S THE DAILY NEBRASKAN Thursday, April 25, 1940
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NINETEEN MINUTES before a big city newspaper's
first edition goes to press. Page by page, a
itory starts coming across the city editor's desk.
The city editor reaches for his phone, calls the
make up editor in the composing room. "How w
doing?" he asks. "This City Hall story looks pretty
hot."
"We're going to be tight. Keep it down," warns
tfee make-up editor. "We can't squeeae the Wash
ington story another inch."
"Okay," responds the city editor. He looks at the
penciled layout for Page One, scribbles some fig
ures in the upper corner of the sheet of copy, and
with an expert twit sends it sailing onto the big
horseshoe desk next to his own.
"We're tight, Mac," he calls to the man in the sloe
Cut it a third."
Seventeen minutes now to the deadline . . . only
ten for cutting', editing, headline-writing. For those
vital ten minutes, die responsibility rests on the
shouljcrs of the man in the slot . . . newspaper par
lance for the head of the copy desk.
A dozen considerations flash their chain light
ning patterns across the slot man's mind. Tyler's
story .. .Tyler the brilliant and touchy. He got it
out of that certain municipal department which is
giving off a faintly gamy odor. The boss will want
it in all editions. This isn't the big break though,
just another build-up to it. Damn good story... real
stuff in every paragraph. Hard to cut. Needs a head
line with sock. Who's to handle it? Ward's fooling
round with that zoo story . . . Won't do, his cuts
make Tyler sore. Colihan's a better bet.
"Colihan," says the man in the slot. One of the
furious pcncil-wieUcrs around the rim of the horse
shoe looks up. "Cut this a third and put a thirty-six
head on. it in time doc the bulldog."
All this has used up fifteen seconds.
Colihan has nine and a half minutes to cut and
edit and write a top headline and sub-headline.
Every line of both headlines must count exactly so
many characters and spaces, figuring i as a half and
m and u one and a half characters.
Then the slot man will take just fifteen seconds
more to review Colihan's work, change "banned"
to "curbed," sniff the whole concoction for traces of
libel, and shoot it to the news editor in tbc compos
ing room.
It is a shorter story than Tyler's original, and a
better one-keener of edge, swifter of impact, yet
complete in every essential dctaiL
The slot is not a glamorous job. It hasn't been
discovered by Shubert Alley or the fiction maga
zines. To the cub reporter, eager for by-lines and
sclf-cxpression, the whole copy desk looks like a
backwater. It takes matutity grasp of the whole
art of news presentation to appreciate the little
miracles that a good copy desk passes.
Among the men who write and edit The Weekly
Newsmagazine, the man in the slot and the men on
the rim are held in greater re
spect, perhaps, than in their
own city rooms, tor more
than any other newspapermen
in the business, TIME men
write with the consciousness
that they must cut, prune,
hone, concentrate, and distil.
The fight against the clock is
not so desperate on a weekly,
but the battle for each line of
space is many times fiercer.
And the raw material for
each issue is mountain-high . . . product of time's
own 75 correspondents, 500 news scouts, and the
100.000 correspondents and reporters of all the na
tion's newspapers and wire services, throughout
whole week of the world's activities.
Journalism in the U. S. A. pours out millions of
words rich week; TIME'S limit is some thirty thou
sand. And when every word must do the work of a
dozen, it needs to be a better word, and more eco
nomically joined to its fellows. Nouns must paint
landscapes, adjectives must do portraits, verbs must
shoot straight.
Each story in TIME must be direct, keen, com
plete; each story must earn its place as an essential
link in understanding the world's news of the week.
y TIME has developed the art of news condensation,
as practiced by the slot men and rim men of the
dailies, to a new high. For every issue of TIME is
"tight" its limit that irreducible minimum of
news every intelligent man and woman must know.
Which is one reason why TIME has won the genuine
devotion of 700.000 busy familics-with their ranks
growing deeper every week.
This it one of a eries of advertisements ia
which the Editors of TIME hope to give College
Student! a clearer picture of the world of new
gathering, newt-writing, and newt-reading and
the part TIMI playt in helping you to gratp,
measure, and use the history of your lifetime at
you live the story of your life.
ME
TH WEEKLY NEVSMAGAZI N E
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