EDITING AN ATLANTIC NEWSPAPER.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 25, 29 January 1921, Page 13

EDITING AN ATLANTIC NEWSPAPER.

"Foldha will be on with news any minato if you care to come and listen." So ran the message from the wireless room. It was past midnight. Slipping on a dressing-gown I left my comfortable stateroom and wandered along the Imperator's deserted corridore and stairways to a little cafoin on the -topmost deck. Here, at a bench crowded with instruments and switches, the wireless operator eat, telephones fitted to his head, his right hand ready with pencil, his left slowly turning, this vray and that, a pointer which caused his receiving apparatus to "search' , the ether for the Poldhu call. For every night from the Cornish town comes news of the world for ships at sea. "Good ovening, Mr. Editor," said the operator, handing mc a spare telephone headpiece to "listen-in."' A high-pitcbed musical Morse note iilled my ears. "Thafe the EUTrI Tower, Paris.' , He altered the pointer and the "mueic" changed. "That's Berlin giving 113 the time from Nauen." Another turn of the pointer: "That's the Aquitania, homeward bound. .. . Hullo! Here we are. . . . Poldhu. . . . Thank goodness, no x's (atmospheric disturbances) tonight " He began to write on a sheet of foolscap beaded "News Messages," and as I followed his pencil I read of disturbances that day in Ireland, of the rates of exchange, of a London Polii-e Court case, of the death of a celebrity in Parity

Slackest night and one thousand miles out from Southampton for New York. Outside a gale played wild music on our aerial wires. Below 3000 people slept, and here •were three of us Lv magic communion with some cheerful fellow in Cornwall who was telling us the happenings of the day just past. I glanced at the clock. It was the hour at which my newspaper comrades in Fleet Street would be doin£ precisely what 1 was doing, reading and sifting the neits and settling the problems of relative importance. The dots and dashes of the Morse" code petered out. All was silent in the telephones. "Three minutes stand-by to listen for 5.0.5.,"' said my friend. Then Poldtau piped in again and finished off his message. The operator aaked if I would like some American news for the American passengers. "We ought to pick up Arlington to-night," he said. He moved a ewitch and started "searching," and soon to my budget of news I was able to add a narrative of a dockers' riot in New York, come sporting results, and points from a speech by Mr. Harding. The "copy"' was soon got ready for the printers. There were two of them, in a wonderfully compact little shop. There was no linotype. All the "copy" was set by hand, and the little four-page sheet, of which three columns were eet aside for the late wireless news, was printed on a small hand press. At 7 a.m. the "printers devil' , awakened mc with the unhappy news that they had not got enough stuff to fill the paper. I remembered the danco the night before in the lounge. A couple of inches hastily written about it and the situation was saved. \Y> gallantly wont to press. In a short while the ereat floating hotel had awakened to another day on the evrelling ocean. The first thing passengers thought of was their newspaper. IWo were soon sold onf. As I watched I the- people in their deck chairs reading, of events in London and Now York and ; Paris only a few hours old I wondered I how many pave a thought to mankind s j magic achievements in Science that that little newspaper represented.— (T. Uar£ in the "Daily Mail.")