MAN WHO BIT A DOG

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6946, 27 June 1929, Page 3

MAN WHO BIT A DOG

QUESTION OF NEWS VALUE

Discovered! The man who bit a dog. His name is Francis M. Eckhart, and ho lives in Denver, Colorado (states a American writer). Newspaper men—and women —the world over have been on the look-out for him ever since the day, many years ago, when Charles A. Dana, famous editor, sermonising on news values, said, in effect. “If a dog bites a man, it is not news. But if a man biles a dog™Ah, then you have a story! "

So here’s the story: Mr. Eckhart and his friend, Miss Dorothy Hamm, 19 years old, were out walking ..one evening recently when they encountered a big, vicious looking police dog. The dog dropped in behind them as they strolled along the sidewalk, sniffing at the heels of one. and then the oilier.

Miss Hamm, frightened, and thinking to scam, the dog oil’, waved an arm at him. instantly the dog sprang at her, fastening its tooth in her forearm. Who screamed and sought to beat the dog oil with her,free hand, but without avail. Eckhart,' after looking about hurriedly for a club or some other weapon, attacked the dog with feet and lists. That didn't accomplish any good, either. “Iso 1 just loaned over and sank my teclli in the brute’s car,” Eckhari said, recounting the incident. “And and 1 know how lo lame a police dog. That big brute les loose of Dorothy’s arm and ran down the street as if there were a, whole Hock of cans tide to his tail.” Neither Eckhart. nor Miss Hamm realised that Eckhart was, iiguratively, biting himself a niche in journalism’s "'Who’s Who” when he seized the dog’s ear in his teeth. To tell the truth, it doesn’t seem to make much difference to either of them, now' that they know it. But for newspaper reporters —the long quest is over. They have discovered the man who bit the dog. But strangely enough, although this was, according to newspaper tradition, big nows indeed, it was given only a modest bit of space on the front pages of the newspapers in that territory, while, as it happened, the story of a dog attacking several children, in a neighbouring community, was Ten 1 u it* 1 in much bigger headlines. So it would scum that since Mr. Dana's famous valuation of news, ideas have changed some what.