There's no business like the news business - any more

The Today programme's guest editor, Richard Ingrams, wanted to examine how journalism has changed, and, in particular, how a buzzing newsroom is now little more than a romantic memory for hacks of a certain age.

He brought together Derek Jameson and Rosie Boycott to discuss what the practice of journalism has lost in the age of email and the internet. 

And he visited the Telegraph to find out for himself. He notes, with disappointment, that the Telegraph newsroom is "a very, very quiet environment" rather than, as was, a world of "terrific activity and noise, of people rushing, the clatter of typewriters and people talking on the phone, and people coughing over their cigarettes".

"Having seen the future, I don't really want to be any part of it," Ingrams concludes.

More to Ingrams' taste, I suspect, would have been the world that Samuel Clemens found as he set out in journalism - and adopted the name Mark Twain. Twain's later writing made him a towering figure. The centenary of his death was celebrated this year.

Twain's move into journalism came in Nevada in 1862 at a time when he'd been seeking his fortune in the gold and silver mines. There was no fortune to be had, so he was pleased to receive an offer from the local newspaper, the Virginia City Daily Territorial Enterprise. He had written a few letters for publication and the Editor wrote back offering him the job of City Editor and $25 a week. 

Twain had no experience as a reporter, but was given some good advice from the proprietor on his first day: 

"He told me to go all over town and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes of the information gained, and write them out for publication."

And the boss had some more specific advice: 

"Never say, 'We learn' so-and-so, or 'It is reported', or 'It is rumoured', or 'We understand' so-and-so, but go to headquarters and get the absolute facts, and then speak out and say 'It is so-and-so'. Otherwise people will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation."

Twain admitted that, however certain his writing sounded, he didn't always manage to follow the advice about accuracy: "I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too often when there was a dearth of news." 

So, finding a hay wagon coming into the city, Twain "multiplied it by 16, brought it into town from 16 different directions, made 16 separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hay as Virginia City had never seen in the world before".

No doubt the above, from his account of his Nevada trip in Roughing It (1872), is another example of 'letting fancy get the upper hand'.

But the young reporter made efforts to improve. He said that, as he got better acquainted with good sources, "I became able to fill my columns without diverging noticeably from the domain of fact."