The Gregg reporter by Gregg John Robert 1867-1948

Author:Gregg, John Robert, 1867-1948
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Shorthand reporting
Publisher: New York, Chicago, The Gregg Publishing Company
Published: 1909-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

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REDUCED FACSIUILE OP ASSIGNMENT-SHEET USED BY THE ASSOQATED PRESS REPORTERS AT THB NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION.

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We endeavored to let each reporter take as nearly as possible two minutes at a time. Personally, I did no reporting except in cases of emergency. On completing his two minutes' take the reporter was relieved by the man sitting next to him and went immediately to the writing-room which I have described, and, before beginning to dictate, wrote, opposite a letter of the alphabet on a large sheet of paper, his name and the name of the typewriter operator. Supposing that he were the third reporter to take on the.session, he would write his name opposite the letter C, and the operator would number his pages **C1," ''C2," etc., putting at the bottom of the pages **C2 fols," or **D1 fpls," as the case might be.

The typewriting was done on Remington machines, without ribbons, wax stencils being used, and these were collected from the different operators by boys and i'un off on a machine capable of printing 150 copies a minute. Only about twenty-five copies were used, and these were hung on hooks, and were called for by the various newspapers entitled to the use of them, or taken by boys to the editor who was making up the report for the wire.

By these means we were able quite easily to finish a verbatim report of every session within the five minutes allowed us. When the chairman's gavel announcing the adjournment of a session fell, the last reporter was half-, way down the stairs on his way to the writing-room with only some two hundred words on his book to dictate, as very often practically all that had been done during his take was the making of the motion to adjourn.

This is practically the same way in which national conventions have been reported for the Associated Press in previous years, with the exception of the system of lettering the takes, which was my own idea, and which worked perfectly. In previous years the head stenographer as-

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signed each reporter the letters of his different takes in advance, and the result was that very soon confusion arose out of the fact that for various reasons the stenographers did not continue to follow each other in the order in which they started to take. Another change which I made was the reducing of the takes from five to two minutes. To one unacquainted with the vital importance of time in newspaper work, this may seem an absurdly short take, but there were several times during the convention when it proved to be most valuable. Of course it was not always practicable to keep the takes down to two niinutes; in a great many instances a man had to take five minutes, but we avoided this as far as possible. Such was the case, for instance, when the convention was in an exceedingly excitable condition on the announcement of the receipt of the Parker telegram.

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