Scoop-Evelyn-Waugh [19]
� in a small way," said Corker. "That's one of the reasons why I was glad to be sent on this story. Ought to be able to pick up some pretty useful things out East. But it's going to be a tough assignment from all I hear. Cutthroat competition. That's where I envy you � working for a paper. You only have to worry about getting your story in time for the first edition. We have to race each other all day." "But the papers can't use your reports any earlier than ours." "No, but they use the one that comes in first." "But if it's exactly the same as the one that came in second and third and fourth and they are all in time for the same edition ... ?" Corker looked at him sadly. "You know, you've got a lot to learn about journalism. Look at it this way. News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead. We're paid to supply news. If someone else has sent a story before us, our story isn't news. Of course there's colour. Colour is just a lot of bulls'-eyes about nothing. It's easy to write and easy to read but it costs too much in cabling so we have to go slow on that. See?" "I think so." That afternoon Corker told William a great deal about the craft of journalism. The Francma� weighed anchor, swung about and steamed into the ochre hills, through the straits and out into the open sea while Corker recounted the heroic legends of Fleet Street; he told of the classic scoops and hoaxes; of the confessions wrung from hysterical suspects; of the innuendo and intricate misrepresentations, the luscious, detailed inventions that composed contemporary history; of the positive, daring lies that got a chap a rise of screw; how Wenlock Jakes, highest paid journalist of the United States, scooped the world with an eye-witness story of the sinking of the Lusitania four hours before she was hit; how Hitchcock, the English Jakes, straddling over his desk in London, had chronicled day by day the horrors of the Messina earthquake; how Corker himself, not three months back, had had the rare good fortune to encounter a knight's widow trapped by the foot between lift and landing. "It was through that story I got sent here," said Corker. "The boss promised me the first big chance that turned up. I little thought it would be this." Many of Corker's anecdotes dealt with the fabulous Wenlock Jakes. "... syndicated all over America. Gets a thousand dollars a week. When he turns up in a place you can bet your life that as long as he's there it'll be the news centre of the world. "Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn't know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window � you know. "Well they were pretty surprised at his office, getting a story like that from the wrong country, but they trusted Jakes and splashed it in six national newspapers. That day every special in Europe got orders to rush to the new revolution. They arrived in shoals. Everything seemed quiet enough, but it was as much as their jobs were worth to say so, with Jakes filing a thousand words of blood and thunder a day. So they chimed in too. Government stocks dropped, financial panic, state of emergency declared, army mobilized, famine, mutiny � and in less than a week there was an honest to God revolution under way, just as Jakes had said. There's the power of the press for you. "They gave Jakes the Nobel Peace Prize for his harrowing descriptions of the carnage � but that was colour stuff." Towards the conclusion of this discourse � William took little part beyond an occasional expression of wonder � Corker began to wriggle his shoulders restlessly, to dive his hands into his bosom and scratch his chest, to roll up his sleeve and gaze fixedly at a forearm which was rapidly becoming mottled and inflamed. It was the fish.