“With the structure of the business.”

“All right.  A newspaper is divided into three parts.  News is the merchandise which it has to sell.  Advertising is the by-product that pays the bills.  The editorial page is a survival.  At its best it analyzes and points out the significance of important news.  At its worst, it is a mouthpiece for the prejudices or the projects of whoever runs it.  Few people are influenced by it.  Many are amused by it.  It isn’t very important nowadays.”

“I intend to make it so on the ‘Clarion.’”

Ellis turned upon him a regard which carried with it a verdict of the most abandoned juvenility, but made no comment.  “News sways people more than editorials,” he continued.  “That’s why there’s so much tinkering with it.  I’d like to give you a definition of news, but there isn’t any.  News is conventional.  It’s anything that interests the community.  It isn’t the same in any two places.  In Arizona a shower is news.  In New Orleans the boll-weevil is news.  In Worthington anything about your father is news:  in Denver they don’t care a hoot about your father; so, unless he elopes or dies, or buys a fake Titian, or breaks the flying-machine record, or lectures on medical quackery, he isn’t news away from home.  If Mrs. Festus Willard is bitten by a mad dog, every dog-chase for the week following is news.  When a martyred suffragette chews a chunk out of the King of England, the local meetings of the Votes-for-Women Sorority become a live topic.  If ever you get to the point where you can say with certainty, ‘This is news; that isn’t,’ you’ll have no further need for me.  You’ll be graduated.”

“Where does a paper get its news?”

“Through mechanical channels, mostly.  If you read all the papers in town,—­and you’ll have to do it,—­you’ll see that they’ve got just about the same stuff.  Why shouldn’t they have?  The big, clumsy news-mill grinds pretty impartially for all of them.  There’s one news source at Police Headquarters, another at the City Hall, another in the financial department, another at the political headquarters, another in the railroad offices, another at the theaters, another in society, and so on.  At each of these a reporter is stationed.  He knows his own kind of news as it comes to him, ready-made, and, usually, not much else.  Then there’s the general, unclassified news of the city that drifts in partly by luck, partly by favor, partly through the personal connections of the staff.  One paper is differentiated from another principally by getting or missing this sort of stuff.  For instance, the ‘Banner’ yesterday had a ‘beat’ about you.  It said that you had come back and were going to settle down and go into your father’s business.”

“That’s not true.”

“Glad to hear it.  Your hands will be full with this job.  But it was news.  Everybody is interested in the son of our leading citizen.  The ‘Banner’ is strong on that sort of local stuff.  I think I’ll jack up our boys in the city room by hinting that there may be a shake-up coming under the new owner.  Knowing they’re on probation will make ’em ambitious.”