ry definite caution must be given
concerning the organization of the story,--the necessity of presenting
facts with judicial impartiality. When the reporter is arranging his
material preparatory to writing, casting away a note here and jotting
down another there, he can easily warp the whole narrative by an unfair
arrangement of details or a prejudiced point of view. Frequently a story
may be woefully distorted by the mere suppression of a single fact. A
newspaper man has no right willfully to keep back information or to
distort news. Unbiased stories, or stories as nearly unbiased as
possible, are what newspapers want. And while one may legitimately order
one's topics to produce a particular effect of humor, pathos, joy, or
sorrow, one should never allow the desire for an effect to distort the
presentation of the facts.

IX. THE LEAD[11]

[11] Before reading this chapter, the student should examine
the style book in the Appendix, particularly that part
dealing with the preparation of copy for the city desk.

=100. Instructions from the City Editor.=--Before beginning the story,
the reporter should stop at the city editor's desk, give him in as few
words as possible an account of what he has learned, and ask for
instructions about handling the story, about any feature or features to
play up. The city editor may not offer any advice at all, may simply say
to write the story for what it is worth. In such a case, the reporter is
at liberty to go ahead as he has planned; and he should have his copy on
the city editor's desk within a very few minutes. The city editor,
however, may tell him to feature a certain incident and to write it up
humorously. If the reporter has observed keenly, he himself will already
have chosen the same incident and may still proceed with the writing as
he planned on the way back to the office. A careful study of
instructions given reporters will quickly convince one, however, that in
nine cases out of ten the city editor takes his cue from the reporter
himself, that in the reporter's very mood and method of recounting what
he has learned, he suggests to the city editor the features and the tone
of the story, and is merely given back his own opinion verified. Not
always is this the case, however. One reporter on a Southern daily--and
a star man, too--used to say that he could never predict what his city
editor would want featured. So he used always to come into the office