XV HUMAN INTEREST STORIES

In our study of newspaper writing up to this point we have been entirely concerned with forms, rules, and formulas; every kind of story which we have studied has had a definite form which we have been charged to follow. We have been commanded always to put the gist of the story in the first sentence and to answer the reader's customary questions in the same breath. Now we have come to a class of newspaper stories in which we are given absolute freedom from conventional formulas. In fact, the human interest story is different from other newspaper stories largely because of its lack of forms and rules. It does not begin with the gist of its news—perhaps because it rarely has any real news—and it answers no customary questions in the first paragraph; its method is the natural order of narrative. The human interest story stands alone as the only literary attempt in the entire newspaper and, as such, a discussion of it can hardly tell more than what it is, without any great attempt to tell how to write it. For our purposes, the distinguishing marks of the human interest story are its lack of real news value and of conventional form, and its appeal to human emotions.

The human interest story has grown out of a number of causes. Up to a very recent time newspapers have been content with printing news in its barest possible form—facts and nothing but facts. Their appeal has been only to the brain. But gradually editors have come to realize that, if many monthly magazines can exist on a diet of fiction that appeals only to the emotions, a newspaper may well make use of some of the material for true stories of emotion that comes to its office. They have realized that newsiness is not the only essential, that a story does not always have to possess true news value to be worth printing—it may be interesting because it appeals to the reader's sympathy or simply because it entertains him. Hence they began to print stories that had little value as news but, however trivial their subject, were so well written that they presented the humor and pathos of everyday life in a very entertaining way. The sensational newspapers took advantage of the opportunity but they shocked their readers in that they tried to appeal to the emotions through the kind of facts that they printed, rather than through the presentation of the facts. They did not see that the effectiveness of the emotional appeal depends upon the way in which a human interest story is written, rather than upon the story itself. Therefore they shocked their readers with extremely pathetic facts presented in the usual newspaper way, while the journals which stood for high literary excellence were able to handle trivial human interest material very effectively. Now all the newspapers of the land have learned the form and are printing effective human interest stories every day.

Another reason behind the growth of the human interest story is the curse of cynicism which newspaper work imprints upon so many of its followers. Every editor knows that no ordinary reporter can work a police court or hospital run day after day for any length of time without losing his sensibilities and becoming hardened to the sterner facts in human life. Misfortune and bitterness become so common to him that he no longer looks upon them as misfortune and misery, but just as news. Gradually his stories lose all sympathy and kindliness and he writes of suffering men as of so many wooden ten-pins. When he has reached this attitude of cynicism, his usefulness to his paper is almost gone, for a reporter must always see and write the news from the reader's sympathetic point of view. To keep their reporters' sensibilities awake editors have tried various expedients which have been more or less successful. One of these is the "up-lift run" for cub reporters—a round of philanthropic news sources to teach them the business of reporting before they become cynical. Another is the human interest story. If a reporter knows that his paper is always ready and glad to print human interest stories full of kindliness and human sympathy, he is ever on the watch for human interest subjects and consequently forces himself to see things in a sympathetic way. Thus he unconsciously wards off cynicism. The search for human interest material is a modification of the "sob squad" work of the sensational papers, on more delicate lines.

A human interest story is primarily an attempt to portray human feeling—to talk about men as men and not as names or things. It is an attempt to look upon life with sympathetic human eyes and to put living people into the reports of the day's news. If a man falls and breaks his neck, a bald recital of the facts deals with him only as an animal or an inanimate name. The fact is interesting as one item in the list of human misfortunes, but no more. And yet there are many people to whom this man's accident is more than an interesting incident—it is a very serious matter, perhaps a calamity. To his family he was everything in the world; more than a mere means of support, he was a living human being whom they loved. The bald report of his death does not consider them; it does not consider the man's own previous existence. But if we could get into the hearts of his wife and his mother and his children, we could feel something of the real significance of the accident. This is what the human interest story tries to do. It does not necessarily strive for any effect, pathetic or otherwise, but tries simply to treat the victim of the misfortune as a human being. The reporter endeavors to see what in the story made people cry and then tries to reproduce it. In the same way in another minor occurrence, he attempts to reproduce the side of an incident that made people laugh. Either incident may or may not have had news value in its baldest aspect, but the sympathetic treatment makes the resulting human interest story worth printing.

There are various kinds of human interest stories. The common ground in them all is usually their lack of any intrinsic news value. Many a successful human interest story has been printed although it contained no one of the elements of news values that were outlined earlier in this book. In fact, one of the uses of the human interest story is to utilize newspaper by-products that have no news value in themselves. Hence the human interest story has no news feature to be played up and, since it does not contain any real news, it does not have to answer any customary questions. In form it is much like a short story of fiction, since it depends on style and the ordinary rules of narration. The absence of a lead, more than any other characteristic, distinguishes the human interest story from the news story, in form. We have worked hard to learn to play up the gist of the news in our news stories; now we come to a story which makes no attempt to play up its news—in fact, it may leave its most interesting content until the end and spring it as a surprise in the last line. To be sure, most human interest stories have and indicate a timeliness. The story may have no news value but it is always concerned with a recent event and usually tells at the outset when the event occurred. Almost without exception, the examples quoted in this chapter show their timeliness by telling in the first sentence when the event occurred. So much for the outward form of the human interest story.

1. Pathetic Story.—One of the many kinds of human interest stories is the pathetic story. Although it does not openly strive for pathos, it is pathetic in that it tells the story of a human misfortune, simply and clearly, with all the details that made the incident sad. It is the story that attempts to put the reader into the very reality of the pain and sorrow of every human life. Sometimes it makes him cry, sometimes it makes him shudder, and sometimes it disgusts him, but it always shows him misfortune as it really is. It looks down behind the outward actions and words into the hearts of its actors and shows us motives and feelings rather than facts. But just as soon as any attempt at pathos becomes evident, the story loses its effectiveness. Its only means are clear perception and absolute truthfulness. Here is an example of a pathetic human interest story taken from a daily paper:

Rissa Sachs' child mind yesterday evolved a tragic answer to the question, "What shall be done with the children of divorced parents?"

She took her life.

Rissa was 14 years old. The divorce decree that robbed her of a home was less than a week old. It was granted to her mother, Mrs. Mellisa Sachs, by Judge Brentano last Saturday.

When the divorce case was called for trial Rissa found that she would be compelled to testify. Reluctantly she corroborated her mother's story that her father, Benjamin Sachs, had struck Mrs. Sachs. It was largely due to this testimony that the decree was granted and the custody of the child awarded to Mrs. Sachs.

Then the troubles of the girl began in real earnest. She loved her mother dearly. But her father, who had been a companion to her as well as a parent, was equally dear to her.

Both parents pleaded with her. Mrs. Sachs told Rissa she could not live without her. The father told the girl, in a conversation in a downtown hotel several days ago, that he would disown her unless she went to live with him.

Every hour increased the perplexities of the situation for the child. She could not decide to give up either of her parents for fear of offending the other. So she sacrificed her own life and gave up both.

Thursday evening, on returning from school to the Sachs home at 4529 Racine avenue, Rissa talked long and earnestly with her mother. Then she retired to her room, turned on the gas and, clothed, lay down upon her bed to await death and relief from troubles that have driven older heads to despair.

At the inquest yesterday afternoon the grief-stricken mother told the story of her daughter's difficulties. She said that Rissa had declared she could not live if compelled to give up either of her parents, but added that she never had believed it.—Chicago Record-Herald.

This is a pathetic human interest story in that it attempts to give the human significance of an incident which in itself would have little news value. Perhaps, in the matter of words, there is a slight straining for pathos. The form, it will be noted, is decidedly different from that of a news story on the same incident and, although the timeliness is given in the first line, there is no attempt to present the gist of the story in a formal lead. The source of the news is indicated in the last paragraph.

2. Humorous Story.—Another kind of human interest story is the humorous story. Its humor, like the pathos of a pathetic story, does not come from an attempt to be funny, but from the truthful presentation of a humorous incident, from the incongruity and ludicrousness of the incident itself. The writer tries to see what elements in a given incident made him laugh and then portrays them so clearly and truthfully that his readers cannot help laughing with him. The subject may be the most trivial thing in the world, not worth a line as a news story, and yet it may be told in such a way that it is worth a half-column write-up that will stand out as the gem of the whole edition. But after all the effectiveness depends upon the humor in the original subject and the truthfulness of the telling. The following humorous human interest story, which occupied a place on the front page, was built up out of an incident almost devoid of news value:

One of Johnnie Wilt's original ideas for entertaining his twin sister Charlotte is to build a big bonfire on the floor of their playroom.

Johnnie, who is 4 years old, carried his plan into execution at the Wilt home, 2474 Lake View avenue, for the first time yesterday afternoon, with results that made a lasting impression upon his mind and the finishings of the interior of the house.

The thing was suggested to him by a bonfire he saw a man build in the street. Charlotte hadn't seen the other fire. For some reason Charlotte's feminine mind refused to understand just what the fire was like.

Consequently nothing remained for Johnnie to do but build a fire of his own. He piled all of the newspapers and playthings that could be found in the middle of the room and then applied a match.

When the flames leaped to the ceiling, however, and a cloud of smoke filled the room, Johnnie began to doubt the wisdom of the move. While Charlotte ran to tell a maid he retreated to that haven of youthful fugitives—the space beneath a couch.

The frightened maid summoned the fire engines and the fire was soon extinguished. But Mrs. Wilt discovered that Johnnie had disappeared. She telephoned to Charles T. Wilt, president of the trunk company that bears his name, and half hysterically told of the fire and the disappearance of Johnnie.

Just then there was a scrambling sound from beneath the couch. Johnnie, looking as serious as a 4-year-old face can look, walked out.

Mrs. Wilt seized him and, to an accompaniment of "I-won't-do-it-agains," crushed him to her bosom. Last reports from the Wilt home were that Johnnie had not yet been punished for his deed.—Chicago Record-Herald.

The student will notice how all the facts of the story and the answers to the reader's questions are worked in here and there, how the content of a news story lead is scattered throughout the entire account.

3. Writing the Human Interest Story.—It is one thing to be able to distinguish material for a human interest story and another to be able to write the story. The whole effectiveness of the story, as we have seen, depends upon the way it is written. Many a poorly written, ungrammatical news story is printed simply because it contains facts that are of interest, regardless of the way in which they are presented. But never is a poorly written human interest story printed; simply because the facts in it have little interest themselves and the story's usefulness depends entirely upon the presentation of the facts. Hence, the human interest story, more than any other newspaper story, must be well written. And yet there are no rules to assist in the writing of such a story. In fact, its very nature depends upon originality and newness in form and treatment.

In the first place, we cannot fall back upon the conventional lead for a beginning, because a lead would be out of place. As we have said before, the human interest story does not begin with a lead for the reason that it has no striking news content to present in the lead. In many cases the whole story depends upon cleverly arranged suspense; if the content is given in a lead at the beginning suspense is of course impossible. The human interest story has no more need of a lead than does a short story—in some ways a human interest story is very much like a short story—and a short story that gives its climax in the first paragraph would hardly be written or read. But, just like the short story, a human interest story must begin in an attractive way. In the study of short story writing almost half of the study is devoted to learning how to begin the story, on the theory that the reader is some sort of a fugitive animal that must be lassoed by an attractive and interesting beginning. The theory is of course a true one and it holds good in the case of human interest stories.

But no rules can be laid down to govern the beginning of human interest or short stories. Each story must begin in its own way—and each must begin in a different way. Some writers of short stories begin with dialogue, others with a clean-cut witticism, others with attractive explanation or description, others with a clever apology. The list is endless. This endless list is ready for the reporter who is trying to write human interest stories. But the choosing must be his own. He must select the beginning that seems best adapted to his story. As an inspiration to reporters who are trying to write human interest stories, a few beginnings clipped from daily papers are given here. Some are good and some are bad; the goodness or badness in each case depends upon individual taste. They can hardly be classified in more than a general way for originality is opposed to all classifications. They are merely suggestions.

A striking quotation or a bit of apt dialogue is commonly used to attract attention to a story. Here are some examples:

"Burglars," whispered Mrs. Vermilye to herself and she took another furtive peek out of the windows of her rooms on the sixth floor of the, etc.

"Speaking of peanuts," observed the man with the red whiskers, "they ain't the only thing in the world what is small." Etc.

"Ales, Wines, Liquors and Cigars!" You see this sign in the windows of every corner life-saving station. But what would you say if you saw it blazing over the entrance to the Colony Club, that rendezvous for the little and big sisters of the rich at Madison avenue and Thirtieth street? Etc.

WANTED—Bright educated lady as secretary to business man touring northwest states and Alaska: give reference, ability; age, description. Address E-640, care Bee.

(7)-680 19x.

The above innocent appearing want ad in The Bee, although alluring in its prospects to a young woman desiring a summer vacation, is the principal factor in the arrest of one M. W. Williams, etc.

A well-written first sentence in a human interest story often purports to tell the whole story, like a news story lead, and really tells only enough to make you want to read further. Here are a few examples:

His son's suspicions and a can opener convinced Andrew Sherrer last Saturday that he had been fleeced out of $500 by two clever manipulators of an ancient "get-something-for-nothing" swindle. So strong was the victim's confidence, etc.

There's a stubborn, unlaid ghost, a gnome, a goblin, a swart fairy at the least, who has settled down for the winter in a perfectly respectable cellar over in Brooklyn and whiles away the dismal hours of the night by chopping spectral cordwood with a phantom axe. Instead of going to board with Mrs. Pepper or another medium and being of some use in the world and having a pleasant, dim-lighted cabinet all its own, this unhappy ghost—or ghostess—is pestering Marciana Rose of 1496 Bergen street, who owns the cellar and the house over it—over both the ghost and the cellar. Etc.

The gowk who calls up 3732 Rector today will get a splinter in his finger if he scratches his head. Nothing doing with 3732 Rector. From early morn till dewy eve Mr. Fish, Mr. C. Horse, Mr. Bass, Mr. Skate and other inmates of the aquarium will be inaccessible by 'phone. Etc.

Under all the saffron banners and the sprawling dragons clawing at red suns over the roofs of Chinatown yesterday there was a tension of unrest and of speculation. It all had to do with the luncheon to be given to his Imperial Highness Prince Tsai Tao and the members of his staff at the Tuxedo Restaurant, 2 Doyers street, at noon to-morrow. Etc.

Man and wife, sitting side by side as pupils, was the interesting spectacle which provided the feature of the elementary night school opening last night. Etc.

Two young Germans of Berlin, neither quite 18 years of age, had a perfectly uncorking time aboard the White Star liner Majestic, in yesterday. They were favorites with the smoke-room stewards. They learned later that man is born unto trouble as the corks fly upward. Etc.

It was a long black overcoat with a velvet collar, big cuffed sleeves, and broad of shoulder, and looked decidedly warm and comfy. It stood in one of the large display windows of ——, and covered the deficiencies of a waxy dummy, who stared in a surprised sort of manner out into the street and appeared to be looking at nothing. Etc.

The bellboys put him up to it and then Marcus caused a lot of trouble. Marcus is a parrot who has been spending the winter in one of the large Broadway hotels. Etc.

Lame, old, but uncomplaining, remembering only his joy when a visitor came to him, and forgetting to be bitter because of the wrongs done him, meeting his rescuer with a wag of the tail meant to be joyful, a St. Bernard dog set an example, etc.

Some human interest stories begin, and effectively, too, with a direct personal appeal to the reader; thus:

If you've never seen anybody laugh with his hands, you should have eased yourself up against a railing at the Barnum and Bailey circus in Madison Square Garden yesterday afternoon and watched a band of 250 deaf mute youngsters, all bedecked in their bestest, signalling all over the Garden. Etc.

If you've ever sat in the enemy's camp when the Blue eleven lunged its last yard for a touchdown and had your hair ruffled by the roar that swept across the gridiron, you can guess how 1,500 Yale men yelled at the Waldorf last night for Bill Taft of '78. Etc.

A question is often used at the beginning of a human interest story:

A near-suicide or an accident. Which? Keeper Bean is somewhat puzzled to say which, but it is quite certain it will not be tried again. At least, Keeper Bean does not think it will.

But, it was a sad, sad Sunday for the little white-faced monkey. For hours he lay as dead, etc.

Many of these stories, animal or otherwise, begin with a name:

Long Tom, a Brahma rooster that had been the "bad inmate" of Jacob Meister's farm at West Meyersville, N. J., for three years, paid the penalty of his crimes Christmas morning when he was beheaded after his owner had condemned him to death. Bad in life, he was good in a potpie that day, etc.

The beginning of a human interest story is always the most important part; just like a news story, it must attract attention with its first line. In the same way, a good beginning is something more than half done. But here the similarity between the two ends. The news story, after the lead is written, may slump in technique so that the end is almost devoid of interest; the human interest story, on the other hand, must keep up its standard of excellence to the very last sentence and the last line must have as much snap as the first. It is never in danger of losing its last paragraph and so it may be more rounded and complete; it must follow a definite plan to the very end and then stop. In this it is like the short story, although it seldom has a plot. There are no rules to help us in writing any part of the human interest story. Each attempt has a different purpose and must be done in a different way. Yet the reporter must know before he begins just exactly how he is going to work out the whole story. He must plan it as carefully as a short story. A few minutes of careful thought before he begins to write are better than much reworking and alteration after the thing is done. This applies to all newspaper writing.

Much of the effectiveness of the human interest story depends upon the reporter's style. When we try to write human interest stories we are no longer interested in facts, as much as in words. Our readers are not following us to be informed, but to be entertained. And we can please them only by our style and the fineness of our perception. Although we have been told to write news stories in the common every-day words of conversation, we are not so limited in the human interest story. The elegance of our style depends very largely upon the size of our vocabulary, and elegance is not out of place in this kind of story. Although we have been told to use dialogue sparingly in news stories, our human interest story may be composed entirely of dialogue. In fact, we are hampered by no restrictions except the restrictions of English grammar and literary composition. Although we have sought simplicity of expression before, we may now strive for subtlety and for effect; we may write suggestively and even obscurely. We are dealing with the only part of the newspaper that makes any effort toward literary excellence and only our originality and cleverness can guide us.

It is hardly necessary to repeat that one cannot write human interest stories in a cynical tone. They are a reaction against cynicism. They require one to feel keenly, as a human being, and to write sympathetically, as a human being. The reporter must see behind the facts and get the personal side of the matter—and feel it. Then he must tell the story just as he sees and feels it. Absolute truthfulness in the telling is as necessary as keen perception in the seeing. Humor must be sought through the simple, truthful presentation of an incongruous or humorous idea or situation; pathos must be sought by the truthful presentation of a pathetic picture. Just as soon as the reporter tries to be funny or to be pathetic he fails, for the reader is not looking to the reporter for fun or pathos—but to the story that the reporter is telling. That is, the story must be written objectively; the writer must forget himself in his attempt to impress the story upon his reader's mind. If the story itself is fundamentally humorous or sad and the story is clearly and truthfully told with all the details that make it humorous or sad, it cannot help being effective.

The best way to learn how to write human interest stories is to study human interest stories. Most papers print them nowadays—they can easily be distinguished by their lack of news value, and of a lead—and the finest example is just as likely to crop out in a little weekly as in a metropolitan daily.

4. The Animal Story.—The examples printed earlier in this chapter are specimens of the truest type of human interest story because they deal with human beings. They derive their joy or sorrow from things that happen to men and women. But all the sketches that are classed as human interest stories are not so carefully confined to the limits of the title. From the original human interest story the type has grown until it includes many other things—almost any piece of copy that has no intrinsic news value. Every possible subject that may suit itself to a pathetic or humorous treatment and thus be interesting, although it has no news value, is roughly classed as a human interest story.

One of these outgrowths of the true human interest sketch is the animal story. In the large cities, the "zoo" and the parks have become a fruitful source of "news." Anything interesting that may happen to the monkeys, or the elephant, the sparrows or the squirrels in the parks, horses or dogs in the street, is used as the excuse for a human interest story. Sometimes the purpose is pathos and sometimes it is humor, but, whatever it may be, if it is clever and interesting it gets its place in the paper, a place entirely out of proportion to its true news value. The results sometimes verge very close upon nature faking, but after all they are only the result of the "up-lift" idea of looking at all life in a more sympathetic way. Several of the beginnings quoted earlier in this chapter belong to animal stories and the following is a complete one:

Smithy Kain was only a mongrel, horsemen will say, but in his equine heart there coursed the blood of thoroughbreds.

Smithy Kain was killed yesterday afternoon, shot through the head, while thousands of Wisconsin fair patrons looked on in shuddering sympathy.

It was a tragedy of the track.

Owners, trainers and drivers always are quick to declare that no greater courage is known than that possessed and demonstrated by race horses in hard-fought battles on the turf, and the truth of this was never more strikingly brought home than in the death of Smithy Kain yesterday.

With a left hind foot snapped at the fetlock, Smithy Kain raced around the track, his valiant spirit and unfaltering gameness keeping him up until he had completed the course in unwavering pursuit of the flying horses in front. Every jump meant intense agony, but he would not quit. Not until near the finish did his strength give out, and not until then was the pitiable truth discovered. Men used to exhibitions of gameness in tests that try the soul looked on in mute admiration as Smithy Kain shivered and stumbled from the pain that rapidly sapped his life. Women cried openly.

Two shots from the pistol of a park policeman ended the life and sufferings of the horse that was only a mongrel, but who, in his equine way, was a thoroughbred of thoroughbreds.

Smithy Kain gave to his master the best that his animal mind and soul possessed. No better memorial can be written even of man himself.

5. The Special Feature Story.—One step beyond the animal story is the special feature story. This kind of story is classed with the human interest story because it has no news value and because its only purpose is to entertain or to inform in a general way; and yet it rarely contains any human interest. There is no space in this book for a complete discussion of the special feature story—an entire volume might be devoted to the subject—but this form of story is often seen in the news columns of the daily papers and deserves a mention here. Ordinarily the special feature story is not written by reporters, although there is no reason why reporters should not use in this way many of the facts that come to them. The story usually comes from outside the newspaper office, from a contributor, from a syndicate, or from some other daily, weekly, or monthly publication; however a word or two here may suggest to the reporter the possibility of adding to his usefulness by writing such stories for his paper.

The special feature story may be almost anything. The name is used to designate timely magazine articles, timely write-ups for the Sunday edition, and timely squibs for the columns of the daily papers. The last use is the one that interests us and it interests us because it is very closely related to the human interest story. The editors usually call it a feature story because it is worth printing in spite of the fact that it has no news value. In this and in its timeliness it is like the human interest story. But it is not written for humor or pathos; its purpose is to entertain the reader. Its method is largely expository and its style may be anything; it may explain or it may simply comment in a witty way. The utilizing of otherwise useless by-products of the news is its purpose—in this it is very much like the animal story.

Subjects for feature stories may come from anywhere and may be almost anything. A very common kind of feature story is the weather story that many newspapers print every day. The weather is taken as the excuse for two or three stickfuls of print which explain and comment upon weather conditions, past, present and future. Growing out of this, there is the season story which deals with any subject that the season may suggest: the closing of Coney Island, the spring styles in men's hats, the first fur overcoat, Commencement presents, Easter eggs—anything in season. Further removed from the human interest story is the timely write-up which has no other purpose than to explain, in a more or less serious or sensible way, any interesting subject that comes to hand. The story purports not only to entertain but to inform as well. It has no news value and yet it is usually timely. Here are a few subjects selected at random from the daily papers: "He'll pay no tax on cake," explaining in a humorous way the customs methods that held up the importation of an Italian Christmas cake; "Clearing House for Brains," a description of the new employment bureau of the Princeton Club of New York; "Ideal man picked by the Barnard girl," a humorous resumé of some Barnard College class statistics; "Winning a Varsity Letter," telling what a varsity letter stands for, how it is won, and what the customs of the various colleges in regard to letters are; "Jerry Moore raises a record corn crop," telling how a fifteen-year-old boy won prizes with a little patch of corn.

These are just a few suggestions to open up to the reporter the vast field for special feature articles. To be sure, many of them are submitted by outsiders, but there is no reason why a reporter should not write these stories as well as human interest stories for his paper, since he is in the best position to get the material. Whenever a special feature story becomes too large for the daily edition there is always a possibility of selling it to the Sunday section or to a monthly magazine. The writing of special feature stories is directly in line with the reporter's work, because the ordinary method of gathering facts for a feature article and arranging them in an interesting, newsy way follows closely the method by which a reporter covers and writes a news story. Hence almost without exception the most successful magazine feature writers are, or have been, newspaper reporters.

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