Why newspapers suck: A theory

Here in Dallas, my friend Wick Allison, a magazine publisher, has a theory that one reason newspapers are losing readers is that they are so boring to read. No premium is placed on good, stylish writing. The prose is affectless. The kind of people nowadays who are sticking with newspapers are people, he thinks, who appreciate good prose writing. Wick's view is that papers should put a special premium on hiring and promoting people who really know how to write well, and draw out good writing from the reporters they edit. You would think that would be something newsrooms are already doing, but you would be wrong. As I travel around the country, I always pick up the local newspaper, and inevitably the prose in the news sections is dry and bland. There's not much personality there. This is no accident. It's part of the mentality of American newspapering.

I thought of Wick's idea when reading this item from Alex Massie's blog. A bit of background: on the occasion that I'm traveling to or through London, I always buy every single British broadsheet on the newsstand. Why? Mostly to read the obituaries, which are so richly written (as distinct from most of the rest of the papers, though on balance, I find the British broadsheets more engaging than their American counterparts). This is the legacy of Hugh Massingberd, who died recently. He revolutionized obit writing by bringing a true storyteller's sensibility to recounting the lives of the departed. He realized that a human being is so much more than a dry recitation of the facts of his life, and his resume. So he insisted that obits be written that way. The results were marvelous, and widely copied.

Massie identifies this bit from A.N. Wilson's eulogy for Massingberd as an explanation for why, technological changes aside, newspapers are in such a fix:

Part of the secret of Hugh’s overwhelming charm was in his vulnerability. He played up the moments when he had been humiliated, and made jokes about them. But he also really did mind. Just when he thought the new obituaries page had got off to a flying start, a thrusting ‘exec’ on the Telegraph complained to him that there were too many heroic brigadiers with absurd nicknames, and moustachoied wing-commanders. ‘Why’, asked this person, ‘can’t you write about more young people on the obituaries page?’ Hugh’s response was a mild: ‘I’ll see what I can do’.

You see what he's getting at. The absurdity of demanding to see "more young people" on a page dedicated to writing about the dead. What happened was surely this: the manager looked at data showing that young people aren't reading newspapers, and decided that the solution is to issue and edict that more young people should be featured in the newspaper. Even on the obits page.

You see the same mentality manifest itself in so many ways. For example: minorities aren't reading the paper? Well, let's write more about minorities, then! Never mind that the writing and reporting you're doing on the Minority-American community might be third-rate, patronizing and dull as dishwater; the idea is that if you put more minorities in the paper, minorities will read the paper. This is the technocrat's idea of how to run a newspaper: the idea that if you follow the right formula, success will follow. It's tempting for the same reason that people who theorize about how to fix the schools believe that all you need to do is to come up with the right set of funding and programs, and all will be well. It's tempting for the same reason that when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails.

What I'm getting at is that good newspapering involves good writing as well as good reporting. You can teach good reporting skills to just about anybody. But you can't teach good writing, nor can you teach people who don't have a writer's sensibility to have one. It can only be developed, because writing is as much an art as a craft. Now, publications that do place a high value on good writing -- magazines, usually -- have a certain personality. You think of them as a person. You don't always like the person, or agree with him, but you come to view the person as a companion. Whenever I sit down with a fresh copy of The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Review, The American Conservative, The New Republic or any other magazine I like, I know I'm going to learn something about the world, and enjoy the prose I'm about to encounter. How the magazines say something is as important a part of their appeal as what they say. Newspapers at their best are not just information delivery systems. They have heart. They have soul. I pick up my collection of H.L. Mencken columns from back in the day, and I marvel at the obstreperous humanity in his writing. It's alive! No American newspaper today would hire Mencken, because the managers would be scared to death of him. If Mencken were with us today, he'd be a blogger. He'd have to be.

The problem with most newspapers is they have no personality, no quirks, no particular sensibility. They're run as if they were a public utility. Nobody loves the electric company, but everybody has to buy what the electric company sells. Does anybody love, I mean really love, the newspaper they read? And if not, when you don't have to buy what the newspaper sells in order to fulfill your need for information, why would you?

One more thing: I used to go speak to college journalism classes, but really don't do that sort of thing anymore, on the belief that I don't want to give false hope to the students. But when I did so, I used to ask from time to time which journalists the students liked to read. Very few could name a single one. Isn't that something? These kids who were training to be the journalists of tomorrow didn't read the journalists of today! What I mean is, when I was in J-school, I was enamored of Tom Wolfe, especially, but also other great prose stylists who brought wit and expression to their journalism. How can you learn to be a lively writer if you're not reading lively writers, and trying to learn from them?