9] John Edwin Nevin in _The Omaha News_,
June 8, 1915.

The next morning President Wilson announced his acceptance of Mr.
Bryan's resignation as Secretary of State.

=189. Value of Inference in the Foiled Interview.=--The reporter who
would attain success in his profession should not fail to study with
care this story by Mr. Nevin, to learn not so much what the story
contains as what the person who wrote it had to know and had to be able
to do before he could turn out such a piece of work. One should analyze
it to see how startlingly few new facts the correspondent had in his
possession at the time he was writing, and how he played up those
lonesome details with a premonition of coming events that was uncanny.
Above all, the prospective reporter should observe with what rare
judgment and accuracy the writer noted in Mr. Bryan's demeanor a few
distinctive incidents which were at once both trivial and yet laden with
suggestions of events to come. To produce this story the writer had to
know not only a man, but men. A cub would have got nothing; this man
scooped the best correspondents of the nation.

=190. Series of Interviews.=--In a story containing a number of
interviews, let the lead feature the consensus of opinion expressed in
the interviews. Then follow in the body with the individual quotations,
each man's name being placed prominently at the beginning of the
paragraph containing his interview, so that in a rapid reading of the
story the eye may catch readily the change from the words of one man to
another. When there is a large number of such interviews, the name may
even be set in display type at the beginning of the paragraph. If,
however, the persons interviewed are not at all prominent, but their
statements are worth while, the quotations may be given successively and
the names buried within the paragraph.

=191. Leads for Speeches.=--In comparison with handling an interview, a
report of a speech is an easy task. In the case of the sermon or the
lecture, typewritten copies are almost always available and the
thoughts are presented in orderly sequence. So if the reporter has
followed the advice given in Part II, Chapter VII, and taken longhand
notes of a speech, or has not been so engrossed in mere note-taking that
he has been unable to follow the trend of the speaker's thought, he will
experience comparatively little trouble in writing up the speech. He may
begin in any one of a half-dozen or