Report values;

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VOL. VI NEW YORK, NOVEMBER, 1923 No. 11
Report Values
MU C H emphasis has been placed on the
importance of care in the prepara­tion
of professional reports. There has
been no end of talk and preachment about
the proper characteristics, such as clear
statements, well written comments, etc.
Countless hours have been devoted to in­struction
in the use of English. Stress has
been laid on punctuation, capitalization,
brevity, and clearness. But the kind and
quality of material to be presented have
been sadly neglected.
The secret of success in the newspaper
world is what a newspaper man calls a
sense of news value. There are certain
events in which the public is not interested.
There are other news items which readers
always await with the keenest of interest.
The interest varies with different groups of
individuals. A good newspaper man has a
sense of discrimination which enables him
to select for his paper those things which
have a popular appeal.
Sense of news value seems to the lay­man
to have all the ear-marks of a mys­terious
and, at times, uncanny thing.
Consideration of the natural aptitude and
training of the newspaper man, however,
explains a great deal. He is first a student
of human nature; of its emotions, likes and
dislikes. He keeps ever in the foreground
of his mind the fact that the average in­dividual
has a personal interest in matters
which affect him, his environment, and his
relation to society generally. No type of
article is more eagerly read than the human
interest story.
While accountancy practice has to do
with a variety of engagements, nine-tenths
of the volume probably center around work
in the nature of review, technically known
as auditing. The natural sequence to the
work of review, carried on in the field, is the
report. This is either a crowning glory, or
a hollow sham, depending on what goes
into it.
Any report which consists of a com­pilation
of figures, with merely an expla­nation
of how they were verified, is not
worthy of the name. The story which
the figures tell, the significance which
they have in the life and experience of
the business, the relations which they
show, the hopes or fears which they give,