A century ago, in an era when newspapers ruled the media world, the New York Herald enjoyed one of the highest circulations of any paper in America. Its publisher, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., was as well known (and controversial) as his two greatest competitors, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.
By 1924, however, just six years after Bennett’s death, this once popular journal gave up its identity when it merged with the New York Tribune.
But that’s not the end of the story. On July 4, 2008, the New York Herald was brought back to life as an online newspaper, favoring “keen observation, analysis and opinion over straight reporting.”
To mark this event, we have reprinted the “Don’t List” prescribed a century ago for the “reporters and copyreaders” on Bennett’s newspaper. Some of these guidelines (such as “Do not tell a story more than once” and “Don’t use suicide as a verb”) remain eminently sensible. Others, however, sound dated–if not downright bizarre.
In the following excerpt from the “Don’t List,” writers are told how to catch and hold a reader’s attention. Certainly some of this advice–to be direct, accurate, original, and precise–is timeless, regardless of the medium.
Dos and Don’ts for Writing for the Herald
- Get the news, and all the news.
- Outline your story before you begin to write.
- Reporters will find it to their advantage to put down a single fact, or a group of related facts, on one sheet of paper in making notes, so that they may readily and quickly arrange their material in logical sequence.
- Know the subject thoroughly and think straight.
- Write as well as you talk.
- Avoid long and involved sentences. Make them short and crisp. Do not try to fire your whole battery of details in the introduction.
- Do not tell a story more than once.
- The introduction is to give the reader a quick, illuminating flash and to hold his attention.
- Tell the story clearly and forcibly and keep away from worn and hackneyed phrases. Be original even if you take a chance. Dare to be as funny as you can. Don’t be afraid to say the same word over again if clearness requires it. Macaulay wasn’t.
- Shun the monotonous repetition of words, however, and especially avoid the use of the same word in different senses in the same paragraph.
- Avoid tiresome circumlocutions; write with interest and enthusiasm. Do not compose a story so that the readers feels the writer was watching himself go by. The highest art is that which conceals art.
- Master general principles of composition.
- Observe accurately, know the facts, think straight, write forcibly–for on these commandments rest all the rules of newspaper English.