aders are interested in the content of the speech or in
the man who uttered it. In the same way, our readers are interested in
interviews because of the man who was interviewed, because of their
content, or because of their bearing on some current event. On the other
hand there is an infinite number of reasons why a court story is worth
printing or why it may not be worth a line. Sometimes the interest is
in the persons involved; sometimes in the significance of the decision.
People may also be interested in a case because of its political or
legal significance or merely because of the sensational testimony that
is given. And again a very trivial case may be worth a large amount of
space in the daily paper just because of its human interest--because of
the pathos or humor that the reporter can bring into it. Thus the
resulting reports are hard to classify. Each one depends on a different
factor for its interest and each must be written in a different way so
that its individual interest may be most effective. However there are
general tendencies in the reporting of court news.

The news itself is comparatively easy to get. In a large city every
court is watched every day by a representative of the press, either a
reporter for an individual paper or for a city news gathering
association. In some cities where there is no independent news gathering
agency papers sometimes club together to keep one reporter at each
court. The man who is on duty must watch all day long for cases that are
of interest for one reason or another. Even with all this safeguarding
sometimes an important case slips by the papers; often the reporter on
duty considers of little interest a case that is worth columns when
some paper digs into it. Every reporter however who is trying to do
court reporting should learn the ordinary routine of legal proceedings;
for example, the place and purpose of the pleas, the direct and cross
examination of witnesses, and other legal business.

As we shall see when we begin to write court reports, it is necessary to
exercise every possible trick to put interest into the story. In the
actual court room all that relieves the dreary monotony of legal
proceedings is an occasional bit of interesting testimony. And when the
reporter tries to report a case he sometimes finds that interesting
testimony is all that will lighten up the dull monotony of his story.
Therefore while he is listening to a case he tries to get down ver