es, therefore,
the reporter must be doubly careful to have a supposed criminal merely
"suspected" of misappropriating funds, or "alleged" to have made the
assault, or "said by the police" to have entered the house. And in order
to present an unbiased story, the side of the supposed malefactor should
be given. In the intense excitement resulting from a newly committed
crime, or in the squalid surroundings of a prison cell, an accused
person does not appear to his best advantage, and it is easy for the
reporter to let prejudice sway him, perhaps causing irreparable injury
to innocent persons. The race riot in Atlanta, in 1905, in which numbers
of innocent negroes were murdered, was a direct result of exaggerated
and sensational stories of crime printed by yellow newspapers. And the
whole long trial and verdict against Leo M. Frank were directly affected
by the same papers. If the opinion of readers is to be appealed to, the
reporter should leave such appeals to the editorial writers, whose duty
it is to interpret the news and sway the public whenever they will or
can. The reporter's duty, as far as possible, is to present mere facts.

XVI. SPORTS

=230. Slang.=--In writing stories of athletic meets and games the
reporter will find that in matters of language he has almost complete
freedom. For this there are two reasons: the fact that it is necessary
half the time to get final results of contests into print within a few
seconds or minutes after the outcome has been decided, and the fact that
athletic devotees--"fans" in American slang--are not naturally critical.
Time is the all-important element with them. The results of a baseball
game are wanted within a few seconds after the last man has been put out
in the final inning. Whether the writer says the Red Sox defeated the
Tigers, or nosed them out in the ninth, or handed them a lemon, means
little to the followers of the game provided the information is
specifically conveyed that Boston beat Detroit. Slang is freely
used,--so much so that the uninitiated frequently cannot understand an
account of a game. The "fans" can, however, and they constitute the
public for whom reporters on the sporting pages maintain they are
writing. If, then, one can brighten up his sporting stories--make them
sparkling, electric, galvanic--by using slang, he will find them
acceptable to any editor. The only caution to the beginner is that he
must be sure every detail is clear to the "fans."