Newspapers / Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / Aug. 20, 1937, edition 1 / Page 17
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“Putting the Baby to Bed" That** I lie old journalistic phrase for closing the passes. Bel mar Etlmondson tells lion’ it*s done on air. , K JmA mMM * ’ Vi Ur T rlur V * *' M ' Eg mjjjk By DELMAR EDMONDSON (Editor Columbia's "Magazine of the Air'’) IF there’s a newspaper or magazine man in your family you may at some time have been startled to hear him speak of "putting the baby to bed.” That expression—as you doubtless made it your business to find out in a hurry— is journalistic parlance for sending the completely written paper to press. Sending a magazine of the air to press, so that a copy is delivered through the radio to any house where a subscriber has the proper station dialed in, is a bit different. The cry in this case is "QUIET! Fifteen seconds.” That means that in fif teen seconds all the vast paraphernalia of the broadcasting station will be con centrated on the group in the given studio, and that group must be on its toes, and await the signal of the control operator for the music to start. Most programs start with some sort of music, so with a magazine of the air that music may be taken as the sound of the presses. So when the cry "Fifteen seconds” echoes, the musicians stop scraping on their strings and blowing into their brasses, the singer stops vocalizing, and a deadly silence descends upon the studio. The control room gives the signal when the passing hand of time falls exactly on the assigned second, the or chestra leader Jbrings his baton down, and the musicians let ’er roll. Radio pages are fed to the air presses one at a' time. You will understand readily that an ozone publication can’t be put out like a three-ring circus, with eight or sixteen pages going on at once, with a singer s warbling about "Chloe” providing an obbligato to a speaker’s dissertation on babies, while the orches tra labors at drowning out both of them. No, no, a magazine of the air, let the printers’ anions say what they will, must be printed a page at a time. Now for the copy on the Heinz Maga zine of the Air, which is published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Your friend and editor, Delmar Edmond son, who introduces the famous guest celebrities beard on the "Heinz Magazine of the Air." That, of course, is prepared in advance. Proofs are made and errors in printing are corrected, and the lines containing them are reset. An attempt is made to turn out the publication ssHhout mis takes, but that ideal is almost never real ized. You have probably never read a newspaper or magazine that didn’t con tain some typographical errors. In cor recting one error the linotype operator is quite apt to make another 'error. Here the magazine of the air is most like the printed magazine. Errors are made. You may not notice them, but tongues are no more infallible than the fingers of a linotype operator. There are verbo graphical errors. You may have thought the baritone was in excellent voice, but at the end of the broadcast he may be saying, "Was that a sour performance I gave!” just as an editorial writer, as he glances over the first edition, may sigh, • Mary Knight, newspaper correspondent and famous "stunt” girl who likes her "Bermooda. ’’ BBUB H Jflßi \ MBM % B fl I 'Veil, l knew what 1 had in mind, but I’m afraid I didn’t put my point Over.” As for verbographical erroas, they PIC may be due to accident or ignorance. Who in the world is able to pronounce off hand every word in his native lan guage, which may be derived from a dozen languages, as English is? Your editor discovered not long ago that culi nary is q-linary, and not, as he’d bandied PfSak m »' tommy 'W. BSL ’•/ ikjitSade ’ '£•: * Neysa McMein, famous illustrator, who bad a lot of trouble with her name but finally worked it out through numer ology. it ever since it came into his life, cul, like the English slang for "that guy.” Equivalent to a sum cove. Q it was, with no allowance for dissenting opin ions. Cul wasn’t even brought up. Most people pronounce the great newspaper founder’s name Piu-litzer. But William Lyon Phelps, Stephen Vin cent Be net and others contend that it is properly pronounced, is so pronounced by the family, Pull-itzer. Various ver sions of the name of the famous artist, Neysa McMein, were stated and vio lently defended. The burden of argu ment seemed to favor Nay-sa McMain, so your editor used that version until the lady herself heard him in dress re hearsal when she contributed to the Heinz Magazine of the Air. The right way to say it, she declared, was Neesa Mi Mean. She’d had a lot of trouble with the name, she admitted, since she’d worked it out for herself by means of numerology. She had used to change her name on every birthday when she was a girl, but she didn’t feel that she could change her current name again, in spite of the complaints about it. "You are lucky,” she ended, "that you don’t have to call me by my married name”— which is Baragwanath, or something of the sort. Mary Knight, famous newspaper cor respondent, once called the Stunt Girl of the United Press, gave the name of the island resort as Bermooda. A diligent traveller who has visited the place five times backed her up, but the dictionary does not. Deems Taylor, renowned composer and critic, uses the English variation of all foreign words. He has defended on the air his pronunciation of Don Quixote, and the dictionary corroborates him in calling it Don Kwiks-ot. A maga zine of the air, then, unlike a magazine of the news stands, makes its errors, not in spelling, but in pronunciation. Charles B. Driscoll, head of a newspaper syndicate, carefully enunciated col-yum nist, though the dictionary does not justify any form but col-um-nist. But suppose the dictionary is wrong, and who is to say whether it is 6r not? If doctors disagree, why shouldn't lexi cographers? As for verbographical errors due to accident, those are just slips of the lips. A tricky combination of syllables throws you, such as Bill Adams’ "quick trick,” or "fashion flashes.” The speaker stum bles over one but through the rest of the sentence he may feel like a tight rope walker who wavers perilously, never quite falling, till he reaches the period, and can take a second to recover his equilibrium. Meanwhile.the boys in the control room above have risen up to sight from their seats, appearing, behind the plate glass that encloses them, like disapproving seals, or like Punch with homicidal designs on Judy.
Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Aug. 20, 1937, edition 1
17
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