On most of his assignments the reporter must trust to others for many, if not all, of his facts. Covering the story of an automobile accident, for example, he must see the story through the eyes of those who were present. These persons he interviews informally. From the information obtained in this way, supplemented by his own observation of the visible results of the accident, the reporter culls the salient facts and writes the story in his own words. What he is sure of he makes his own; other facts he may put in the form of indirect quotation, while occasionally he may quote a person directly.
Interviewing in its broad sense is thus at the basis of nearly all newspaper reporting, because nearly all stories deal with persons--their doings and opinions. Even in covering the story which the reporter is fortunate enough to observe, a certain amount of interviewing may still be necessary to make the story complete. If it is a fire story, he probably questions the owner about the loss and the insurance and plans for rebuilding; he interviews various persons to find out the cause of the fire; he talks, perhaps, to persons who have been rescued and their rescuers. These and other facts can be obtained only by asking questions.
Except when a story is dependent on what a person has said, in a speech or a formal interview, it is nearly always desirable that the reporter, as far as possible, should make the story his own. He should hitch his wagon to the star of absolute certainty and then tell the story, at least the salient facts, in his own words. It is poor policy in news writing, as a rule, to put trivial bits of information in the form of direct quotation. The reporter will find that owing to the common failure to observe accurately the accounts given by witnesses of a given occurrence will vary widely. It is the reporter’s business to learn all that he can of the story; to see, in the limited time at his command, as many as possible of the persons concerned in it, and then to present to the reader an intelligible, lucid account in the third person--the kernel of the story without the husks of inconsistency. It is impossible to do this if the writer slavishly quotes, in the direct form, everybody to whom he talked in getting the story.