The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

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THE STORY OF "THE SUN"
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never wrote introductions and never padded his articles
Clarke would sometimes crack a joke. Sun traditions
have it that once, after a reporter had turned New York
inside out to dig out a particularly difficult piece of
news, the night city editor remarked to his assistant
that that reporter "was a handy man to have around
the office." Although Clarke has been referred to by
an excellent judge, Will Irwin, as "the greatest
living schoolmaster of newspapermen," his methods
could never be adapted to the academies of journalism.
As a schoolmaster of a more positive type, Sun men
remember the late Francis T. Patton, who edited suburban news for twenty years. Staff men on assignments in New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island, and
other places just beyond the city turned in their copy
to " Boss " Patton, a cultured man who spent his spare
hours reading old Latin works in the original or working out chess problems. It was to him that the bewildered cub turned in his hour of torment, and Patton
would tell him how long his story ought to run, how
he might begin it, how end it.
"I know it isn't right to fake, Mr. Patton," said
a new reporter; " but is exaggeration never permissible? "
" It is," said Patton. "You may use exaggeration
whenever it is needed to convey to the reader an adequate but not exaggerated picture of the event you are
describing. For instance, if you are reporting a storm
at Seabright, and the waves are eight and one-half feet
high by the tape which you surely carry in your hippocket for such emergencies, it will hardly do to inform
the reader that the waves are eight and one-half feet
high; his visualization of the scene would not be perfect. Yet, if you write that the waves ran mountain