FURTHER TECHNIQUES IN SUBBING

Not only must the story you are subbing be accurate, clear and readable and of the right length; it must also be legally safe to print. Production delays caused by a late decision to take a story found to be libellous out of a page can cost money and lose sales.

Subeditors and the law

All newspapers retain a trained lawyer or senior journalist versed in the law to read copy and advise the editor of potential legal traps. If a story is considered unsafe to use, the legal person, after consulting the editor or chief subeditor, will issue a legal kill, which means it must be thrown away or removed from the computer. Any legal alterations to make a story safe are passed to the sub or page editor who amends the text.

Electronic editing causes no particular problem to the legal reader. While security of text means that computer access is limited in certain areas to those performing editorial tasks, the legal reader has access to all incoming texts, which can be called up file by file and read on screen. Even so, it is necessary for the legal overview to extend to the finished pages, which can also be called up (or printed out) to ensure that no legal danger has resulted from editing, captioning or headline writing.

The overview of the lawyer or legal reader is a general one and varies in efficiency from office to office and it does not absolve the subeditor from watching carefully for legal dangers in copy. If there are any doubts about a story that you cannot resolve in the editing, refer it in good time to the legal reader before consigning it to the page. The difference between a safe story and an action for damages can turn on a phrase or a sequence of words at a critical point in the text.

Lessons in law for newspapers are included in all journalism training courses but it takes time for a young sub to develop the sixth sense a senior colleague uses to spot legal traps that can lie behind innocent-seeming words. Rewrites of stories are an obvious danger when facts are being rearranged and quotations paraphrased or perhaps keyed in wrongly. Yet a ‘tick-marking job’ – a well written story that needs little editing or cutting to fit – can hold as great a danger because it may lull the sub into a state of false confidence. Read a story through again carefully if it seems to have needed little attention.

Legal traps

Keep two thoughts in mind when considering legal problems in editing: one, a mistake or damaging statement gains much more currency with the public than by any other means of dissemination and therefore can cause greater harm; two, newspaper companies are regarded by litigants as rich and a good target. Editors are thus sensitive to those laws of which newspapers are most liable to fall foul.

While all these laws worry editors since they restrict what a newspaper can say and do, some are of less immediate concern to the sub. The laws restricting the coverage of court cases, for instance, are accepted and applied by newspapers. While you as a subeditor should be aware of the types of restrictions, you are not likely to be presented with a blow-by-blow account of the evidence in a steamy divorce case because reporters know such evidence is not allowed to be reported. Only the names and the judge’s summing-up can be used.

Nor are the laws covering youth court cases flouted. Names and identities can be reported only if the magistrates direct that they should (which they seldom do) in the case of very serious offenders who put the public in danger. Here the magistrates’ direction becomes an important part of the story. The provisions of the various Criminal Justice and Sex Offenders Acts from 1967 onwards, which forbid publication of evidence against people committed for trial from lower courts (except in special cases), although disliked by editors, are universally applied.

Yet legal traps can still lurk in copy. Chief of these is the perennial danger of libel in which the threat of being sued can cause a timid editor to shelve a story which should have been published for the public good.

Libel

A newspaper is guilty of libel when it can be proved that a person’s character or livelihood has been damaged as a result of statements made in the paper. A successful action can result in substantial damages being paid out. While some well-known cases get much publicity, many more are settled unknown to the public by out-of-court arrangements in which quite large sums of money change hands, accompanied by a printed apology. This method at least avoids heavy court costs where a newspaper feels the judgement might go against it.

Defence against libel is difficult. An editor might plead the truth of the statements, or contest that they are not defamatory, or that the story was ‘fair comment made in good faith and without malice about a matter of public interest.’

While the decision on whether or not to publish is the editor’ s, the sub needs to be careful in the arrangement of words and facts in a story in which there is a known danger of libel. This is particularly so in stories where the editor, having taken legal advice, is ignoring a letter threatening libel action if the story appears. Such threats are used by people to try to stop publication and are ignored only if the editor has good legal grounds – or good legal advice. In such a story the office lawyer should be allowed to vet the edited version at an early stage to avoid late changes which would delay pages.

A persistent litigant or a wily lawyer can find libel in the most innocent statements and no paper is ever free of writs. Some, however, are just attempts by unscrupulous people to make money and a newspaper learns how to deal with them.

In stories of known legal danger you should make sure that risky statements are corroborated in the text; that people against whom accusations are made have space in the story to in which to make their reply, and that background details are not chosen out of malice or to make people look small or ridiculous. Check back any obvious danger points with the reporter.

People with criminal records are particularly sensitive about having them mentioned in stories that have nothing to do with their murky past. Actors can stand criticism of a particular role but could sue if their professional competence were being questioned. People in public life would expect to meet opposition and criticism but it would be actionable to say that they are not fit for public office. Likewise, suggestions that people are drunks or take drugs can be dangerous, or suggestions that they have been less than honest in their handling of public or shareholders’ money.

Contempt of court

This means broadly any conduct or spoken or written words or printing of pictures which might impede the working of a court or bring justice into disrepute. This is a law aimed at everyone, not just the press. Yet the press, because it reports court cases, is particularly exposed to the danger of being in contempt.

These are the main points concerning news stories about court proceedings, but there is a wide area beyond this in which, at the decision of a judge, an editor might be in contempt of court, and even be fined or sent to prison. For instance, two reporters were sent to prison in Britain for refusing to disclose to a judge the sources of information in a story about an accused person printed before a trial began. Also, judicial tribunals presided over by judges into disasters and other situations have been ruled to be subject to the laws of contempt of court, thus restricting newspapers in what they can print in the same way as with court proceedings.

The idea of the law of contempt of court is that a person, once accused, should be able to get a fair trial. To give an example, a persistent pattern of crime in an area such as attacks on women or children can produce in the public mind the shadowy figure of the marauder who becomes personalized as the Yorkshire Ripper or the Beast of Bournemouth. As long as the police search goes on and further attacks are reported the name Yorkshire Ripper or Beast of Bournemouth dominates the headlines. Once a person has been arrested and charged, however, or even if a person is being held for questioning and not yet named, the editor is in danger of being in contempt by associating the name given to the marauder with the person held. The matter has become sub judice. It is subject to the due processes of the law with which there should be no outside interference. A newspaper story can give only those details that are allowed under the law.

The sort of story that first appears after someone is arrested might run like this:

A man was helping police with their inquiries at Extown police station last night in connection with the deaths of two teenage girls whose bodies were found last Wednesday in the River Ex.

The next development of the story might be:

Charles Jinks, a labourer, of Caxton Street, Riverport, was charged in Extown magistrates’ court this morning with the murder of Elsie Jones, of Privet Street, Extown on or about October 8.

He was given legal aid and was remanded in custody for further inquiries. Bail was refused.

It would be wrong of the local paper to introduce the death of the second girl into the story at this stage, even though they might know that a further charge is pending. It has to wait.

Eventually Charles Jinks is charged with the murder of both girls and evidence is presented and pleas taken. The paper can still publish only what is allowed under the Criminal Justice Acts, which means that, unless the magistrates direct otherwise, only Jinks’s name and address, the charges against him, the names of the girls, his plea, details of bail if any, and the fact of his committal to a higher court can be given.

Not until the case comes before the Crown Court for the area and the prosecution and defence cases are given in full before a jury can the evidence be published in the press. Only after the trial has finished and judgement been given can the paper comment on the case, interview people involved and – if the evidence and result justifies it – use once more the term Yorkshire Ripper or Beast of Bournemouth. It can then, if it wishes, even comment on the way proceedings were brought and on the police handling of the case.

By observing the law of contempt of court, the editor has ensured that the paper’s coverage has done nothing to impede a person’s fair trial (since under British law a person is innocent until proved guilty) by publishing information or comment that might have influenced the jury or damaged the prosecution or defence cases.

Your job in subbing court cases is to check that the law has been observed by the reporter at the hearings at the various stages and not to allow anything into the newspaper that will get it into trouble – and that includes the wording of your headline.

The Official Secrets Act

This is a wide Act which can be used to cover many aspects of government business as well as security and state secrets. Controversial areas are spelt out to the press from time to time in DA-notices, which are requests to editors not to publish certain things on threat of being guilty of breaching the Act. The decision here is whether to publish an item at all and it is one for the editor.

Privilege

Newspapers would be in trouble with litigants much more were it not that under British law the need for freedom of speech in the public interest is recognized and certain newspaper reports are protected by ‘privilege’. The law on privilege covers the reporting of court hearings and sittings of parliament and public bodies where serious accusations can be made about people which, if made and reported elsewhere, could lead to actions for libel.

The application of privilege needs to be learnt by journalists during training for it is a valuable guide to the protection their reports have. It must be known by subeditors. Privilege comes in two sorts.

Absolute privilege

Absolute privilege covers a fair and accurate report of judicial proceedings published contemporaneously, provided that legal restrictions on coverage in certain cases specified in law have been observed. However untrue in fact statements in court are, or however unfair, a newspaper who reports them and says who made them is safe from action for libel. An exception to this in the past has been statements involving sedition, blasphemy and obscenity, though these have become increasingly hard to define.

Qualified privilege

This allows protection for reports of judicial proceedings that are non-contemporaneous, and to reports of Parliament and other public bodies over a wide field. Broadly, qualified privilege means that the reports are privileged in law provided that there is no malice or other improper motive behind publication. Where these motives can be established in court, the protection of qualified privilege is of no avail. Subs should keep in mind this important distinction when dealing with such reports.

The areas covered by qualified privilege include: Parliament, Commonwealth legislatures, international organizations and conferences to which the UK Government sends a representative, public inquiries, bodies formed in the UK to promote the arts, science, religion, learning, trade, business and industry; associations for promoting sports and pastimes to which the public are invited, public meetings held for a lawful purpose, meetings of local authorities, committees or tribunals appointed by Act of Parliament, and reports of notices or information issued to the public by the Government, local authority or police.

Schedules listing these and other occasions of qualified privilege, and also spelling out some important exceptions, are published as part of the 1952 Defamation Act and its successors.

For the subeditor, danger can crop up with statements made by some public bodies covered by qualified privilege in which the background material to which the newspaper might have access is not so covered. The advice of the office lawyer or legal reader is the only course in some cases.

The publication of material not covered by qualified privilege does not mean that the newspaper is automatically in trouble – only that if a court action follows, qualified privilege cannot be used as a defence.

When to rewrite

Subs are generally thought by reporters to be too keen to rewrite copy. It can be galling for a reporter who has taken care over writing up a difficult assignment to find that half the words in the published version, perhaps under the reporter’s name, are unrecognizable.

Yet rewriting can be necessary just as heavy editing is necessary for reasons that have nothing to with the way the reporter has written a story. The treatment of copy, as we have seen, is influenced by the volume and changing pattern of news on the day, and the availability of space on the page, which might change after the story has been completed and the reporter gone home. It may also be governed by new developments that put a story in a different light, the inclusion of other copy sources, a change of emphasis to suit a night editor’s or chief subeditor’s judgement, a clash with editorial policy, or simply changes for editions. It can happen that the work that needs to be done on a story for these reasons is so complex that rewriting is the quickest solution.

The following examples show where rewriting or partial rewriting would be the best means of editing.

Angling

There is nothing sinister about angling a story. It simply means deciding the viewpoint from which to tell it. The intro of any story in effect defines the angle. The fact sequence that follows supports and justifies what the first paragraph has to say.

It can happen that the night editor or chief-sub, with more mature judgement, sees a story differently from the reporter, and the sub is instructed to re-nose it for the page from a new angle. Here are some examples of what might result:

1  A simple local paper account of a street accident becomes a ‘death trap claims new victim’ story because the sub remembers cuttings of previous stories of accidents at the same spot and draws the chief sub’s attention to them.

2  Bequests in a will are brought alive through the eagle eye of the night editor who called for cuttings of some interesting beneficiaries. An unexpected human interest angle emerges.

3  A decision of the local planning committee is found through copy from another reporter to have vital implications for the community that were not immediately apparent in the report of a council meeting.

4  A story about an old lady found dead in a flat in which she lived alone is combined with other material into a story to exemplify a campaign the newspaper is running about urban loneliness.

Angling as demonstrated shows how the creative assessment of a story after it has left the reporter’s hands can result in recasting of the material by the subeditor even if it is not totally rewritten.

There is also the more general angling of stories to suit the readership. Political stories, we have seen, are sometimes presented in regional and town papers in terms of local connections of the politician or of proposed legislation. A paper’s political writers are aware of this and it does not often fall to subs to re-nose their copy. Other jobs can entail a considerable amount of work by the sub to bring out the local angle, often for different editions. The casualty figure in a crash or disaster story might include local people and the story, especially from the more general agency copy, will be edited from this viewpoint. Likewise, trade and industry stories are angled on local connections.

Multiple copy sources

Sometimes you will be given a story which has copy from more than one source. It might be story with several ends in which a main section is perhaps by a staff reporter with legwork provided by area correspondents. For instance an air crash might have local interviews, or a rescue story material from several areas. Sometimes agency copy, either from home agency such as Press Association (PA) or an international agency, has coverage which is relevant. Some stories have foreign ends which have important links with the main story. File background has to be worked in and perhaps a financial angle from the City correspondent, or other specialist contribution.

Keeping up with this amount of copy in a complicated many-sided story requires an eye for vital detail, especially when extra copy arrives during the subbing of the story or even while it is being fitted into the page. You cannot afford to leave out anything of importance, and you must see that new facts, however late in arriving, are placed in correct sequence. Rewriting is often the answer. Most newspapers require staff reporters’ copy to be used where possible in such stories, with agency copy filling the gaps, but the agency version might provide an important element. Such stories should carry a combined staff and agency credit.

Bad copy

A more obvious candidate for rewriting is the story that is badly written, either for lack of time by the reporter or through a wrongly judged style or approach. Such copy might be sent back for the reporter to try again, but if time is short or the reporter is out on another job the sub is instructed to ‘knock it into shape.’ This could include ‘cleaning it up’, which means taking out explicit sex, obscenities, excessive violence or things likely to offend the readers; ‘sharpening it up’, getting rid of dull writing, tedious phrasing and wordiness; or ‘toning it down,’ ridding it of extravagant or emotive language, excessive use of adjectives, or gush.

The precise boundary in rewriting between what should be done in the newsroom before submitting copy and what should be left to the subs is a matter for house practice. There is no doubt that basic newsroom collating of source material simplifies the sub’s job, yet with imminent page and edition deadlines the arrival of late or additional material is best dealt with by the subeditor, who is closer to the space requirements and may be already well into editing the story. Daily newspapers, especially town evenings, are much more subs’ papers than they are writers’.

Electronic tools

Electronic editing offers no handicap to jobs that entail collating and rewriting. Computers have a prodigious capacity for storage and retrieval of material and, although split screen allows only two stories to be displayed comfortably at a time, you can display the main edited text on one side and work in material from other stories successively from the other side on those systems that offer the facility.

In most cases where there are multiple sources, copy feeds into the main story file to which it relates – the running story in Chapter 10 is an example – and the computer makes easy the task of inserting, adding, rearranging and rewriting the material. Original text can be left in the computer in the form of notes to get back to if needed.

By the same coin, where separate story files are merged it is not difficult to copy required material from one file to another as part of the editing job.

Rewrite subbing from complex sources is a job for an experienced sub. Such a person can sift through a varied input of copy, do the necessary checking by reference book or cuttings, and within minutes begin writing the story from intro onwards, or with intro to follow.

The following points should be watched with rewrites, particularly by subs new to the table:

1  Is the rewrite necessary? Is using part of the reporter’s copy, with subbing adjustments, just as quick, or quicker?

2  Have you checked quotes, names, ages, addresses etc. against the original copy?

3  Have you transcribed all quotes accurately or paraphrased them fairly?

4  Have you followed house style in spellings, abbreviations, use of colloquialisms etc?

Revising and editionizing

National dailies in Britain publish four or five main editions during a production cycle lasting from midday to about 2.30 a.m. the following morning. At one time most nationals printed in London and Manchester, and sometimes Glasgow, from where the various edition areas were served Those editions furthest away – Ulster or Northern Scotland, say – went to press earliest. The main pages were transmitted from London by page facsimile, with late or edition area pages being inserted at the regional printing centres to make up a paper which looked the same wherever it was bought.

Today, the computer and the electronic systems available have enabled national papers to decentralize their printing to any number of sites around the country to facilitate faster distribution. Some of these printing plants are directly owned and managed; others are provincially-owned centres that print a variety of national and local papers by contract. Thus a paper can be printed at the same time wherever a company chooses for whatever edition areas it wishes to cover. This has resulted in editorial control becoming concentrated in London where all the changes are originated, with the pages being transmitted instantly to whichever presses need them. It is not even necessary to print papers on the same site where they are edited.

Area changes in national paper editions are mainly concerned with sport, with full-length match reports in football and cricket being substituted on the sports pages for each readership area. One or two pages might be kept open for big regional stories but the bulk of the news changes concern the updating of national stories or the introducing of later news and pictures in place of earlier items. Stories that are likely to need updating are carried on page one, the back page and dedicated inside pages; including TV and radio programme pages, with the greater number of pages – including the features – staying the same through all editions.

Provincial papers – town evening papers and local weeklies, printing mostly on one site, update general news and sport in their main editions, but also change special area pages of community news, sometimes to the extent of varying the title of the paper to emphasize its local identity. Thus the Hoylake News and Advertiser becomes the Heswall and Neston News and Advertiser, and the Malton Gazette and Herald becomes the Pickering Gazette and Herald.Big town evenings run as many as six or seven editions in a production cycle lasting from about 11.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. In evenings and weeklies the pagination is arranged (depending on whether the paper is tabloid or broadsheet) so that pages devoted to area news can be replaced at each edition change. The front and back pages usually change with every edition and contain the general stories that most likely need updating or replacing. With tabloid size, remember that pages go on the press in pairs.

If the need is urgent it is possible to ‘slip’ a page (or pair of pages) on its own between editions in order to change or update a story, thus creating a special or ‘slip’ edition. This is done if new facts or news have to be carried and the editor does not wish to wait until the next edition to get at the page.

In the case of edition coverage the stories are catch-lined with their edition when subbed and are stored type-set to length in the computer to be called into pages as changes become due. You might find yourself subbing a story in different versions to different deadlines to bring out edition angles. A story in one edition of a Yorkshire evening paper about a robbery in Bradford might be angled in another as ‘Huddersfield man accused.’ A story in a West Country paper about a Bristol bride can turn up in another edition as a story about a Swindon bridegroom

It is usual on evening papers to list editions and page press times on an information sheet so that subs, especially new ones, can refer quickly to the deadlines for whatever story or edition they working on.

Rejigs

The revised form of a story is called a rejig or redress. Your job as a sub is to work in later material from the reporter or agency or whatever other source to update the text for each edition. Add matter is intended to go conveniently at the end (it is not often as simple as that). If the story length in the page is the same, a cut has to be made to accommodate it. This is the simplest form of rejig with the headline and body of the story staying the same.

Where the later material is more important or complex it can involve re-nosing and re-headlining the story for the next edition. This might entail reworking the whole story although it is likely you can pick up some of the old material, provided it is not outdated by the new. In such a case you should give the story a new catchline, or add an x or a z to the present one to differentiate it from the old one that might still be in the computer. Alternatively you can erase the old story if you are certain parts of it are not going to be needed. Unless more space has been allowed for the rejigged story – maybe a page lead instead of a single-column top – you cast it off to the same length as the version it replaces.

Later material can also arrive on screen as inserts – perhaps A and B – marked by the writer to particular parts of the story. Here again, cuts need to be made so that the length in the page is preserved.

For the more complex problems of revision and edition changes, see Chapter 10.

Caption writing

Writing picture captions, a job that usually falls to the page editor or sub, is a world on its own. While a picture cannot stand without them, the wording should not stress the obvious but should try to extend what the picture is saying by offering explanation and context. For instance, a caption to a picture of a man playing golf would be banal if it said:

Faldo playing a long shot

It would be better if it told the reader:

Faldo: a record round

or

The Faldo style: today’s picture

Which at least makes the point that the picture is hot from the camera (if it is). Likewise, a rail crash picture would have to say something more creative than:

The crash scene at Extown junction

For instance it could tell the reader:

The upended coach in which ten survived

Even stock pictures used on TV programme pages can be brought to life and not just give names. For example:

WOGAN: A sit-com debut

at least gives readers a piece of information that sends them looking into the programme details. And note the use of the name in caps. This is a good ploy with ‘mug shot’ captions.

These examples aim to extend readers’ awareness of the accompanying text as well as explaining the picture. By giving titbits of information they persuade the reader to read on. Note that identification is paramount in a caption, whereas time and location are not always necessary.

Most captions appear alongside the story which the picture illustrates and therefore do not have to say more than will justify the picture, but some display pictures do not tie in with stories and depend on their own self-contained caption. The material usually still has a news point, even if it is just a new portrait of one of the Royal Family, or of the new mayoress trying on her chain of office.

A difficulty arises in the popular tabloids, however, where a girlie picture appears in a regular slot because this is where the reader expects to find it rather than for any other justification. It is here, in providing self-contained captions to primarily display pictures that the caption writer’s art is most clearly demonstrated. Absolved almost from dealing in facts – or restricted to the very barest – the writer has to use comment, whimsy and clever writing to bring the words alive. Even so, the conventions of identification, justification and the use of the present tense have to be applied. The reader has to be guided.

Caption typography

This is best kept simple. It should be different from the adjacent reading text, usually in bolder type and a size bigger. In captions of more than one line the writer should aim at even lines. The use of stars, blobs, squares and other graphic decoration to draw attention to captions is unnecessary.

Some captions where the material is self-contained, and even those where the picture is exceptional, can be usefully given a headline. Here, a label heading, usually banished from news stories, can effectively draw the readers’ attention to the message in the picture, especially if there is already a main headline on the story. For example, a sports picture headline might say:

HOWZAT!

or:

CAUGHT NAPPING!

or:

ENGLAND’s GLORY

On a human interest picture a headline might say:

THE LOVE CHILD SHE NEVER FORGOT

or on a train crash rescue:

THE MOMENT OF FREEDOM

Picture headlines which sometimes consist of clusters of words, perhaps in the form of a quotation, such as:

Dawn breaks over the base camp
on the mountain that nearly cost
them their lives

are not trying to tell you the essentials of the story. These are given in the news headline close by. They are trying to connect you with a fleeting moment in time caught by the camera. They are a rare example, as captions themselves sometimes are, of comment being allowed to intrude into a news page, though intrude is not the right word. What comment is doing in this case is to orchestrate and heighten what the picture is saying so that you are drawn to read the facts of the story.

Writing contents bills

One of the lesser known jobs associated with subbing is the writing of news bills, usually called contents bills (posters in the US). Part of a newspaper’s self-publicity is to display these bills outside news-stands at strategic points in the circulation area.

There are various types. Stock bills are those that remind readers that racing form cards or TV programmes or ‘latest sports news’ can be found in the paper that night or morning. These are pre-printed with stock wording such as ‘Today’s race cards’ or ‘All tomorrow’s TV programmes.’General bills are those that advertise an important story or new serial, and are placed at all display points in the circulation area. Third are local bills, which emphasize the local connection of stories and are placed in their own area.

On some papers a senior sub writes all the bills, taking the material off-screen as each page is made ready. In others, subs and page editors are asked to write off bills on any stories they are handling that they consider ‘billable.’

The technique of writing contents bills is to disclose enough information to arouse the readers’ interest without saying so much that the reader has no need to buy the paper – a legitimate advertising and publicity ruse. In this sense they are not explicit in the way headlines are, which are intended for the reader who has already bought the paper. For instance:

FLEET IN
STAND-BY
SENSATION

has urgency yet suggests an intriguing range of possibilities, and is typical wording for a general bill.

POP STAR IN
MARRIAGE
RIDDLE

likewise gives in general terms a story of wide-ranging possibilities, as does:

SEAMEN’S
STRIKE DECISION

It would be self-defeating (and bad practice) if the wording deliberately misled the reader – for example, if the fleet turned out to be the Italian fleet or the pop star an obscure American West coast singer, or the seamen were from Danish ships. A good general bill should honestly justify the ‘bait’ placed before the passing reader.

With local bills the place name is all-important. A national paper which avoided the town’s name in a headline would bill a story to its area as BRISTOL WIFE IN POISON RIDDLE if it felt the story were good enough to garner a few extra local sales. A town evening paper might exploit suburban references to bump up sales. The Birmingham Mail might bill the same story as HANDSWORTH WIFE IN COURT RUMPUS and WIFE IN SOLIHULL COURT RUMPUS. In cases of casualty figures or local election results, one story might yield a handful of local bills, each containing a different area name.

Bills can be ‘local’ in a different sense than in place names. A national story about universities might suggest ‘local’ bills for all university towns, or a council decision about housing be billed to all housing estates in an area. A story about theatres in general could be billed outside all London West End theatres.

The usual system is that bills are sent, hand-written, to the circulation department who produce them by stencil or heavy hand lettering on standard headed sheets for delivery by newspaper vans to distribution sites.