The Reporter, y^ the newspaper reporter ever since the organization of a corps of shorthand writers by Mr James Perry, of the Morning Chronicle^ a little more than a century ago, to report the proceedings of Parliament. For at least fifty years afterwards, the adoption of shorthand by the repor- ters of the Press throughout the country was slow, espe- cially on the provincial newspapers. In the early days of several old pressmen now living, a shorthand reporter was a rara avis; but Phonography has wrought a great change, and to-day Mr Pitman's system is practically in universal use in the newspaper offices of the land. The every- day practice of shorthand by reporters has become such a familiar thing that its great importance is hardly valued as it should be. It gives the reporter another sense, as it were, and enormously increases his usefulness. In the reporting of speeches shorthand is, of course, indispens- able, but its great value also arises from the facility it gives the reporter to jot down, with lightning-like rapidity, heads of conversation and items of information of various descriptions, collected from divers sources, to be after- wards converted into paragraphs or articles. Material of all descriptions may, by means of shorthand, be stored up in the reporter's note-book, for use in the next issue or his newspaper, with the minimum of trouble and the least possible expenditure of time. Shorthand is, indeed, the beneficent genius summoned to the reporter's assistance twenty times a day in the course of his labors, and if we ask his name, in ninety-five cases out of a hundred, it will be Pitman's Phonography. Next to ability as a shorthand writer, the reporter is, or should be, an adept at condensation. To the uniniti- ated, no doubt, the successful epitomizing of speeches by the skilled reporter may appear to be mere child's play, but the faculty is only acquired by pressmen after much observation and practice, and the exercise of whatever
