PAGE EIGHT
GENERAL
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1940
They also Serve who only Stand and Wait
IN THE WEEK BEFORE NEW YEAR'S, 1940. Istanbul was quiet as Wall Street on a Sunday.
Robert Canuti, the AP's English-educated Turkish correspondent, hadn't had a first-class story for almost three months—not since the Turko-British treaty handed the Kremlin a short and snappy answer.
But while man was dozing, Nature woke. Beneath the surface of ancient Asia Minor, subterranean ledges lost their age-long balance, slipped and skipped sideways.
The first totals of homeless, dead, and injured—usually exaggerated in such disasters—were not exaggerated this time. Pictures that came by "slow camel" added to the terrible tale. It was the biggest earthquake story since Yokohama.
And Robert Canuti, his months of waiting ended, had it on the wires to the western world before it was known in the streets of Istanbul. At once, the machinery of international relief began to whir, and help was on the way.
But the complete, the almost miraculous, worldcoverage of the great Press Services comes frommen who mostly stand and wait. Correspondentslike Robert Canuti in the quieter capitals—andthe thousands of "stringers," in the world's little townsand villages, so-called because they paste theirinfrequent dispatches into a string and measure theirpayment by the inch.
Most people think of Press Association men as daring young acrobats of the newspaper world, always somersaulting from one hot story to another ... now in Tokyo, next in Singapore—now in Bucharest, soon at Brussels.
Men like these form the nerve ends of the wire services-indispensable divisions of journalism's army of 300,000 men.
The development of these world-wide Press Services, accurate, unbiased, and unsubsidized, is an
American achievement. It is an outstanding example of American organizing genius—and it has all happened within the lifetime of most news-readers now living. More than that, the Press Services are the standard bearers, throughout the world, of the 20th century American tradition of accuracy and fair play in news-reporting. Something new under the sun.
It wasn't until the 1890s that the dream of the modern Associated Press began to take form. A few courageous pioneers—Victor Lawson, Frank B. Noyes, Melville Stone, and Adolph Ochs—worked zealously for it, and in time press associations began pointing eager fingers at the map of the world and putting new correspondents wherever a fat dot showed an important city.
By the time an emperor with a withered arm unleashed the hounds of war in 1914, U. S. Press Services had spun their webs around the globe. AP's now seasoned network was being kept on its mettle by a lusty young competitor, an independent service called United Press, fathered in 1907 by E. W. Scripps.
Due chiefly to the vision of these pioneers, the U. S., in less than half a century, has shed its news provincialism. Today... let a flood sweep down the
Yangtze, a strike begin in Melbourne, a regiment revolt in Addis Ababa, and in a matter of minutes or hours the teletypes in the U. S. begin to chatter.
▶ FLASH—calls' the foreign cable, and begins gasping out its own curt, staccato language . . . SMORNING FRENCH CRUISER AIR-BOMBED IN ENGLISH CHANNEL. "Flash" calls the New York operator. "French cruiser bombed." A
rewrite man works frantically, and soon the fingers of another operator start the electric current flowing. Operators in Philadelphia, Chicago, and almost a score of other U. S. cities stand up crying "Flash." In a few seconds, every cranny of the U. S. will have the news.
From 50,000 news sources all over the globe, this river of news flows day and night. For while America sleeps, one half the world is wide-awake, busy getting into and out of trouble, busy making that vivid, perishable stuff called news.
To every self-respecting newspaper, Press Association news is the breath of life. A paper pays for as much of it as it can afford and use. A country weekly can have as little as $18 worth a week, a metropolitan daily as much as $2,500. But whether a paper gets "pony" or multiple wire service, it counts its Press Association service as perhaps its most valuable asset.
Press Association news is just as indispensable to The Weekly Newsmagazine as to a daily newspaper. To be sure, TIME has its own special correspondents, too—its own force of 500 news-scouts—its own check-and-query system.
But the stories from the daring acrobats and the quiet watchers of the Press Associations supply a basic pattern of the world's news...the vital pattern, which in the Newsmagazine becomes the continuing narrative history of our times, followed every week by 700,000 cover-to-cover readers.
This is one of a series of advertisements in which the Editors of TIME hope to give College Students a clearer picture of the world of news-gathering, news-writing, and news-reading—and the part TIME plays in helping you to grasp, measure, and use the history of your lifetime as you live the story of your life.
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