LARRY DEXTER,
REPORTER
CHAPTER I
A REPORTER'S MISTAKE
“Copy!”
The city editor's voice rang out sharply, and he held in his extended hand a bunch of paper, without lifting his eyes from the story he was; going over with a correcting pencil. There was no answer save the clicking of half a score of typewriters, at which sat busy reporters.
“Copy!” cried the editor once more. There was a shuffle among a trio of boys on the far side of the room.
“Copy! copy!” fairly shouted the exasperated editor, as he shook the papers, looking up from his work towards the boys who were now advancing together on a run. “What's the matter with all of you? Getting deaf, or are you tired of work? When you hear 'Copy' called at this time of day you want to jump! Now all the way up to the composing room with that, Bud. It's got to make the first edition!”
“Yes, sir!” exclaimed Bud Nelson, head copy boy on the New York Daily Leader, one of the largest afternoon papers of the metropolis, as he raced upstairs to where the clicking type-setting machines were in noisy operation.
“You boys must be more lively,” went on Mr. Bruce Emberg, the city editor. “This is not a playroom nor a kindergarten. You must learn to jump up whenever you hear the assistant city editor or myself call 'Copy.' I make some allowances for you boys who have not been here long, but it must not occur again.”
The two remaining lads went back to their bench looking a little startled, for, though Mr. Emberg was a kind man, he could be severe when there was occasion for it.
“Did he give you a laying-out?” asked Bud, of his companions, when he returned.
“I just guess yes,” replied Charles Anderson, the tallest of the copy boys. “You ought to have heard him!”
“I was so busy telling you fellows about the party last night I didn't hear him call,” said Bud. “We'll have to be more careful, or we'll lose our jobs.”
“Copy!” called the editor again, and this time the three reached the desk almost at the same instant.
“That's the way to do it,” remarked Mr. Emberg. “That's what I like to see.”
For the next few minutes there was a busy scene in the city room of the Leader. Reporters were writing like mad on their typewriters, and rushing with the loose sheets of paper over to the desk of the city editor or his assistant. These, and two copy readers, rapidly scanned the stories, made whatever corrections were necessary, put headings, or “heads,” as they are called, on them, and gave them to the copy boys.
The lads ran out to the pneumatic tube that shot the copy to the composing room, or, in case of an important story, took it upstairs themselves so that it would receive immediate attention from the foreman.
The boys were running to and fro, as if in training for a race, typewriters were clicking as fast as though the operators were in a speed contest, the editors were slashing whole pages from stories to make them shorter, and the copy readers were doing likewise.
“Hurry up that stuff, Jones!” exclaimed the editor to one reporter. “You've only got two minutes!”
“Here it is!” cried Jones, yanking the last page from his typewriter.
For two minutes there was a wilder scene of activity than ever. Then came a comparatively quiet spell.
“That's all we can make for the first,” remarked the editor, with something like a breath of relief. “We did pretty well.”
The editor looked over a book that lay open in front of him on his desk. The cover was marked “Assignments,” and it was the volume in which memoranda of all the items that were to be gotten that day appeared. The editor glanced down the page.
“Here, Larry!” he called to a tall, good-looking youth, who was seated at a small desk. “Get this obituary, will you? It's about a man over on the West Side. He was ninety-eight years old, and belonged to a well-known New York family.”
“Shall I get his picture?” asked Larry Dexter, as he came forward to go out on the assignment.
“No, we haven't time to make it to-day. Just get a brief sketch of his life. Hurry back.”
Larry got his hat from the coat room, and left the office. He was the newest reporter on the Leader. The other reporters spoke of him as the “cub,” not meaning anything disrespectful, but only to indicate that he was the “freshman,” the apprentice, or whatever one considers the beginner in any line of work. Larry was a sort of fledgling at the business, though he had been on the Leader a number of months.
He began as a copy boy, just like one of the lads whom Mr. Emberg had cautioned about being in a hurry. Larry, with his mother, his sisters, Lucy, aged thirteen, and Mary, aged five, and his brother, James, lived in a fairly good tenement in New York City. They had come there from the village of Campton, New York, where Larry's father, who had been dead a few years, once owned a fine farm. But reverses had overtaken the family, and some time after Mr. Dexter's death the place was sold at auction.
When the place had been disposed of, Mrs. Dexter desired to come to New York to live with her sister, Mrs. Edward Ralston. But, as related in the first volume of this series, entitled, “From Office Boy to Reporter; or, The First Step in Journalism,” when Mrs. Dexter, with Larry and the other children, reached the big city, they found that Mrs. Ralston's husband had been killed a few days before in an accident. Mrs. Ralston, writing a hasty letter to her sister, had gone to live with other relatives in a distant state.
But Mrs. Dexter did not receive this letter on time, in consequence of having hastily undertaken the journey from Campton, and so did not hear of her sister's loss until she reached the house where Mrs. Ralston had lived. The travelers made the best of it, however, and were cared for by kind neighbors.
Larry soon secured work as an office, or copy, boy on the Leader, through one day being able to help Harvey Newton, one of the best reporters on the paper, at an exciting fire.
In those days Larry had trouble with Peter Manton, a rival copy boy, and he was kidnapped by some electric cab strikers who thought he was a reporter they wanted to pay off an old score on. The lad and Mr. Newton were sent to report a big flood in another part of the state, where the big dam broke, and where many persons were in danger of being drowned.
While in the flooded district Larry met his old enemy, Peter, and there was a race between them to see who would get some copy, telling of the flood, to the telegraph office first. Larry won, and for this good work was promoted from an office boy to be a regular reporter. In the course of his duties as a copy boy he once saved a valuable watch from being stolen by pickpockets from a celebrated doctor, and the physician, in his gratitude, operated on Larry's sister Lucy, who suffered from a bad spinal disease, and cured her.
This made the family feel much happier, as now Lucy could go about like other girls, and did not have to spend many hours in a big chair. Larry's advancement also brought him a larger salary, so there was no further need for Mrs. Dexter to take in sewing. They were able also to move to a better apartment, though not far from where they had first settled.
Larry was able to put a little money in the bank, to add to the nest-egg of one thousand dollars which he received as a reward for finding the Reynolds jewels, though the thieves were not apprehended.
Larry had been acting in his new position as reporter about eight months when, on the morning that our story opens, he was sent to get the obituary of the aged man. In this time he had learned much that he never knew before, and which would not have come to him in his capacity as copy boy. He had, as yet, been given only easy work, for though he had shown “a nose for news,” as it is called, which means an ability to know a story when it comes one's way, Mr. Emberg felt the “cub” had better go a bit slow.
The young reporter managed to get what information he wanted without much trouble. He came back to the office, and wrote it up by hand, for he had not learned yet to use a typewriter. While he was engaged on the “obit,” as death accounts are called for brevity, he had his eyes opened to something which stood him in good stead the rest of his life.
The first editions of other New York afternoon papers, all rivals of the Leader , had come into the Leader office. Mr. Emberg was glancing over them to see if his sheet had been beaten on any stories; that is, whether any of the other journals had stories which the Leader did not have, or better ones than those on similar subjects that appeared in the Leader.
“Hello! What's this?” the city editor exclaimed, suddenly. “Here's a big story of a fight at that Eleventh Ward political meeting, in the Scorcher. Who covered that meeting for us?”
“I did,” replied a tall, thin youth.
“Did you have anything good in your story?” the editor asked.
“No—no, sir,” stammered the youth, as he saw the angry look on the editor's face.
“Why not?”
“Because there wasn't any meeting,” replied the luckless scribe. “It broke up in a free fight!”
“It what?” fairly roared the city editor.
“It broke up in a fight. The candidates tried to speak, but the crowd wouldn't let 'em. They called 'em names, and then they made a rush, and upset the stand, and there was a free fight. I couldn't hear any of the speeches, so I came away.”
“You what?” asked the editor, trying to speak calmly. The room seemed strangely quiet.
“I came away. I thought you sent me to report the political meeting, but there wasn't any. It broke up in a fight,” repeated the reporter.
“I thought you said you were a newspaper man,” the city editor remarked. “I wouldn't have hired you if I knew you had had no experience.”
“I did have some. I—I,” began the unfortunate one.
“It must have been as society scribbler on the Punktown Monthly Pink Tea Gazette,” exclaimed Mr. Emberg. “Why, you don't know enough about the business to report a Sunday school picnic.
“If you were sent to a house to get an account of a wedding,” went on Mr. Emberg, “and while there the house should burn down, and all the people be killed, I suppose you would come back and say there wasn't any wedding, it was a fire! Would you?”
“No—no, sir.”
“Well, I guess you would! I don't believe you're cut out for the newspaper business. The idea of not reporting a meeting because it broke up in a fight! It's enough to make—but never mind! You can go to the cashier and get what money is coming to you. We can't afford to have mistakes like that occur. This is the best story in many a day. Why, they must have had a regular riot up there, according to the Scorcher. Here, Smith,” the city editor went on, turning to an older reporter, “see what there is in this, and fix up a story,” and Mr. Emberg handed over the article he had clipped from the rival paper. It was a bad beat on the Leader.
“I hope I never make a mistake like that,” thought Larry, as he turned in his article. “My, that was a call-down!”