fire engines. A
narrow escape from death does not always excuse the beginning, "Scores
killed and injured would have been the result, _if_----" All beginnings
of this kind give a false impression and do not tell the truth. If a
story has no striking feature be satisfied to tell the truth about it
without trying to make a world-wide disaster out of it for the sake of a
place on the front page. Exaggeration for a feature is one of the bad
elements of sensational journalism. For example, seven lives were lost
in this fire, but this is the way the story was written, for the sake of
a three-column scare-head:

| That 500 sleeping babes and 100 more |
|who were kneeling in prayer in St. |
|Malachi's Home, a Roman Catholic |
|institution for the care of orphans at |
|Rockaway Park, are alive to-day is due to|
|the coolness of the nuns in charge and |
|the children's remembrance of their |
|teacher's fire drills. |

The suspense is built up in such a way that at the end of the lead we do
not know what happened and read on with breathless interest to find that
there was a small fire at the Home and seven children were burned.

=The Body of the Story.=--"A good beginning is half done," according to
the proverb. In writing a news story a good beginning is more than half
done--two-thirds at least. The lead is the beginning, and when that has
been written we are ready to go on to the body of the story with a clear
conscience.

Our lead has told the reader the main facts of the case and the most
unusual feature. If he reads further he is looking for details. In
giving him these we return to the ordinary rules of narration. We start
at the very beginning of the story and tell it logically and in detail
to the end. We tell it as if no lead preceded it and repeat in greater
detail the incidents briefly outlined in the lead. Never should the body
of the story depend upon the lead for clearness. If the feature of the
story is a rescue and you have briefly described the rescue in the lead,
ignore the lead and describe the rescue all over again in the body of
the story in its proper place. The number of details that are to be
introduced into the story is limited only by the space that the story
seems to be worth. But no point should be mentioned in the story unless
space permits of its be