Nothing could accelerate human progress more than to reduce the time
between the discovery of a new truth and its application to the
needs of mankind.... It is regarded as a great journalistic
achievement when the time of transmission of a cablegram is
shortened. But how much more important it is to gain a few years in
learning what the men who are in advance of their age are doing than
to gain a few seconds in learning what the people of Europe are
doing? This lag in intellectual progress ... is something which it
is the especial duty of the journalist to remove. He likes to score
a beat of a few hours. Very well, if he will turn his attention to
science, he can often score a beat of ten years.

The three main sources, therefore, of subjects and material for special
feature and magazine articles are (1) personal observation and
experience, (2) newspapers, (3) scientific and technical publications
and official reports.

PERSONAL OBSERVATION. How a writer may discover subjects for newspaper
feature articles in the course of his daily routine by being alive to
the possibilities around him can best be shown by concrete examples.

A "community sing" in a public park gave a woman writer a good subject
for a special article published in the _Philadelphia North American_.

In the publication of a city directory was found a timely subject for an
article on the task of getting out the annual directory in a large city;
the story was printed in a Sunday issue of the _Boston Herald_.

A glimpse of some children dressed like Arctic explorers in an outdoor
school in Kansas City was evidently the origin of a special feature