Page:The Newspaper World.djvu/81

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The Newspaper World.

the advertisements exceed the space alloted for them, and a good many additional items of news have turned up unexpectedly. Proofs are produced, and a hurried consultation takes place. This piece of intelligence can be held back till a later edition, when something else can be removed to make room for it; that article, filling a column, may stand over for another day without losing its freshness; this report, to which the reporter and sub-editor have devoted a great amount of labor, must be sacrificed, and a paragraph is all that sees the light of an interesting half-column report. The foreman's mind is relieved, and the sub-editor having given the finishing touch to a batch of late news, home and foreign, the first edition of the morning newspaper is put to press at about four o'clock in the morning.

Not even the editorial position in point of labor and responsibility is above that of the sub-editor, or news-editor, in importance. It is the sub-editor who arranges various items of news, and it is news primarily that the public look for in the paper. The acme of perfection in modem journalism, as far as the compilation of news is concerned, has been well put by a Philadelphia journalist. "The coming editor," remarks Colonel A. K. McClure "is the man who can take the scissors and paste and tell the world better in a quarter of a column what another editor would tell in a column or more."