Fifty years ago today, City Editor Gale Cook of the San Francisco Examiner sent the note below to his staff.
I remember memos like this from editors, saved a lot from my bosses and wrote a few for my staffs. I really like this one and share it with permission of Cook’s daughter, Jennifer Cook Sterling. Jennifer’s husband, Robert Sterling, is editor of the Marin Independent Journal, a Digital First newsroom, and Mimi and I enjoyed dinner at their home last summer. (Update: Robert has blogged about Gale and his memo, too.)
I will comment on some of Cook’s note, but I don’t want to interrupt it. So I’ll let it run in full (it’s long, as editors’ memos to the staff can sometimes be, five pages, single-spaced). Then I’ll comment. But one note here that will help you understand the first paragraph: The Examiner promoted itself as the “Monarch of the Dailies.”
TO THE STAFF:
I want to offer you some ideas for improving our newspaper – things we can do to strengthen the Monarch’s position in this jungle fight for circulation.
Times have changed for newspapers, particularly since World War II. And they are changing still. Papers are being forced to adapt to changes in our society and the tastes of the people who buy newspapers. The main trouble with newspapers is, they aren’t changing fast enough.
We can see change everywhere about us. I won’t belabor the obvious. We’ve got television breathing down our necks, of course, and radio reporters running around with mobile transmitters. I’m thinking more, though, of how people have changed. Look at the police department: Considering the younger men on the force, the last few rookie classes, for instance – could anyone apply to them the term, “dumb cop?” I think not. Most of them are highly intelligent, educated young men – some with college degrees – who read books and current magazines, watch TV, go to plays and PTA meetings, and they expect their newspaper to be a 1964 Model.
All of you are newspaper people of high intelligence and unusual talent. Over the years, the Examiner has been fortunate in being able to choose new reporters from the best in the business.
All agreed?
Then it follows by the immutable rules of logic that if we are bested in the handling of a story, it’s our own damn fault. We had a breakdown somewhere; a bit of lethargy; somebody didn’t have his eyes open. It may have been a deskman, or it may have been the reporter. That’s not important.
What is important is ATTITUDE. If that smacks of lecture and scolding, forgive me. I don’t mean it in that sense. I am talking of the approach we must take to each story, large or small, if we are to extract its real essence.
Enthusiasm, compassion, suspicion, curiosity, real interest – these are the qualities which a fine newspaperman must bring to bear on the stories he develops and writes. The reporter or deskman without these qualities is a second rater, no matter how skillfully he writes.
Arthur Brisbane once said: “The newspaperman must do every day the work by which he lives, and do it all over again. Each day he must create his reputation anew. His greatest asset is enthusiasm, real interest in what he sees and what he tells.” (There’s more to the quote. Cynics may read the rest in Chapter 12 of Gene Fowler’s “Skyline.”)
If we are satisfied simply to cover the news that comes along, if we are content merely to do as good a job as our competitors, then we deserve to fail and we will fail.
The fact that you and I and a lot of other first-rate people happen to work for this paper doesn’t do a thing for home delivery or street sales. People will buy our paper only for one reason – because they think they get more for their dime than they do in the other paper, because experience has taught them they will find news and detail in The Examiner that they won’t find elsewhere.
Dick Nolan once said: “When I was at City Hall, I took the position that The Examiner was entitled to every story the other papers had, plus one or two a day that the others didn’t have.” That is a selling attitude. (Russ Cone, incidentally, has the same philosophy.)
The exclusive story is king around here, as far as I’m concerned. There are three principal ways to come by xcloos.
One is to poke a little below the surface of a routine story. Often you find an interesting, important story that no one else bothered to develop. Let’s poke and probe.
The second is to keep your eyes and ears open so that you occasionally see and hear things which you are not supposed to see or hear.
The third, and most important, is to cultivate friends and acquaintances who will give you tips on stories. All of you have friends – lawyers, doctors, cops, politicos, businessmen – whom you don’t see often enough. Keep in touch with them. Treat them with tender loving care. It can reward you and your newspaper. I don’t mean on your own time. Anyone who wants to roam now and then for the purpose of renewing community friendships is encouraged to do so.
This brings us to another point – getting out of the office. We all know from experience that you get a better story by on-the-scene coverage, or a face-to-face interview, than by telephone work. Let’s get out of our chairs and go after the news in person whenever time permits.
Only a small percentage of our stories will be exclusives, unfortunately. The other paper will have most of the stories that we have, or a version of them, at least. Thus if we are to make our paper significantly different, significantly better than the other paper, we must do it with the basic material that is available to all media.
We can do this if we are willing to take a little extra time, expend a little extra effort, with each story.
Search out the angle. There usually is one.
Pry loose the additional facts which will lift the story out of the routine.
Reporters must go beyond the police report, the court file and the press release. We must talk to the principals. We must tell not only what happened, but why it happened. Rewriters must analyze the legman’s report carefully; if it has holes, ask for more information; if the legman can’t get it, the rewriter must hit the phone himself.
Before you start to write a story – any story, handout on up – stop a minute and ask yourself if you’ve overlooked any possibilities. Is there a twist or treatment you can give that will make it different?
Press conferences, the bane of our trade, offer a challenge to an artful reporter. Nothing is worse, to me, than to watch a TV report of a press conference at 6:30 p.m., knowing that the same quotes will be reported in our paper the next morning. Let’s get to the press conference a few minutes early or linger a moment after it’s over, and try for a couple of quotes the other guys don’t get. Then we’ve got a DIFFERENT story.
The key to a fine story is detail. Not wordiness, but pertinent detail that describes, lets the reader see through your eyes. Describe the people who move through your stories. Avoid tiresome generalities which substitute for facts. Don’t say a woman was “well dressed” or “dressed in high fashion.” Say she wore a blue mink stole and a Handmacher suit; if you don’t know what she wore, try to find out.
It is the reporting of interesting, significant detail that will insure that a newspaper is read. TV and radio can give news flashes and summaries, but it cannot give detail.
Many of you will be thinking about now that with our tight paper, more detail would not be welcomed by the city desk and news desk. Not so. Tiresome, wordy, boring, windbaggy detail is not welcome, here or anywhere. But fresh, interesting, descriptive detail is welcome, and is entirely consistent with tight writing.
About writing: this paper is pretty well written, but it could be improved. There are still too many stories that begin … “A 28 year-old-laborer yesterday …” Let’s scrub that style – unless it’s the instance of a 28 year old laborer’s marriage to an 89 year old widow from Sea Cliff.
If stories of wrecks and drownings and mayhem must start with the victim, what’s wrong with the man’s name? “John P. Reynolds rammed his car into a freeway abutment yesterday and died instantly.” People might read a story written that way; they wouldn’t find out till later that the guy was only a laborer. Addresses, of course, should never be in leads; age should be used in the lead only when pertinent. An extreme example of pertinency would be a woman, 59, who bore a child.
The location of the time element in the lead requires a little care. The “yesterday” should be placed in the sentence as unobtrusively as possible. The hackneyed wire service style is to slap in in between the subject and predicate; e.g., “John P. Reynolds yesterday rammed his car …” That’s not our spoken language, and not the style of good written English. The reader stumbles over it. Usually it can follow the action verb; often it can go at the end of the sentence. “John P. Reynolds was shot and killed yesterday when he tried to disarm an off-duty policeman.” “Governor Brown turned the first shovelful of earth for the new San Luis Project yesterday.”
In stories about city, state and federal government, try to say what happened first and, if it’s necessary to name a long-titled committee, put the committee at the end of the lead, or in the next paragraph. I still see stories with leads like: “Governor Edmund G. Brown’s Special Study Committee on Housing, Poverty, Welfare and Water Pollution yesterday recommended that married women over 18 be given the right to vote.” Exactly that structure. The way to write it, of course, is: “Married women over 18 would have the right to vote under a program recommended yesterday by a governor’s special committee.”
Avoid the clichés, handy though they may be, such as donnybrook, hassle, socialite, top brass, traffic snarls, prisoner at the bar, contusions and abrasions (multiple or otherwise), attractive (blonde, brunet, redhead). Ah, make up your own list.
When doing stories in special fields, take pains to write in the language of the people and not the argot of specialists. We can leave finalizing to the bureaucrats, methodology to the educators, scientific disciplines to the scientists, Latin-type to the police, tokenism to civil rights workers and national posture to the military, to name a few.
A few words about obits: We like them. My grandmother, who died in her eighties, once told me she had taken the Ex for more than 40 years because, among other things, “it has the best obituaries.” Most obits by necessity are somewhat stylized. However, every once in a while there comes an obit which can be a good feature story … a colorful adventurer, perhaps; a once-celebrated actress who died in obscurity. When you see an opportunity in an obit, point it out to the desk. We can give it a ride.
Finally, we do want your ideas for stories and features. We need them. We LOVE them.
Gale Cook
January 23, 1964
Back to Buttry: I love the note on many levels and think I would have enjoyed working for and with Gale Cook. You’ve already read the best part of this blog post, but if you care about my observations on the note, read on. My comments will be in bold, interspersed in the Cook note (which is worth a second read anyway). I’ll also add some links.
TO THE STAFF:
I want to offer you some ideas for improving our newspaper – things we can do to strengthen the Monarch’s position in this jungle fight for circulation.
Times have changed for newspapers, particularly since World War II. And they are changing still. Papers are being forced to adapt to changes in our society and the tastes of the people who buy newspapers. The main trouble with newspapers is, they aren’t changing fast enough.
I have often said that change has been a constant during my career, not just since the birth of the Internet. Well, this note was written four years before I first delivered a newspaper and seven years before my first professional byline.
We can see change everywhere about us. I won’t belabor the obvious. We’ve got television breathing down our necks, of course, and radio reporters running around with mobile transmitters. I’m thinking more, though, of how people have changed. Then as now, the changes in people and their lives are more important than the changes in our business. Look at the police department: Considering the younger men on the force, the last few rookie classes, for instance – could anyone apply to them the term, “dumb cop?” I think not. Most of them are highly intelligent, educated young men – some with college degrees – who read books and current magazines, watch TV, go to plays and PTA meetings, and they expect their newspaper to be a 1964 Model.
All of you are newspaper people of high intelligence and unusual talent. Over the years, the Examiner has been fortunate in being able to choose new reporters from the best in the business.
All agreed?
Then it follows by the immutable rules of logic that if we are bested in the handling of a story, it’s our own damn fault. I’d love to know if a particular story triggered this memo. We had a breakdown somewhere; a bit of lethargy; somebody didn’t have his eyes open. It may have been a deskman, or it may have been the reporter. That’s not important. You’ll notice lots of male references in the note: deskman, legman, newspaperman. It was a heavily male business then, and it was acceptable as well to use -man as generic terminology even if everyone referred to wasn’t a man.
What is important is ATTITUDE. Remember that this was typed, before we had the option of boldface or italics and before all-caps became the Internet equivalent of SHOUTING. If that smacks of lecture and scolding, forgive me. I don’t mean it in that sense. I am talking of the approach we must take to each story, large or small, if we are to extract its real essence.
Enthusiasm, compassion, suspicion, curiosity, real interest – these are the qualities which a fine newspaperman must bring to bear on the stories he develops and writes. The reporter or deskman without these qualities is a second rater, no matter how skillfully he writes. As true now as it was then.
Arthur Brisbane once said: “The newspaperman must do every day the work by which he lives, and do it all over again. Each day he must create his reputation anew. His greatest asset is enthusiasm, real interest in what he sees and what he tells.” (If that name looks familiar, it might help to know that Arthur S. Brisbane, former New York Times ombudsman and Kansas City Star publisher and editor, was the grandson of the great Hearst editor Cook was citing; Art the younger and I were colleagues at the Star more than 20 years ago.) (There’s more to the quote. Cynics may read the rest in Chapter 12 of Gene Fowler’s “Skyline.”) This is a real journalist: Even in a note to the newsroom, he’s telling you where to go for more. I’m pretty sure he would have understood the importance of linking.
If we are satisfied simply to cover the news that comes along, if we are content merely to do as good a job as our competitors, then we deserve to fail and we will fail. Again, this is as true now as it was 50 years ago. Complacency leads to failure.
The fact that you and I and a lot of other first-rate people happen to work for this paper doesn’t do a thing for home delivery or street sales. People will buy our paper only for one reason – because they think they get more for their dime than they do in the other paper, because experience has taught them they will find news and detail in The Examiner that they won’t find elsewhere. You can’t get much for a dime any more. But most digital content is free, and if newspapers are going to make paywalls, meters, all-access and other paid plans work, they better provide value.
Dick Nolan once said: “When I was at City Hall, I took the position that The Examiner was entitled to every story the other papers had, plus one or two a day that the others didn’t have.” That is a selling attitude. (Russ Cone, incidentally, has the same philosophy.) I couldn’t find anything explaining who Dick Nolan was, but Robert sends this explanation: “He wrote a column for the Examiner called ‘The City.’ I believe he started in the late 1950s and continued through the ’60s and maybe into the early ’70s.” Cone was the Examiner’s City Hall reporter from 1958 to his retirement in 1984, according to his 1996 obit, which I linked above.
The exclusive story is king around here, as far as I’m concerned. There are three principal ways to come by xcloos. Exclusives aren’t what they used to be, since the exclusivity doesn’t last long. But I still love being first. And I especially love journalism jargon, such as xcloos, a new one on me.
One is to poke a little below the surface of a routine story. Often you find an interesting, important story that no one else bothered to develop. Let’s poke and probe. Still a great way to find a good story: Poke and probe.
The second is to keep your eyes and ears open so that you occasionally see and hear things which you are not supposed to see or hear. More advice that remains sound 50 years later.
The third, and most important, is to cultivate friends and acquaintances who will give you tips on stories. All of you have friends – lawyers, doctors, cops, politicos, businessmen – whom you don’t see often enough. Keep in touch with them. Treat them with tender loving care. It can reward you and your newspaper. I don’t mean on your own time. Anyone who wants to roam now and then for the purpose of renewing community friendships is encouraged to do so. Excellent point. In my writing-coach days, I often encouraged “prospecting,” getting out into the community to meet new sources and learn the stories they have to tell. I’d broaden the circle of people you should cultivate beyond Cook’s suggestions: teachers, cab drivers, factory workers, janitors, social workers, administrative assistants, stay-at-home moms and dads, retirees …
This brings us to another point – getting out of the office. We all know from experience that you get a better story by on-the-scene coverage, or a face-to-face interview, than by telephone work. Let’s get out of our chairs and go after the news in person whenever time permits. Sometimes you hear old-timers say that young journalists need to get out of the office more often and work stories in person, rather than looking for information online. Well, that’s been a tension my whole career, long before online research was even an option. It’s great advice, but often overlooks the efficiency of using a phone or computer to track down information (including making connections with those people you’ll interview in person). The best reporters know when to save time with the phone and/0r digital communication and when to go to the scene or meet the source face to face.
Only a small percentage of our stories will be exclusives, unfortunately. The other paper will have most of the stories that we have, or a version of them, at least. Thus if we are to make our paper significantly different, significantly better than the other paper, we must do it with the basic material that is available to all media.
We can do this if we are willing to take a little extra time, expend a little extra effort, with each story.
Search out the angle. There usually is one.
Pry loose the additional facts which will lift the story out of the routine. I used to do a whole workshop on making routine stories special. I’ll update and publish that handout sometime, and maybe some updated lessons from some routine stories.
Reporters must go beyond the police report, the court file and the press release. We must talk to the principals. We must tell not only what happened, but why it happened. Rewriters must analyze the legman’s report carefully; if it has holes, ask for more information; if the legman can’t get it, the rewriter must hit the phone himself. “Rewriter” isn’t a position we have in newsrooms today, but I think a curator (which wasn’t a newsroom position 50 years ago) actually has something in common with the rewriter. And I expect some newsroom someday, maybe soon, to try a rewrite position, an editor whose job is to write the print version of events covered in liveblogs.
Before you start to write a story – any story, handout on up – stop a minute and ask yourself if you’ve overlooked any possibilities. Is there a twist or treatment you can give that will make it different?
Press conferences, the bane of our trade, offer a challenge to an artful reporter. Nothing is worse, to me, than to watch a TV report of a press conference at 6:30 p.m., knowing that the same quotes will be reported in our paper the next morning. Let’s get to the press conference a few minutes early or linger a moment after it’s over, and try for a couple of quotes the other guys don’t get. Then we’ve got a DIFFERENT story.
The key to a fine story is detail. Not wordiness, but pertinent detail that describes, lets the reader see through your eyes. Describe the people who move through your stories. Avoid tiresome generalities which substitute for facts. Don’t say a woman was “well dressed” or “dressed in high fashion.” Say she wore a blue mink stole and a Handmacher suit; if you don’t know what she wore, try to find out. This reminds me of Roy Peter Clark’s advice to “get the name of the dog” or the brand of the beer. In blog post about my story on women who had abortions or continued difficult pregnancies, I noted the importance of pertinent detail. Mimi wondered if there really is or was such a thing as a blue mink stole. Apparently so, but it’s not very blue.
It is the reporting of interesting, significant detail that will insure that a newspaper is read. TV and radio can give news flashes and summaries, but it cannot give detail. This is not a particular advantage that newspapers have over digital publishing. Without newspapers’ space limitations and with the use of databases, digital publishers can use detail most effectively.
Many of you will be thinking about now that with our tight paper, more detail would not be welcomed by the city desk and news desk. I’m thinking those guys probably didn’t have a clue about tight papers. I think we’ve always thought today’s papers were tight, whenever “today” was. Not so. Tiresome, wordy, boring, windbaggy detail is not welcome, here or anywhere. Still true. But fresh, interesting, descriptive detail is welcome, and is entirely consistent with tight writing. Still true.
About writing: this paper is pretty well written, but it could be improved. There are still too many stories that begin … “A 28 year-old-laborer yesterday …” Let’s scrub that style – unless it’s the instance of a 28 year old laborer’s marriage to an 89 year old widow from Sea Cliff.
If stories of wrecks and drownings and mayhem must start with the victim, what’s wrong with the man’s name? “John P. Reynolds rammed his car into a freeway abutment yesterday and died instantly.” People might read a story written that way; they wouldn’t find out till later that the guy was only a laborer. Addresses, of course, should never be in leads; age should be used in the lead only when pertinent. An extreme example of pertinency would be a woman, 59, who bore a child. Newspapers used to (and perhaps still do) overuse age as an identifying fact, whether it was relevant or not.
The location of the time element in the lead requires a little care. The “yesterday” should be placed in the sentence as unobtrusively as possible. The hackneyed wire service style is to slap in in between the subject and predicate; e.g., “John P. Reynolds yesterday rammed his car …” That’s not our spoken language, and not the style of good written English. The reader stumbles over it. Usually it can follow the action verb; often it can go at the end of the sentence. “John P. Reynolds was shot and killed yesterday when he tried to disarm an off-duty policeman.” “Governor Brown turned the first shovelful of earth for the new San Luis Project yesterday.” It’s kinda cool to be reading this 50 years later and California’s government is still led by Governor Brown, Jerry Brown, the son of Pat Brown, who was governor in the 1960s. It was his 1962 defeat of Richard Nixon that led Nixon to say (prematurely) at his “last press conference” that we wouldn’t have him to “kick around any more.” (If only …)
In stories about city, state and federal government, try to say what happened first and, if it’s necessary to name a long-titled committee, put the committee at the end of the lead, or in the next paragraph. I still see stories with leads like: “Governor Edmund G. Brown’s Special Study Committee on Housing, Poverty, Welfare and Water Pollution yesterday recommended that married women over 18 be given the right to vote.” Exactly that structure. The way to write it, of course, is: “Married women over 18 would have the right to vote under a program recommended yesterday by a governor’s special committee.” More sound writing advice.
Avoid the clichés, handy though they may be, such as donnybrook, hassle, socialite, top brass, traffic snarls, prisoner at the bar, contusions and abrasions (multiple or otherwise), attractive (blonde, brunet, redhead). Ah, make up your own list. The list would be different today, but we still lean too heavily on clichés.
When doing stories in special fields, take pains to write in the language of the people and not the argot of specialists. We can leave finalizing to the bureaucrats, methodology to the educators, scientific disciplines to the scientists, Latin-type to the police, tokenism to civil rights workers and national posture to the military, to name a few. Again, it’s still good advice to avoid using jargon. But my note here is to young journalists who haven’t used typewriters: You couldn’t just hit “control-U” to start underlining. Cook had to backspace and then type the underline key each time he wanted to underline a word. Kids today have it so easy. 😉
A few words about obits: We like them. My grandmother, who died in her eighties, once told me she had taken the Ex for more than 40 years because, among other things, “it has the best obituaries.” Most obits by necessity are somewhat stylized. However, every once in a while there comes an obit which can be a good feature story … a colorful adventurer, perhaps; a once-celebrated actress who died in obscurity. When you see an opportunity in an obit, point it out to the desk. We can give it a ride. I’ve said before that we need to tell better life stories in our obituaries.
Finally, we do want your ideas for stories and features. We need them. We LOVE them. All caps again. And again, we still want your stories and features.
Gale Cook
January 23, 1964
What a great note. Thanks to Robert and Jennifer for sharing it. I may someday dig through some old boxes and files to see if I can find some notes from my editors (or myself) to share. I’ve scanned my photocopy of the note and embedded it below. The coffee stains, I should note, are not mine.
Cook died at age 92 in 2011. He was Sacramento Bureau chief for the Examiner for 10 years, as you can see in the screen grab below from a 1981 TV report about the Examiner and other newspapers experimenting with the Internet.
[…] two posts were my only posts getting more than 1,000 views in January, but a Jan. 23 post with a 50-year-old memo by former San Francisco Examiner City Editor Gale Cook had 961 this morning, so it will top 1,000 […]
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[…] While Project Unbolt dominated the first part of the year, we didn’t launch it until late January, and I set a monthly traffic record in January (since broken in February and again in October, when the Baquet and Shirky posts both published). That post on Twitter competition was the big driver, but two other January posts did pretty well, too: My first post of advice for a new journalism professor (nearly 2,800 views) and a 50-year-old memo from San Francisco Examiner editor Gale Cook (1,200). […]
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