… too many are mezmerised with the sound of their own voice, thereby neglecting the content or the substance of their intended message.
This is what Kassandra said on this blog the other day. We were talking about the pitfalls of translating classic texts. But her comment can apply equally well to a subject raised recently in The Atlantic Monthly: the conventions of newspaper writing.
The Atlantic’s article titled, “Cut This Story!” by Michael Kinsley is entertaining. Yet there are several points Kinsley doesn’t raise, including one I hereby dub the “just enough” rule of writing.
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Kinsley cites the way in which newspaper articles are padded with unnecessary quotations from “experts” and “observers” so as to “magically turn an opinionated story into an objective one.” He illustrates how every piece at the national level – at least in the US – is suborned by the political angle.
He also nails the jettisoning of the old “pyramid” style of writing which means many articles nowadays begin as “you’ll-never-guess-what-this-is-about, faux-mystery narratives.” And the tiresome close with its frequent “rueful irony about the limits of human agency.”
These aspects of newspaper writing are all unsatisfactory. But I would have liked Kinsley to go further, and look at the following three issues.
1. DISHONEST CANT
So much newspaper writing is utterly hammy. It’s phoney, dishonest cant. I’m not a big fan of Raymond Carver’s work, however, he does a good line in the morality of writing: “Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.”
2. MISTRUST
There is a deep mistrust of the audience: of their acuity, their capacity, even — as Kinsley jokes about stories being written to “accommodate readers who have just emerged from a coma or a coal mine” – their sentience.
It’s either mistrust, or an acute failure of self-confidence on the part of the writer/publisher which has points readily intelligible from the context spelt out in detail, and slightly unfamiliar vocabulary belaboured or withheld altogether.
3. “JUST ENOUGH” RULE OF WRITING
Which leads me to the third aspect. There’s a failure to understand that writing works when the reader works, just enough.
I’ve talked about this before in relation to web writing, about how many “how-to-write” sites urge a type of writing that is “so pre-fab, so pre-masticated” that it leaves the reader with nothing to do. I suggested that the best kind of writing
is fast and smooth, yes, but it also needs to stick in the craw a little. It’s writing that gives the reader just the right amount of something to do.
The same applies with newspaper writing, all writing. What this “right amount of something to do” is in each case may vary, but that’s where the skill of writing lies.
In a lot of commercial writing on the web the amount of work required by the reader is zero. Which is why so much of this writing kind of bounces off the surface of one’s mind. On the other hand, in a lot of newspaper writing the amount of work required by the reader is both too much and too little. Take one of the passages Kinsley quotes from The New York Times:
Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.
If you managed to get to the end of this sentence, bravo!
If you look at it more closely, you’ll see there’s too much for the reader to do at the level of syntax, and too little to do at the level of inference and comprehension. Every last statement of the bleeding obvious is crammed in: it was a victory for Obama, it’s a bill with big consequences, the successful party will trumpet its significance, and so on. As if the audience couldn’t have inferred these things for itself.
Instead, it leaves the audience with absolutely nothing to do: passive, enervated and effectively redundant.
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To read the Kinsley article, click here. And to read what Andreas, a journalist himself, had to say about it on The Hannibal Blog, click here.
An interesting and provocative post.
What you and Michael Kinsley (and Andreas) say about contemporary magazine and newspaper writing is spot on. However, you are critiquing American newspaper and magazine writing, which, I suggest, comes out of American culture, which, in turn, is the product of America’s unique history.
How does current American magazine and newspaper writing compare with British, Australian, and Canadian? What are the differences (if any) and what are their causes?
Perhaps we should simply look at the Englishes of America, Britain, Australia, and Canada as different languages in which are contained values appropriate for the society to which the particular English speaks.
I don’t know how it is in Australia, but in Canada much newspaper writing is deliberately written to the level of readers having only a Grade 8 level education (15 year olds). I feel sure it would be the same in the USA – which anglophone Canada so much resembles culturally.
If you bear this in mind (as well as treating the English of America as a separate language stemming from a different culture) it might assuage your irritation when you read American newspapers and magazines. In est (or even Landmark) parlance, the problem will “clear up” as you look at it from another angle!!!
Your statement that Raymond Carver “………does a good line in the morality of writing: ‘Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.’”.
While Carver’s minimalist style of writing may have given it a rigorous morality, his life was totally otherwise, particularly in what the women in his life had to put up with!!!.
he he, funny how it’s always the immoralists who cite morality, isn’t it? mmm, maybe I’d better go check my own bedroom … :)
I guess I don’t see the issue as a nationally-determined one, or if it is, it’s because we’re all becoming one big amorphous USA-lite land; because all the things I talked about occur in Australian magazines and newspapers too. I just see it as an issue of poor writing.
… much newspaper writing is deliberately written to the level of readers having only a Grade 8 level education (15 year olds)
If only it were written to the level of most 15 year olds it might be worth reading. Most 15 year olds are a hell of a lot smarter than some of the rubbish that’s printed. SGx
Hear, hear.
As you’d expect, I’m backing you.
In the interests of “balance”, allow me to point out that there are US newspapers and magazines which consistently contain the finest of writing eg The NY Times (despite Kinsley’s critique), the New Yorker Magazine, the Atlantic, Harpers, Slate.com (web only, which Kinsley once was the editor of), the New York Review of Books, and many others.
As with journalistic writing, as with all the other areas of human endeavour, the US provides the best of all worlds, and the worst of all worlds.
It’s the middle ground which all too often is missing.
I’d like to get some directions from you to some great pieces. Not because I don’t believe there are US newspapers and magazines that contain the finest of writing, but because I need some nourishment. Sgx
Well, seeing that there is now the internet, you can simply go to the websites of the publications I mentioned!!!
Sure, but what are 2 or 3 examples you’ve read recently that showcase fine writing?