on cake," explaining in
a humorous way the customs methods that held up the importation of an
Italian Christmas cake; "Clearing House for Brains," a description of
the new employment bureau of the Princeton Club of New York; "Ideal man
picked by the Barnard girl," a humorous resume of some Barnard College
class statistics; "Winning a Varsity Letter," telling what a varsity
letter stands for, how it is won, and what the customs of the various
colleges in regard to letters are; "Jerry Moore raises a record corn
crop," telling how a fifteen-year-old boy won prizes with a little patch
of corn.

These are just a few suggestions to open up to the reporter the vast
field for special feature articles. To be sure, many of them are
submitted by outsiders, but there is no reason why a reporter should not
write these stories as well as human interest stories for his paper,
since he is in the best position to get the material. Whenever a special
feature story becomes too large for the daily edition there is always a
possibility of selling it to the Sunday section or to a monthly
magazine. The writing of special feature stories is directly in line
with the reporter's work, because the ordinary method of gathering facts
for a feature article and arranging them in an interesting, newsy way
follows closely the method by which a reporter covers and writes a news
story. Hence almost without exception the most successful magazine
feature writers are, or have been, newspaper reporters.

XVI

DRAMATIC REPORTING

Dramatic reporting is one of the most misused of the newspaper
reporter's activities. To many reporters, as well as to their editors,
it is just an easy way of getting free admission to the theater in
return for a half column of copy. Hence it is treated in an unjustly
trivial way; the reports of theatrical productions are printed most
often as space fillers or as a small advertisement in return for free
tickets. But after all the work is an important one and should be done
only by skillful and expert hands. Dramatic reporting is included in
this book, not because it is thought possible to give the subject an
adequate treatment, but because theatrical reporting is a branch of the
newspaper trade that may fall to the hands of the youngest reporter. In
mere justice to the stage the reporter who writes up a play should know
something about the real significance of what he is doing. It is much
easier to tell the beginner wha