to print stories that had
little value as news but, however trivial their subject, were so well
written that they presented the humor and pathos of everyday life in a
very entertaining way. The sensational newspapers took advantage of the
opportunity but they shocked their readers in that they tried to appeal
to the emotions through the kind of facts that they printed, rather
than through the presentation of the facts. They did not see that the
effectiveness of the emotional appeal depends upon the way in which a
human interest story is written, rather than upon the story itself.
Therefore they shocked their readers with extremely pathetic facts
presented in the usual newspaper way, while the journals which stood for
high literary excellence were able to handle trivial human interest
material very effectively. Now all the newspapers of the land have
learned the form and are printing effective human interest stories
every day.

Another reason behind the growth of the human interest story is the
curse of cynicism which newspaper work imprints upon so many of its
followers. Every editor knows that no ordinary reporter can work a
police court or hospital run day after day for any length of time
without losing his sensibilities and becoming hardened to the sterner
facts in human life. Misfortune and bitterness become so common to him
that he no longer looks upon them as misfortune and misery, but just as
news. Gradually his stories lose all sympathy and kindliness and he
writes of suffering men as of so many wooden ten-pins. When he has
reached this attitude of cynicism, his usefulness to his paper is almost
gone, for a reporter must always see and write the news from the
reader's sympathetic point of view. To keep their reporters'
sensibilities awake editors have tried various expedients which have
been more or less successful. One of these is the "up-lift run" for cub
reporters--a round of philanthropic news sources to teach them the
business of reporting before they become cynical. Another is the human
interest story. If a reporter knows that his paper is always ready and
glad to print human interest stories full of kindliness and human
sympathy, he is ever on the watch for human interest subjects and
consequently forces himself to see things in a sympathetic way. Thus he
unconsciously wards off cynicism. The search for human interest material
is a modification of the "sob squad" work of the sensational papers, on
more d