r lead might
be written in this way:

| After being chased down Sixth street by|
|a young woman, a robber, who had |
|attempted to rob the grocery store of |
|Charles Young, 1345 Sixth street, was |
|arrested on the roof of a saloon at 835 |
|Sixth street, at 7 o'clock last night. |

The lead might be arranged in a different way, but these are the facts
that it would contain. Before we consider the arrangement of the body of
the story it may be well to go back to the interviews by which we
secured the story. In getting the facts we would probably talk to Young,
the groceryman, and to the saloonkeeper into whose establishment the
robber fled. We could probably interview the policeman who made the
arrest, but let us suppose that the young woman could not be found. The
groceryman would tell us about the attempted robbery and the escape,
with the girl in pursuit. The saloonkeeper would tell us how the man
fled into his saloon and ran up the stairs to the roof; then how two
policemen came and made the arrest. The policeman could tell us how a
young woman ran up to him and told him that a robber had fled into the
saloon; then he would describe the arrest. None of these stories is told
just as we want the newspaper story--each one tells us only a part of
the story. If the finished story were written by a green reporter it
would probably tell the story in the order in which it was obtained.
That is if the reporter saw the policeman first, then the saloonkeeper,
and lastly the groceryman; his story would tell in the first paragraph
what the policeman said, in the second paragraph what the saloonkeeper
said, and in the last paragraph what the grocer said. At least that is
the way in which green reporters in the classroom attempted to write
the story.

But, obviously, that is not the logical way to tell the story. The
finished account should be written in the order in which it happened:
i.e., first the robbery, then the pursuit, and lastly the arrest. This
would be the ideal way to tell the story--according to the rules of
English composition--if we could be sure that the entire story would be
printed. But if it were written in this way and the editor decided to
slash off the last paragraph, what would go? Obviously the arrest would
not be printed; and the arrest was quite interesting. We must find some
way to bring the arrest neare