the tenth-story window to the street
below adds a thrill of the yellow "write up." The two prime requisites
for an ideal yellow newspaper, as that prince of yellow editors, Arthur
Brisbane, once told me, are sport for the men and love for the women;
and as the Hearst papers have secured their great circulation by
putting in practice this discovery, we find the other papers are
consciously or unconsciously copying them. A typographical revolution
has thus been brought about, as well as a general deterioration of
reporting. Even in papers of the highest character an over-indulgence
in headlines is coming into vogue, while the reporter is allowed too
often to treat the unimportant and most personal events in a
picturesque or facetious way without regard to truthfulness. On a
lecture trip West last winter, a reporter of one of the most
respectable and influential papers in the country asked if I was going
to attack anybody in my speech, or say anything that would "stir up the
mud." When I said I hoped not, he replied that it would not be
necessary for him to attend the lecture. "Just give me the title, and
the first and last sentences," said he, "and I'll write up an account
of it at my desk in the office."

Sometimes, by this method of reporting, a serious injury is done to the
individual. A reporter on the New York "Times" wrote up last winter a
sensational account of the marriage of the head worker of the
University Settlement on the East Side to a young leader of one of the
girls' classes. The marriage was performed by one of the officers of
the Society of Ethical Culture, who are expressly authorized by the New
York legislature to officiate on such occasions. And yet the reporter
called the marriage an "ethical" one, putting the word "ethical" in
quotation marks and also the word "Mrs.," to which the bride was
morally and legally entitled, implying that the marriage was irregular,
and indicated a tendency towards free love. Though many letters of
protest were written to the "Times" about this, the "Times" made no
editorial apology for a breach of journalistic ethics, which should
have cost the reporter who wrote the article and probably the managing
editor who passed it their positions.

It is this lack of sense of the fitness of things that would make the
average reporter scribble away for dear life, if, when the President's
message on the tariff was being read in Congress, a large black cat had
happened to walk up