Anthology

The BEST NEWS STORIES OF 1924-- Edited by Joseph Anthony and Woodman Morrison--Small, Maynard ($2.50). He who writes for him who reads as he runs must learn to write as he runs. For the latter's assistance, there is the who-what-where-when-how formula for first paragraphs, with its variations peculiar to various copy-desks. But within the narrow confines of a formula, triteness is escapable only by the unusually agile-minded reporter. The editors of this anthology have selected 70 examples of such agility --straight reporting, foreign correspondence, sport, "features," human interest, interviews and personality stories from "the vast and sprawling newspaper field,'' apologizing for necessary omissions but not for the merits of any inclusion.

"Mars kept his date with Mother Earth a few minutes after midnight this morning. He made that date in 1804. Shy bachelor, it will be the year 2007 before he comes back courting again" &3151;readers of The New York Evening Post may recognize Reporter Dudley Nichols' astronomical report of last August.

A story by Reporter Jack De Witt of the Council Bluffs (Iowa) Nonpareil, began: ''There's a lot of good fellows on the road nowadays, seems like we're getting a better class of hoboes, if you know what I mean.' It was a railroad man speaking. The Burlington railroad yards were hideous with noises of the night, hissing of steam and dull clanging of bells. . . ."

From the St. Paul Dispatch, there appeared a highly amusing story, by Reporter Julian Sargent, about "the girl of the athletic nose" ; from the Baltimore Sun, an ingenious piece involving a Chinaman whom the police mistook for a Yellow Peril when he did his own surveying for a new laundry.

Of 39 newspapers represented in the table of contents, 6 were Far Western sheets, 9 Midwestern, 4 Southern, 6 Manhattan, 2 New England. No Philadelphia paper contributed anything found worthy by the editors.