The Exaggeration Department.
Some time ago, one of the editors of a daily newspaper asked another the secret of his success. "Well," said he, "first get the news, and then make a grand fuss about it." A fuss, a sensation, a stir about it, is the one thing needful to make the most of newspapers "go." The other day I was riding up-town in a Fourth-avenue car. By the side of me sat a young man with two or three copies of the same paper in his hand. It was a popular weekly journal, the character of which was well known to me, and I also knew something of its "ways and means." As we rode on we fell into conversation, and a remark of his led me to perceive that he had some relation to the papers he had with him. At length I asked him if he was one of the editors. He said "not an editor, but a regular contributor, he furnished an article every week, for which he was paid by the week a salary, and each communication was expected to be about a certain length." I then inquired what department he filled, and he opened the paper and showed me his production. It was entitled "The Rats of Brazil." I read part of it, and being filled with wonder at the marvelous rat-stories, their numbers, size, ferocity, and power, far exceeding anything that I had heard of before from Brazil or any other quarter of the world, I finally ventured, in a very confidential and yet knowing manner, to insinuate the faintest shadow of a doubt as to the strictly accurate character of the exceedingly interesting, graphic, and startling account he had permitted me to read. Pleased he evidently was with my simplicity; "verdancy" he may call it, when he serves me up as I am now serving him; and turning upon me with a familiar smile, he said: "True, well, that is a joke to be sure; true! what has that to do with it? My business is to write an article that will sell and sell the paper. I suppose my department might be called 'The Exaggeration Department.' I take a subject and work it up into a readable, entertaining, exciting paper. Who cares whether the rats of Brazil are a foot longer or shorter, or more or less in numbers? There are plenty of rats everywhere, and when people read about them they want to read something they never read before. Everybody loves a 'big story,' and I love to tell it." Here I interposed a question as to the line of his studies: "Do you confine yourself to Natural History?" "Not always, but just now I am mostly in that way. I am getting up a splendid article on the 'Cockroaches in Japan.'" "Are there any there?" I asked hastily. "What has that to do with it?" he answered. I take it for granted there may be, and nobody will care enough about the matter to make any inquiries, so the thing will be read, wondered at, and forgotten; it is copied into other papers, goes the rounds, dies out, and by and by comes up again. Then some traveler, merchant, missionary, or what not, pitches into it, and sends to the religious papers (here I winced a little) a communication denying the truthfulness of a statement he has seen going the rounds of the papers about the cockroaches of Japan; he knows from personal observation, having resided there seventeen years last July, and having just returned, that the statements are altogether unworthy of credit, and must have been made by some person not himself familiar with the natural history of that hitherto secluded empire. Here my neighbor paused to take breath, and I rewarded his eloquence by telling him that truth is the basis of all excellence in a newspaper as well as a man, and I thought it a great pity that a youth with so much imagination as he evidently possessed would not employ it in illustrating and adorning the true, rather than inventing the false. The word struck him harshly; the blow was not expected, and he went upon another track immediately. "It is bread, sir; it's a question of meat and potatoes, sir. I must live, you know, sir." "No," said I. "I do not see any necessity of your living at all. What good do you do? What is your life worth to the community? What loss would it be to this city or the world if a man should die who earns his bread by exaggeration; by telling the public what he knows to be without foundation in fact, and which misleads and misinforms everybody who reads?" We had just reached this point in our conversation and Fourth street at the same time, where he said he must get out. He looked a little hurt by the bluntness of my remarks. He was of the same class with the "Dreadful-Accident Makers," who startle the public with their ingenious fabrications. Just now that set are writing letters from the seat of war, and the lies they tell are so many that the regular correspondent who values his reputation hardly stands a chance. It is a fact that many people love a terrible story, an incredible story, and its truth is the last and least element in it they care to question.—N. Y. Observer.