places where it keeps what it has of conscience. That'll come later. Now
where shall I begin?"

"With the structure of the business."

"All right. A newspaper is divided into three parts. News is the
merchandise which it has to sell. Advertising is the by-product that
pays the bills. The editorial page is a survival. At its best it
analyzes and points out the significance of important news. At its
worst, it is a mouthpiece for the prejudices or the projects of whoever
runs it. Few people are influenced by it. Many are amused by it. It
isn't very important nowadays."

"I intend to make it so on the 'Clarion.'"

Ellis turned upon him a regard which carried with it a verdict of the
most abandoned juvenility, but made no comment. "News sways people more
than editorials," he continued. "That's why there's so much tinkering
with it. I'd like to give you a definition of news, but there isn't any.
News is conventional. It's anything that interests the community. It
isn't the same in any two places. In Arizona a shower is news. In New
Orleans the boll-weevil is news. In Worthington anything about your
father is news: in Denver they don't care a hoot about your father; so,
unless he elopes or dies, or buys a fake Titian, or breaks the
flying-machine record, or lectures on medical quackery, he isn't news
away from home. If Mrs. Festus Willard is bitten by a mad dog, every
dog-chase for the week following is news. When a martyred suffragette
chews a chunk out of the King of England, the local meetings of the
Votes-for-Women Sorority become a live topic. If ever you get to the
point where you can say with certainty, 'This is news; that isn't,'
you'll have no further need for me. You'll be graduated."

"Where does a paper get its news?"

"Through mechanical channels, mostly. If you read all the papers in
town,--and you'll have to do it,--you'll see that they've got just about
the same stuff. Why shouldn't they have? The big, clumsy news-mill
grinds pretty impartially for all of them. There's one news source at
Police Headquarters, another at the City Hall, another in the financial
department, another at the political headquarters, another in the
railroad offices, another at the theaters, another in society, and so
on. At each of these a reporter is stationed. He knows his own kind of
news as it comes to him, ready-made, and, usually, not much else. Then
there's the general, unclassified news of the city that drifts in partly