Handling a Big Story. The scene in a metropolitan newspaper office following the receipt of the first news of the "Titanic" disaster, as graphically portrayed by an editor of a New York morning paper, illustrates the conditions under which important news, received late, is hurried into print.[1] The account in part is as follows:
At 1:20 a.m. Monday, April 15, [1912], the cable editor opened
an envelope of the Associated Press that had stamped on its face
"Bulletin." This is what he read:
Cape Race, N. F., Sunday night, April 14.—At
10:25 o'clock tonight the White Star Line steamship
"Titanic" called "C. Q. D." to the Marconi station here,
and reported having struck an iceberg. The steamer said
that immediate assistance was required.
The cable editor looked at his watch. It was 1:20 and lacked
just five minutes of the hour when the mail edition goes to press.
"Boy!" he called sharply.
An office boy was at his side in a moment.
"Send this upstairs; tell them the head is to come; double column, and tell the night editor to rip open two columns on the first page for a one-stick dispatch of the 'Titanic' striking an iceberg and sinking."
Every one in the office was astir in a moment and came over to see the cable editor write on a sheet of copy paper the following head [which he indicated was to be set up in this form]:
TITANIC SINKING
IN MID-OCEAN; HIT
GREAT ICEBERG
"Boy!" he called again; but it was not necessary—a boy in a newspaper office knows news the first time he sees it.
"Tell them that's the head for the 'Titanic.'"
Then he wrote briefly this telegraphic dispatch, and as he did so he said to another office boy at his side: "Tell the operator to
- ↑ "Telling the Tale of the 'Titanic,'" by Alex. McD. Stoddart; The Independent, May 2, 1912.
