Reporters began to be engaged, and subeditors stood between them and their unearthly work and the finished product which was to delight the eye of the editor of that day—and possibly of his readers on the next. The paper was still set up by hand; and in the old compradoric-style building which was then No. 17 The Bund, away at the back, queued Chinese typesetters rapidly filled their sticks with the type from which the paper was to be printed. The supply of telegraphic news was rapidly increasing, and a wider knowledge of world affairs was continually demanded of the men who were placed in charge of the destinies of the journal.
Increase in' population made increase in the activities of the various institutions in Shanghai. The various Consular and Mixed Courts became busier. There was more information to.be obtained from the Police and Fire authorities, and generally speaking the pages of the "North-China Daily News" began to look more like what is now conceived to be a newspaper than it was in those times when its pages provided a home for what nowadays would be considered very dreary material.
Nevertheless many of the methods used in producing the paper were still, at the beginning of the century, of a nature which would be nowadays regarded as archaic. Even the smallest case in the various courts received mention wholly out of proportion to its importance, while if there was anything in the nature of a cause célébre, pleadings, counsels' speeches and evidence were reproduced verbatim and printed in daily instalments very much like a serial story, until it sometimes happened that the report of the case was concluded in the columns of the "North-China Daily News" as much as One or two weeks after it had been concluded in the courts.
With the growth of the cables services the columns of the paper were gradually transformed from what started as almost a purely local journal to something more metropolitan in its aspect. Even then the supply of telegraph material was not great, for if on any one day it was sufficient to fill a whole page of the paper it was a cause of editorial rejoicing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.