JOURNALISM AND THE STUDENT PUBLICATION
by Frederick W. Maguire '24and Richard M. Spong '36. Harpers, 432pages, 1951, $3.20
Of the texts I have seen, dealing with student publications this is the first which uses an actual background of standard newspaper publications as a model for the construction of a school or college paper. While there are models of undergraduate sheets, the far greater number are those of metropolitan or city dailies. By this mature approach the authors cover two fields, the first that of directions for building a school organ, and the second for furnishing a study of the entire journalistic layout as it may be covered in actual school classes in journalism.
While the book may be better for secondary schools than for liberal colleges it does include the classifications of news work which have become more or less standardized in the half-century since Pulitzer founded his school of journalistic studies. The techniques which a beginning apprentice must master are well broken down here into chapters dealing successively with staff organization, leads, headlines, make-up, features, and even advertising and management. These discussions of technique do not in any way hamper the readability or attractiveness of the book, and for classroom purposes, suggestions for discussion follow each chapter.
In making an approach to the advanced study of the newspaper, the book gives emphasis to such subjects as journalism as a career, the limitations and pressures under which news men work, and the reasons for certain "faits accomplis" in the trade, if it is a trade. Of perhaps the greatest importance is the very last chapter in which directions are given for the reading of newspapers. In these days when it takes three hours to read through such a newspaper as The New York Times one must develop one's own technique of reading adapted to the time one can spend at such a reading. I have often thought that an ideal course in a college or school would be given on a free hour of the morning when each member of the faculty in turn, one to a day, would read a newspaper before a class, explaining as he went on what his method was, what he looked for, and what he had to skim over or skip, as well as the columns which he read thoroughly, word for word. School and college publications have made great advances in the past 25 years. They do form a separate field with separate interests, but on the whole the student is generally affected in the same way as the reader outside the school by the same interests. Applied to a building or a campus these news approaches may be more limited, but on the whole the book in question endeavors to instill a desire for a student publication which reaches a high degree of efficiency.
