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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 21, 1940)
1 Thursday, March 21, 1940 I 8 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN r. 1 m i ,i..trm ' 1 w m i.'," '., " ' v ' '.'' ........ ,. i .n mm 11 v -tv.'. - CU -own Lux"-. w 1 - F .... :iim 1 ,A 1 a i:S : ;.:..:: 1 t - I r s -1 li f jy .y. y- vt. i?,.' .. ' "" r. .-. y.: T.-;.::- . .X 'W '. They also Serve who only Stand and Wait1 IN THf WEfK ProB NEW YEAR'S, 1940, ImmWwI wu quiet as Wall Street on a Sunday. Robert Canuti, the AP's English-educated Turkish correspondent, hadn't had a first-class story for almost three months not since the Turko-British treaty handed the Kremlin a short aod snappy answer. But while man was doting, Nature woke. Be neath the surface of ancient Asia Minor, subter ranean ledges lost their age-long balance, slipped and skidded sideways. The first totals of homeless, dead, and injured usually exaggerated in such disasters were not ex aggerated this time. Pictures that came by "slow camel" added to the terrible tale. It was the biggest earthquake story since Yokohama, And Robert Canuti, his months of waiting ended, bad it on the wires to the western world before it was known in the streets of Istanbul. At once, the machinery of international relief began to whir, and help was on the way. Most people think of Press Association men a daring young acrobats of the newspaper world, always somersaulting from one hot story to another . , . now in Tokio, next in Singapore now in Buch arest, soon at Brussels. But the complete, the almost miraculous, world cOYcrage of the great Press Services comes from men who mostly stand and wait. Correspondents like Robert Canuti in the quieter capitals and the thousands of "stringers," in the world's little towns and villages, so-called because they paste their infre quent dispatches into a string and measure their payment by the inch, Mea like these form the nerve ends of the wire Sirvices indispensable divisions of journalism's army of 300,000 nvecu The development ot the ; world-wide Press Serv ices, accurate, unbiased, and unsubsidized, is an American achievement. It is an outstanding eain plc of American organizing genius and it has aM happened within the lifetime of most news-readers now living. More than that, the Press Services are the standard bearers, throughout the world, of the 20th century American tradition of accuracy and fair play in news-reporting. Something new under the sun. It wasn't until the 1890s that the dream of the modern Associated Press began to take form. A few courageous pioneers Victor Lawson, Frank B. Noyes, Melville Stone, and Adolph Ochs worked zealously for it, and in time press associations began pointing eager fingers at the map of the world and putting new correspondents wherever a fat dot showed aa important city. By the time an emperor with a withered arm unleashed the hounds of war in 1914, U. S. Press Services had spun their webs around the globe. AP's now seasoned network was being kept on its mettle by a lusty young competitor, an independent service called United Pre, fathered in 1907 by L W. Scripps. Due chiefly to the vision of these pioneers, the U. S., in less than half a century, has shed its news provincialism. Today. . . let a flood sweep down the Yangtze, a strike begin in Melbourne, a regiment revok in Addis Ababa, and in a matter of minutes or hours the teletypes in Uk U. S. be gin to chatter. rtASH-calb the foreign ca ble, and begins gasping out its own curt, staccato lan guage ... SMORNrNG FRENCH CIUISER Alt BOMBED IN ENG LISH channel. "Flash," calb the New York operator. "French cruiser bombed." A rewrite man works frantically, and soon the fingers of another operator start the electric current flow ing. Operators in Philadelphia, Chicago, and al most a score of other U. S. cities stand up crying "Flash." In a few seconds, every cranny of the U. S. will have the news. From 50,000 news sources all over the globe, this river of news flows day and night. For while Amer ica sleeps, one half the world is wide-awake, busy getting into and out of trouble, busy making that vivid, perishable stuff called news. To every self-respecting newspaper, Press Asso ciation news is the breath of life. A paper pays for as much of it as it can afford and use. A country weekly can have as little as $18 worth a week, a metropolitan daily as much as $2,500. But whether a paper gets "pony" or multiple wire service, it counts its Press Association service as perhaps its most valuable asset, Press Association news is just as indispensable to The Weekly Newsmagazine as to a daily newspaper. To be sure, TIME has its own special correspondents, too its own force of 500 news-scouts its own check-and-query system. But the stories from the daring acrobats and the quiet watchers of the Press Associations supply a basic pattern of the world's news ... the vital pat tern, which in the Newsmagazine becomes the con tinuing narrative history of our times, followed every week by 700,000 cover-to-cover readers. This it one of a series of advertisements in which the Editors of Timi hope to give College Students a clearer picture of the world of newt (theriog, newt-writing, and news-readinf-aod the part TIMI plavt in helping you to grasp, meamre, and ute the hittory of your lifetime at you live the Mory of your life. fgTIME VEEK LY H E17S MAGAZINE 1