1937-03-10 — Page 11

THE CHINA MAIL, MARCH 10, 1937.

The

Trained

Seals

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can speak freely on the subject told, or so editors have seemed to Hearst readers panted and fretted specimens. can quote write unquote much a mystery as the fate because I have been-one and think for the last fifteen years. In impatiently until we could get the is as r

are the vital real low-down from Floyd Gibbons of Judge Crater. If I am any because before I was one I held them the lead story there in the same expectorating disdain statistics: "A death toll of 645 was The tension was the worse because guesser and if I were not I'd never which any averagely good reporter written on the records of the Shau- in the dozen or so days it took Gib- have become a trained seal I should affords them. The "trained seals" on pung River to-day as state and local bons to get there the "news" in- say that the first signs of genius are [”. And. “Property loss dicated that the situation was get detected when a bored reporter pots a newspaper are those guys who can officials

an "angle" on an accident and it "write." They are the guys who are was estimated far into the millions." ting more and more perilous.

becomes a "box" instead of a ten- sent out by the Editor to put the But, says the editor, in his subcon-

But at last there came a day point head. · Instead of detailing "steam" on what is a good news scious reaction, “Who is left behind;

when the Hearst papers announced: the injuries of the two people in- story in its own right but which for whose property was it that was lost,

"to-morrow: Floyd Gibbons first volved, the reporter plays up the. some reason, that only the Boss what does it mean to Shoeville?" knows and even he can't remember The person to answer that is the dispatch." The headlines that day police officer who in hurrying to were about bombings of consulates, the scene trips over a dog and loses the next day, is deemed worthy of trained seal.

It isn't his business to write a burnings of hospitals, mass execu- his hat. a little juicing up, fret-saw work, or

you- sock-in-the-jaw story starting: tions, and whatnot all ac After a couple stories like that, common, woven-under-water

"Death and destruction swept the cording to report.”

the Editor begins to hand him the know.

etc., etc.” His is the story apt to The next day, the day when Gib- lost kiddies, the oldest living in- A trained seal is not per se a re- start out, on such an occasion, some- bons. was to tell us what was really habitant, the annual sweepstakes porter, although he probably was one thing like:

going on, we snatched up our winners, the visiting Hollywooden- before he achieved the eminence of

A thin-faced man

of fifty-odd papers and read as his first sentence heads and such. These are all still "staff" man. He is a sort of un- years, sat on the Court House steps and paragraph:

in the city limits, however, and he natural appendage to newspapering in Memorial Square here to-day and "I am in a rowboat.”

is not yet a trained seal. -not exactly a wart, but a sixth, and useful, finger on the right hand of jounalism. Perhaps his relation to the ordinary course of getting out a paper can best be shown with a hypothetical example.

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But then on the third day, in the midst of choosing among pictures of

By C. B. Palmer

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But there comes a day when the Big Stuff, the Number One train- ed seal if off on a story (colloq.: drunk) and there is something big and throbbing going on in West That, I must insist, is the end- Turnbuckle. Then the little fellow point in trained. seal leads. By who had hitherto been a parochial

of-

The

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abstractedly wrung out his wet stock- Spring floods have been promising ings. a story for two days. Fragmentary "No," he said, “I don't know where and large they tuck into the matter stunt man suddenly finds himself dispatches have been turned over to the kids are. They've just took the much more directly, even though al- with a voucher for expense money, the sub. editor each day, and he, missis into the ambulance. I was lowed any amount of apparent irre a cameraman, and instructions to without having seen an inch of just leaving the shop when I heard levancy, As I have said, the the effect that for the sweet love water, writes a picture in black and the

trained seal probably has "straight of Pete he will please stay sober. white (no colour as yet) of what

"news" experience behind him. And From then on there is none seems to be happening. His material

the chances are very good that as the well-known even tenor. comes from local correspondents. You can see that if that were the a "straight news" man he rendered trained seal is a marked man. The There is no point in sending out only story in the paper about the far greater service to the public Boss thinks he has to keep those a staff reporter as yet, because the flood you would have a hard time and his employer, that is as far as magnificent talents at work story is too spread out.

finding out what had really happen gathering and relaying fact is con- much as he can. So if there is ed and where and when: But the cerned, than he ever can in his nothing really major going 011 trained seal isn't there to collect, newer, glorified capacity. Unfortun- around town he assigns the smart pack, and ship the news. He is there ately, the trained seal is helpless in lad to interview the second-string smiling people rowing boats down a to find intimate, personal and hu- the matter. Few of them seek the evangelists, the rocket to the moon main street or of a policeman carry man meaning-in it.

status of a “writer," at least so far boys, the men returning from Ex- ing a pretty girl across a six-inch

as the day's work is concerned. Most tensive Surveys of the European puddle, the News Editor gets a flash that he can't. Many's the time a of them are surprised and a little Situation, the semi-annual poverty trained seal has been sent out to sheepish on being plucked from the story, and the eccentric recluse who message.

play the harmonica on a familiar ranks.

died with gold stuffed behind the theme, and has for one reason

How anyone discover that these pictures. The Editor knows that Shoeville is another found no theme to work on. a mill town in a rather narrow val- “Straight news” men (meaning ley, closely populated and shabbily reporters, editors, even the linotyp built. He doesn't begin screaming ers) will never give up, as a pun. orders, as the movies would have ishing example of what a trained you believe, but he does shove back seal can do when he's sent out on his chair and hurries to find the a big story, the lead that Floyd Managing Editor and the City Edi- Gibbons once put on a dispatch tor

Dam at Shoeville Reported Collapsed.

Many's the time God wot!

or

Among them they start the Gibbons had been rushed across wheels of coverage moving. The the United States by air, put on chief sub. puts a call through the fastest boat there was and the to the correspondent. If it is day world waited, supposedly, to read time one of the editors summons the his first dispatch from Shanghai. photographers while another char- (This was about five years ago, ters a plane. Other cameramen and when the real oompah was on about from one to six reporters are start.

China and Japan. Americans were ed over the road

"besieged" in the foreign quarter,. Now this is all on the straight the "long-awaited outbreak of hos news side, the hot news. The actual tilities" loomed; "grave interna- well in hand, and all tional complications" were immin- coverage is through the day and night the news ent if not threatening). The efforts and the pictures come in, detailing of Asiatic correspondents of many the quick and terrible disaster. years standing were apparently not But there is still something to be enough to cover the situation, and

WHY "HORSE SENSE"?

After all these years of saying or a Percheron, I worked with both. that people should have more horse Even sheep give horses a pretty sense," it now turns out it should good run for it, mentally.”- have been "cow sense" all along.

Where the horse has been fooling everyone, apparently, is that he Miss Pearl Gardner told this to trusts man far more than any other the convention of the American- Association for the Advancement Science.

It took her five years, starting in 1931, and with infinite patience, she studied 72 horses, 48 cows and 11 sheep

"When it comes to observation, there's no cow is much smarter

Misa Gardner.

ter whether the horse

barnyard animal-

"Cows catch on to things quicker, remember better. And strangely enough the champion cows that gave the most milk were the smart-

of all cows. But polo ponies the ame mistakes that draft their horses do. And sheep desp

midity can be taught tricks such

taki handerchief

cket, rolling

barrel

ads just as, sily as a hoj

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