| Fire destroyed the grain elevator of | |the H. P. Jones Produce Company, First | |and Water streets, and $50,000 worth of | |wheat at 2 o'clock this morning. The | |total loss is estimated at $150,000. |
Then the reporter would describe the fire at length, including all obtainable facts. By afternoon almost every one in the city has read the story--and yet the afternoon papers must print something about the big fire. If no new facts can be obtained the previous story must be rehashed and presented with a new feature that will make it appear to be a later story. It is useless to begin the evening story with a mere announcement of the fire, for that is no longer news, and the rewrite man must find a new beginning to attract the attention of his readers. Perhaps in looking over the morning story, he finds that the fire was the result of spontaneous combustion in the grain stored in the elevator. In the morning story this fact was rather insignificant in the face of the huge loss, and most readers passed over it hastily. The rewrite man, however, who has no later facts at his command, may seize it as a new feature. Instead of beginning his story with the fact of the fire, which is already known, he begins with the cause, which appears to be later news. His lead may be as follows:
| Spontaneous combustion in the wheat | |bins of the H. P. Jones Produce Company's| |elevator, First and Water streets, | |started the fire which destroyed the | |entire structure with a loss of $150,000 | |this morning. |
Or if the rewrite man is not so fortunate as to discover a new feature as good as this, he may have to resort to beginning with a picture of the present results of the fire--thus:
| Smouldering ruins and a tangled mass of| |steel beams are all that remain of the H.| |P. Jones Produce Company's $100,000 | |grain elevator, First and Water streets, | |which was destroyed by fire this morning.|
It will be noticed that, while these new rewrite leads begin with a new feature, each new lead contains all the facts presented in the previous lead and is told with an eye to the man who has not read the earlier account. After the lead the rewrite man retells the whole story for the benefit of readers who did not see the morning papers and rearranges the facts so that they appear new to those who read the previous stories. Facts which the other papers buried he unearths and displays; details which appear to be later developments he crowds to the beginning. The whole story is sorted and rewritten in a new order and with a new emphasis. The result is a rewrite story which appears to be later, although it contains no new facts at all. It is seldom, of course, that such a rewrite story is used for local news, for very rarely is it impossible for a later paper to discover new facts. But in the case of news from the outside world, from other cities, the simple method of rehashing old facts must often be resorted to. If the story is based upon a single dispatch announcing an earthquake in Hawaii or a shipwreck in mid-ocean, many rewrite stories must be printed on the same facts before another message brings later news and additional details. An example of this is the treatment of the first few stories of the wreck of the White Star liner _Titanic_. The story was a big one, but the first dispatches were very meager and many rehashings of these few facts had to be printed before later and more definite news could be obtained.