It is impossible to suppose that any daily newspaper could normally
regard the making of Pittsburgh Surveys, or even Interchurch Steel
Reports, as one of its tasks. News which requires so much trouble as
that to obtain is beyond the resources of a daily press. [Footnote: Not
long ago Babe Ruth was jailed for speeding. Released from jail just
before the afternoon game started, he rushed into his waiting
automobile, and made up for time lost in jail by breaking the speed
laws on his way to the ball grounds. No policeman stopped him, but a
reporter timed him, and published his speed the next morning. Babe
Ruth is an exceptional man. Newspapers cannot time all motorists. They
have to take their news about speeding from the police.]
The bad conditions as such are not news, because in all but
exceptional cases, journalism is not a first hand report of the raw
material. It is a report of that material after it has been stylized.
Thus bad conditions might become news if the Board of Health reported
an unusually high death rate in an industrial area. Failing an
intervention of this sort, the facts do not become news, until the
workers organize and make a demand upon their employers. Even then, if
an easy settlement is certain the news value is low, whether or not
the conditions themselves are remedied in the settlement. But if
industrial relations collapse into a strike or lockout the news value
increases.
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