3. News Sources.=--There are certain sources from which the paper gets
most of its tips of expected events and its knowledge of unexpected
events. These every editor knows about. The courts, the public records,
the public offices, the churches, and the schools furnish a great many
of the tips of expected news. The police stations, the fire stations,
the hospitals, and the morgues furnish most of the tips of unexpected
news. Whenever an event is going to happen, or whenever an unexpected
occurrence does happen, a notice of it is to be found in some one of
these sources. Such a notice or a casual word from any one is called a
"tip" and indicates the possibility of securing a story. The securing of
the story is another matter. A would-be reporter may get good practice
from studying the stories in the daily papers and trying to discover or
imagine from what source the original news tip came. He will soon find
that certain classes of stories always come from certain sources and
that there is a perceptible amount of routine evident in the accounts
of the most unexpected occurrences.

=4. Runs and Assignments.=--Between the news tip and the finished copy
for the compositor there is a vast amount of news gathering, which falls
to the lot of the reporter. This is handled by a system of runs and
special assignments. A reporter usually has his own run, or beat, on
which he gathers news. His run may cover a certain number of police
stations or the city hall or any group of regular news sources. Each day
he must visit the various sources of news on his beat and gather the
tips and whatever facts about the stories behind the tips that he can.
The tips that he secures furnish him with clues to the stories, and it
is his business to get the facts behind all of the tips on his beat and
to write them up, unless a tip opens up a story that is too big for him
to handle alone without neglecting his beat.

Assignments are used to cover the stories that do not come in through
the regular sources, and to handle the big stories that are unearthed on
the regular beats. The editor turns over to the reporter the tip that he
has received and instructs him to go out and get the facts. A paper's
best reporters are used almost entirely on assignments, and when they go
out after a story they practically become detectives. They follow every
clue that the tip suggests and every clue that is opened up as they
progress; they hunt down the facts until the