sending a message to each of these points,
also, the message goes to Boston, and operators at New Haven, Hartford,
Springfield, and Worcester, _listen to it as it goes through_, and copy
it off. Thus one operator at New York is able to talk to perhaps a score
of papers, in various parts of New England, or elsewhere, at once.

But in a large city there is a great deal of city and suburban news. Take
for example, New York; and there is that great city, and Brooklyn, and
Jersey City, and Hoboken, and Newark, and Elizabeth, to be looked after,
as well as many large villages near at hand. And there is great
competition between the papers, which shall get the most, the exactest,
and the freshest, news. Consequently, each day, a leading New York paper
will publish a page or more of local news. The City Editor has charge of
collecting this news. He has, perhaps, twenty or twenty-five men to help
him--some in town, and others in the suburbs.

His plan for news collecting will be something like this: He will have
his secretary keep two great journals, with a page in each devoted to
each day. One of these, the "blotter," will be to write things in which
are going to happen. Everything that is going to happen to-morrow, the
next day, the next, and so on, the secretary will make a memorandum of or
paste a paragraph in about upon the page for the day on which the event
will happen. Whatever he, or the City Editor, hears or reads of, that is
going to happen, they thus put down in advance, until by and by, the book
gets fairly fat and stout with slips which have been pasted in. But, this
morning, the City Editor wants to lay out to-day's work. So his secretary
turns to the "blotter," at to-day's page, and copies from it into
to-day's page in the second book all the things to happen to-day--a
dozen, or twenty, or thirty--a ship to be launched, a race to come off, a
law-case to be opened, a criminal to be executed, such and such important
meetings to be held, and so on. By this plan, nothing escapes the eye of
the City Editor who, at the side of each thing to happen, writes the name
of the reporter whom he wishes to have write the event up. This second
book is called the "assignment book;" and, when it is made out, the
reporters come in, find their orders upon it, and go out for their day's
work, returning again at evening for any new assignments. Besides this,
they, and the City Editor, keep sharp ears and eyes for anything new; and
so,