timidity when John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil is mentioned?" asked the Rev. R. A. Bateman, from East Jaffrey, N. H., of the ministers assembled in Ford Hall last evening at the New England Baptist conference.—Boston Herald.

The opening quotation may sometimes be made an excuse for a brief description of the speaker or his gestures as in the following. This is good at times but it may easily be overworked or become "yellow" in tone.

"There is no fire escape," remarked Gypsy Smith, the famous English evangelist, yesterday before the fashionable audience of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church. He held aloft a Bible as he made this declaration during an eloquent sermon on the possibility of losing faith and wandering from the narrow way.—New York World.

2. Direct Quotation Beginning.—Paragraph.—You notice that in each of the foregoing the quoted sentence is incorporated grammatically into the first sentence of the lead. It is followed by a comma and the words "said Mr. ——," "was the statement of ——," "declared Mr. ——," etc. This construction is possible only when the quoted sentence is short and simple. When it is long or complex, it is well to paragraph it separately and to put the explanations in a separate paragraph, thus:

"If the United States had possessed in 1898 a single dirigible balloon, even of the size of the one now at Fort Myer, Virginia, which cost less than $10,000, the American army and navy would not have long remained in doubt of the presence of Cervera's fleet in Santiago harbor."

This statement was made today by Major G. O. Squier, assistant chief signal officer of the army, in an address on aëronautics delivered before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at 29 West Thirty-ninth street.—New York Mail.

This same construction must always be used when the statement quoted in the lead consists of more than one sentence, as in the following:

"The climate of Wisconsin is as good for recovery from tuberculosis as that of any state in the union. It is not the climate, but the out-of-doors air that works the cure."

So said Harvey Dee Brown in his tuberculosis crusade lecture in Kilbourn park last night.—Milwaukee Free Press.

It is to be noted that the statement quoted in the lead is never split into two parts, separated by explanation. The quotation is always gathered together at the beginning and followed by the explanation.

3. Indirect Quotation Beginning.—This method is best adapted to the playing up of a brief resumé of the content of the speech. It is sometimes called the "that-clause beginning" because it always begins with a that-clause which is the subject of the principal verb of the sentence—"was the statement of," "was the declaration of," etc. The that-clause may contain a resumé of the entire speech or only the most striking statement in it. Here is one of the latter:

That the cruise of the battleship fleet around the world has taught the citizens of the United States that a powerful fleet is needed in the Pacific was the statement of Rear Admiral R. C. Hollyday, chief of the bureau of yards and docks of the navy, at a luncheon given to him by the board of trustees of the Chamber of Commerce at the Fairmont Hotel yesterday.—San Francisco Examiner.

It is not always necessary to use the phrase "was the statement of." A variation from it is often very good:

That it is the urgent mission of the white people of America, through their churches and Sunday-schools, to educate the American negro morally and religiously, was the sentiment of the twelfth session of the International Sunday-school Convention last night, voiced with special power and eloquence by Dr. Booker T. Washington, the chief speaker of the evening.—Louisville Courier-Journal.

That the Irish race has a great destiny to fulfill, one greater than it has achieved in its glorious past, was the prophecy of Prof. Charles Johnston of Dublin university in his lecture at the city library Sunday afternoon.—Wisconsin State Journal.

It is perfectly good usage to begin such a lead with two that-clauses or even with three. The two clauses in this case are of course treated as a singular subject and take a singular verb. It is usually best not to have more than three clauses at the beginning and even three must be handled with great care. Three clauses at the beginning, if at all long, bury the speaker's name too deeply and may become too complicated. Unless the clauses are very closely related in idea, it is usually better not to use more than two. Naturally when more than one that-clause is used in the lead, all of the clauses must be gathered together at the beginning; never should one precede and one follow the principal verb. Here is an example of good usage:

NEW YORK, Feb. 25.—That America is entering upon a new era of civic and business rectitude and that this is due to the awakening of the moral conscience of the whole people was the prophecy made here tonight by Governor Joseph W. Folk of Missouri.—Chicago Record-Herald.

4. Summary Beginning.—This is a less formal way of treating the indirect quotation beginning. It is simply a different grammatical construction. Whereas in the that-clause beginning the principal verb of the sentence is outside the summary (e. g., "That ... was the statement of"), in the summary beginning the principal verb of the sentence is the verb of the summary and the speaker is brought in by means of a modifying phrase; thus:

MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 1.—Both the free trader and the stand-patter are back numbers, according to Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, who delivered a tariff speech here tonight.—Milwaukee Free Press.

Federal control of the capitalization of railroads is the solution of the railroad problem suggested by E. L. Phillipp, the well-known Milwaukee railroad expert, in the course of a speech at the third annual banquet of, etc.—Milwaukee Free Press.

The summary beginning may be handled in many different ways and allows perhaps more grammatical liberty than any other beginning. The summary may even be given a sentence by itself as in the following. This kind of treatment may easily be overdone and should be handled with great caution:

If you have acute mania, it is the proper thing to take the music cure. Miss Jessie A. Fowler says so, and she knows. Miss Fowler discussed "Music Hygienically" before the "Rainy Daisies" at the Hotel Astor yesterday and prescribed musical treatment for various brands of mania.—New York World.

5. Keynote Beginning.—Very closely related to the summary beginning is the keynote beginning, in which the subject of the main verb is an indirect presentation of the content of the speech. Whereas the summary beginning displays its resumé in a complete sentence, the keynote beginning puts the content of the speech in a single noun and its modifiers. Thus:

The ideal state university was the theme of a speech delivered by, etc.

The mission of the newspaper to tell the truth, to stand for high ideals, and to strive to have those ideals adopted by the public was the keynote of an address delivered by, etc.

6. Participial Beginning.—This is less common than the other kinds of indirect quotation beginnings but it is often very effective. The summary of the speech or the most striking statement is put into a participial phrase at the beginning and is made to modify the subject of the sentence (the speaker). It must of course be remembered that such a participial phrase can be used only to modify a noun, as an adjective modifies a noun, and can never be made the subject of a verb. Here is an example of good use of this beginning:

Upholding the right of public criticism of the courts on the theory that there can be no impropriety in investigating any act of a public official, Judge Kennesaw M. Landis last night addressed the students of Marquette College of Law and many members of the Milwaukee bar.—Milwaukee Free Press.

Just as it is perfectly possible to begin an indirect quotation lead with two that-clauses instead of one, it is also possible to use two participial phrases in the participial beginning; as:

Pleading for justice and human affection in dealing with the delinquent child, and urging the vital need of legislation which shall enforce parental responsibility, Mrs. Nellie Duncan made an address yesterday which stirred the sympathies of an attentive audience in the First Presbyterian Church.—San Francisco Examiner.

Although the participial phrase usually gives the summary of the speech, not infrequently the participial construction is used to play up the name of the speech or some other fact and the summary comes after the principal verb of the lead; thus:

Paying tribute to the memory of President William McKinley last night at the Metropolitan Temple, where exercises were held to dedicate the McKinley memorial organ, Judge Taft told in detail of his commission to the Philippine service and his subsequent intimate connection with the President.—New York Tribune.

7. Title Beginning.—There are two reasons for beginning the report of a public utterance with the speaker's subject or title. The title itself may be so broad that it makes a good summary of the speech, or it may be so striking in itself that it attracts interest at once. In the following examples the title is really a summary of the speech:

NEW YORK, Dec. 15.—"The Compensation of Employes for Injuries Received While at Work" was taken by J. D. Beck, commissioner of labor of Wisconsin, as the theme of his address before the National Civic Federation here today.—Milwaukee Free Press.

"The Emmanuel Movement" was the subject of an address by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the Free Synagogue yesterday morning.—New York Evening Post.

In the following stories the reporter began with the title evidently because it was so strikingly unusual and also because it was the title of a strikingly unusual speech by an unusual man. This kind of title beginning is always very effective:

"Booze, or Get on the Water Wagon," was the subject on which Rev. Billy Sunday, the baseball evangelist, addressed an audience of over 4,000 persons at the Midland Chautauqua yesterday afternoon. For two hours Sunday fired volley after volley at the liquor traffic.—Des Moines Capital.

"If Christ Came to Milwaukee" was the subject of the Rev. Paul B. Jenkin's Sunday night in Immanuel Presbyterian Church.—Milwaukee Sentinel.

8. Speaker Beginning.—It is obvious that this is the easiest beginning that may be used in the report of a speech. But just as obviously it is the beginning that should be least used. Just as in writing news stories a green reporter always attempts to begin every lead with the name of some person involved, in reporting a public discourse he has a strong desire to put the name of the speaker before what the speaker said. But the same tests may be applied to both cases. Are our readers more interested in what a man does than in the man himself; do our readers go to hear a given speaker because they wish to hear what he has to say or because they wish to hear him? Whenever the public is so interested in a man that it does not care what he says, then you may feel safe in beginning the report of what he says with his name. This test may be altered, especially in smaller cities, by previous interest in the speech; if the speech has been expected and looked forward to with interest, then, no matter if the speaker is the President himself, his name is not as good news as what he has to say. Even if the lead does begin with the speaker's name, the reporter usually tries to bring a summary of the speech or the most striking statement into the first sentence after the name. For example:

Speaker Joseph G. Cannon placed himself on record last night in favor of a revision of the tariff in accordance with the promise of the Republican party platform and declared that so far as his vote was concerned he would see to it that the announced policy of revision would be written in the national laws as soon as possible. The words of the speaker came at a luncheon given to six rear admirals of the United States navy by Alexander H. Revell of Chicago in the Union League Club, at which the need of more battleships and increased efficiency of the fighting forces of the republic were the principal themes of discussion.

This example was chosen because, while it is written in accordance with the rules of the speaker beginning, it is obviously too long and complicated—over 110 words. It would be better to gather it together and condense it as in the following:

Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot opened the second day's session of the national conservation congress yesterday by an address in which he expressed his entire satisfaction and his confidence in the attitude of President Taft toward conservating the national resources.—Milwaukee Sentinel.

ST. PAUL, Minn., Feb. 10.—Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee, Ala., in an address at the People's Church tonight predicted that within two years the liquor traffic would be driven out of all the southern states but two.—Milwaukee Sentinel.

There are obviously other beginnings that cannot be classed under any of the above heads. Some of them, much like the "freak" leads that may be seen in many newspapers of the present day, may be called free beginnings for want of a better name. These free beginnings are quite effective when properly handled but the novice must use them with fear and trembling. They may be witty or they may be sarcastic, but they are usually dangerous. The difference in the eight beginnings discussed above is mainly one of grammatical construction; the same fundamental ideas govern them all. Their purpose is always to play up a striking statement or a summary of the speech report and to give at the very outset the necessary explanation concerning the speech.

THE BODY OF THE REPORT

The body of the report of a speech is not so distinct from the lead as the body of an ordinary news story. In the news story it is safe to assume that many readers will not go beyond the lead, but in the report of a speech this is not so true. It is less possible to give the main facts in the lead of a speech report and the rest of the story is more necessary. Hence it must be written with as great care as the lead.

The body of the report should consist of direct quotation in so far as possible. The reader is interested in what the speaker said and it is impossible to make a summary in indirect discourse as convincing as the actual quotation of his words. Be sure that the quotations are the speaker's exact words or very nearly his exact words, so that he cannot accuse you of misquoting him. The spirit of his words must be in the quotation, anyway.

In these quotations nothing less than a complete sentence should be quoted. Do not patch together sentences of indirect and direct quotation, like the following—He said that some of us are prone to let things be as they are, "because the philanthropic rich help in our times of trouble and in sickness." Such quotation is worse than no direct quotation at all. Of course, this does not mean that one cannot add "said the speaker" to a direct quotation, but it means that "said the speaker" can be added only to quotations that are complete sentences. Furthermore whenever it is necessary to bring in "said the speaker," or similar expressions, they should be added at the end of the quoted sentence—the least emphatic part of a newspaper sentence.

Obviously a condensed report of a speech can only quote sentences here and there throughout the speech—the high spots of interest, as we called them before. These must not be quoted promiscuously and disconnectedly. The original speech had a logical order and set forth a logical train of thought. These should be followed as far as possible in the report. Bring in the quotations in their true order and fill the gaps between them with indirect discourse to knit them together and to give the report the coherence of the original speech. But do not carry this indirect explanation to the extent of making your copy a report of the speech in indirect discourse with occasional bits of direct quotation to illustrate. Remember that, after all, the direct quotation is the truly effective part of the speech.

Whenever a paragraph contains both direct and indirect quotation, the direct quotation should always precede the indirect. But it is much better to paragraph the two kinds of quotation separately, making each paragraph entirely of direct, or entirely of indirect, quotation. If a paragraph must contain both, begin it with the direct so that as the reader glances down the column he will see a quotation mark at the beginnings of most, if not all, of the paragraphs. By the same sign, when your notes are lacking in direct quotations, bring in as many of the quotations as possible at the beginning of the report and let the indirect summary occupy the end where it may be cut off by the editor if he does not wish to run it.

Here is a good illustration of a part of the body of a good speech report—it is the second paragraph of one of the stories quoted under the "Speaker" beginning above:

"I can not account for the moral revolution that is sweeping over the South," he continued. "The sentiment against whisky is deeper than the mere desire to get it away from the black man. That same sentiment is found in counties that contain no negro population. People who say that the law will not be enforced have not been in the South.—B. T. Washington's speech, Milwaukee Sentinel.

You will notice that although the above paragraph is composed entirely of direct quotation it has no quotation mark at the end. This is, of course, in accordance with the old rule of rhetoric which says that in a continuous quotation each paragraph shall begin with a quotation mark but only the last shall be closed by a quotation mark.

To illustrate the errors that may be made in reporting speeches we might write the above paragraph as follows:

Mr. Washington continued by saying that he could not account for the revolution that is sweeping over the South. "The sentiment against whisky is deeper than the mere desire to get it away from the black man." He says that "the same sentiment is found in counties that contain no negro population." People who say that the law will not be enforced "have not been in the South," according to Booker T. Washington.

The clumsiness of this mingling of direct and indirect quotation is very clear, as is the weakness of beginning with an explanation that is really subordinate.

Much more could be said about the reporting of speeches. Very few things will make a man so angry as the misquoting of his words. Therefore, whatever other faults your report of a speech may have, let it be accurate and truthful.

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