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.

As you’d expect, I’m backing you.

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

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!!!.