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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (1710)	6/1/2003 8:54:02 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793624

David Warren has an interesting comment on the NYT: Mr. Raines, the editor, has been justly criticized for the obvious editorial-page slant he has spread through the rest of the newspaper; and for the cronyism and favouritism he has practised within. And while the man is now acknowledged by many of his staff to be the worst disaster that ever befell them, I think he deserves more criticism on another score. He has taken the cult of "by-line-ism" to its final absurdity. He has been turning his remaining reporters into effete "writers", and thus turning news into "features". It is perfectly natural that a new rank of nameless stringers should grow up under these reporter "stars", to do the work they no longer have time for, or which is now beneath them -- the work of actually gathering the news. In this new world of daily magazining, the stringers dig out the small stuff, the facts; and the "reporters" do the styling. Coal miners do not get by-lines, and traditionally, reporters did not get by-lines in newspapers. In previous generations newspapers everywhere were full of news. The New York Times itself was once capable of reporting a fairly important item in less than a dozen lines, because that was all the hard information available. They assumed the reader would grasp the significance, from having read the paper every day. He wouldn't need a huge headline to confirm the importance. He wouldn't need a by-line, because the paper itself was the guarantor of the accuracy of its reporting. An "analytical" article was something else, and could use a by-line to stipulate the writer's point-of-view. The author might be given some space, and allowed to delve into subtleties. The difference between "news" and "analysis" was so obvious no one could be fooled. The old idea, inherited from Britain, was that a reporter who is not anonymous is a reporter who is for sale. Telegraphy was anyway charged by the word, the editor back home could add a few connectives, but would generally avoid inserting "bilge", such as adjectives and adverbs. The reader thus received his news almost unvarnished. He is now as likely as not turning to the Internet to get unvarnished facts: for what is old becomes new again with each advance of technology. But there he is afloat in an ocean of blinking words. His newspapers have abandoned him, but may begin to win back his allegiance when they relearn the art of separating the colour from the black-and-white. davidwarrenonline.com