. I'se 'bleeged ter |
|'fend mahse'f, ain't I, jedge? Well, den!" |
| |
|The conclusion of Frogeye's story lacked climax, but|
|apparently the judge got the gist of it, for he |
|said: "It seems to me all of you dancers need a |
|summer vacation. They say there's nothing like a |
|little arm work to improve the grip. Thirty days, |
|everybody!" |

But every reader knows that in one round-up of negro malefactors,
characters such as Frogeye, Three-Finger Fanny, and Bugabear are not
going to be arrested at one "Potlicker Ball." The story is a good one if
the reader will suspend his sense of realism sufficiently to enjoy it.
But in its purport to be a true account of an arrest and a trial of
certain persons, it makes one doubt first the story, then the newspaper
that printed it, and finally newspapers in general. And so develops one
of the main causes of criticism of the modern newspaper. A reporter must
resolve to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. A
journal loses its power the moment it is wrong.

XV. ACCIDENT, CRIME

=210. Accident and Crime Stories.=--Accident and crime stories are
grouped together because they are handled alike and because they differ
from each other only in point of view, or in the fact that in the one
some one is guilty of lawbreaking, while in the other the participants
are merely unfortunate. The two, of course, frequently overlap, since a
death or a wreck which at first may seem purely accidental may later
prove to have been the result of a criminal act. In this chapter,
however, accident stories will be taken to include fires, street-car
smash-ups, railroad wrecks, automobile collisions, runaways, explosions,
mine disasters, strokes of lightning, drownings, floods, storms,
shipwrecks, etc. In the list of crime will be placed murders, assaults,
suicides, suspicious deaths, robberies, embezzlements, arson, etc. Of
the accident class, the method of writing a fire story may be taken as a
type for the whole group.

=211. Lead to a Fire Story.=--Ordinarily the lead to a story of a fire
should tell what was destroyed, the location of the property, the extent
of the damage, the occupants or owners, the time, the cause, and what
made the loss possible,--answering, in other words, the questions _who_,
_what_, _when_, _where_, _w