Journalese

By N. RAGHUNATHAN. M.A., B.L.
(Assistant Editor, The Hindu)

To speak when you have something to say, and to practise the golden virtue of silence the rest of the time, is a luxury which few journeymen, (as distinguished from gentlemen) journalists can afford. It is chronic over-writing that is responsible for most of the stylistic aberrations that go by the comprehensive name of journalese. The word was first used as late as 1882. But the thing itself is far older. Writing to a friend in 1809 Crabb Robinson, the famous diarist, observed of a successful fellow-journalist, “My colleague has a certain wordy emphasis which readers like.” And what the reader likes or is supposed to like is as much the ruling consideration with popular journalism today as it has ever been–and with far more disastrous results. In its early days the press looked for support to a limited but comparatively intelligent and educated public. Its literary standards were correspondingly higher. The characteristic vices of the old-time journalist were an excess of exuberance indicative of abundant vitality and an extreme license of speech that the manners of the age permitted. It is anemia and a smothering respectability that afflict his modern descendant. “Newspaper writing,” said Thomas Barnes, the first great Editor of The Times, “is a thing sui generis. It is in literature what brandy is in beverages. John Bull whose understanding is rather sluggish–I speak of the majority of readers–requires a strong stimulus;…you must fire ten-pounders at his densely compacted intellect before you can make it comprehend your meaning or care one farthing for your efforts.” As a sample of Barnes’ ten-pounders this shot at Lord Brougham will serve: “Persons acquainted with the furniture of Lord Brougham’s mind,” said The Times, “know that it is like the specimens of an upholsterer’s show-room–some piece of every set, but nothing in completeness and arrangement–a lumber of fineries, odds and ends, at once more and less than necessary to the fitting of anyone mansion of the understanding.” Surely to be abused in that royal style is itself distinction! For Barnes’ brandy, unfortunately, we have now substituted slops; universal primary education and a cheap press have seen to that.

Use and wont has dulled many a good word which, in the morning-time of the language, glittered and rang true. The great artist is at liberty to discard this defaced coinage and mint his own currency. But the honest hodman of journalism, even if he happens to have a feeling for words, is made to realise early that he must not deviate from the familiar or cultivate an individual idiom. The public will not have it, he is told. The utmost hemay ventureinthisdirectionistomotherfancy words thatsomebody elsehas spawned–words like‘quisling’, ‘fifth column’ and ‘global’willreadilyoccur to my listeners. And itmust be admittedthattheWorkaday journalisthaslittleinclinationto go a-maying inthewoods of fine prose. Perpetuallyracingagainst theclock, he cannot pick his words nicely even if he would. He must slam them down as they Come higgled-Piggledy, trusting to instinct and practice to save him from the more egregious types of howler. Carelessness can and should be avoided. But it is not always possible to verify your quotations, even if you must not take chances with your spelling. The rotary press, by grudgingyou thatextra five minutes, seemsto make mockof your quest of perfection. And a missisas good as a mile.

Hurry isparticularlyinimicalto economy of expression. Itisparadoxicalbut truethatitisfar more difficult to say athinginfifteen words thaninfifty. Todistiltheessence of a situationina few significantand well-ordered words isexpert’swork: to turn on thetap of muddled prose is child’s play. Where time is all important and quantity is not to be despised– for the journalist, as the Oxford Dictionary reminds you with a spice of academic malice, is a penny-a-liner as well as other things–all the predisposing conditions of verbal dropsy are present. But let it not be supposed that the journalist is congenitally long-winded. Where technical considerations make compression imperative–as in the matter of headlines–he can be as laconic as you please. Indeed, the common complaint is that he too often sacrifices sense to his passion for brevity. The best type of headline, however, is a miracle of conciseness and point.

While the high pressure at which the day’s work is done is not a little responsible for the flatulence and slovenliness of much newspaper writing, its general formlessness is too often explained by the fact that the writer is struggling to express an emotion that is not deeply felt. The daily commentator must be ready at a moment’s notice to turn out a knowledgeable and moderately interesting paragraph on any subject, however trivial or uninviting in itself, which accident has brought into the limelight. He may not say with Hamlet:

“What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her?”

Like the professional mourners of Egypt and the tame bards at the courts of mediaeval barons, he must be equally ready to sing a dirge or a ditty as the occasion may prompt. The temptation in such straits to indulge in superficialities and window-dressing, hollow sentiment and sickening blague should be obvious. A few illustrations taken at random from a recent batch of British and American newspapers will perhaps be useful here. “Do those who go forth in autumn,” runs a peroration on the glory of science in achieving a thornless blackberry, “with baskets and crooked sticks, to raid those hedgerows, know of chromosomes and the part they play in the spreading tangles of the wild blackberry?” And why should they, the exasperated reader is tempted to ask the panegyrist in return. A ‘middle’ writer in a famous American newspaper grows lyrical over ice in Christmas which puts him in mind of the timeless verities. “Armies march and dictators rant, and ice on a river turns the flow of a battle. And long after the dictators have been laid in the frost-heaved earth, a wisp of cloud and crystal of ice will be moving the granite mountains.” The thought would be chastening– if it were not so trite. Again, how could you possibly hope to stir up indignation against the Government’s unpreparedness for the future if you set about it as decorously as does an English journal which begins its tirade by saying, “It is difficult not to be very impatient and very angry”? The professional, hard-boiled as he is, fine it, however, far pleasanter to throw bouquets than to heave brickbats, as you will see from the following prize-piece in which a paragraphist in a staid English weekly gushes all over Mr. Churchill convalescing after his recent illness:

“The fact is we can no longer believe anything can happen to the Prime Minister. A blind fatalism it may be, but at the same time rather more than that. It is not simply that because the mind cannot conceive the scheme of things without Mr. Chllrchill, the mind determines that the scheme of things will not be without Mr. Churchill, but rather that we have acquired a deep conviction that there is something in the man himself that will keep him at his post, fit and able, till (in his own words) he has finished the job….What is pneumonia? Moran and M. & B. 693 see to that. A few days in bed no doubt; but one can read despatches and write them, too, as well there as anywhere else.”

It would be difficult to assemble in briefer compass all the characteristic vices of journalese. Here you have the painful archness, the pedantic circumlocution, the distressing emptiness and the seeming profundity on which Fowler’s flail descends so unmercifully. Surely there are other and more convincing ways of expressing one’s admiration for a great national leader.

So far I have been discussing avoidable faults. More important, though not so obvious, are certain difficulties inherent in the given situation. The special genius of prose, maintained Clutton-Brock, is persuasion. If the art is to be successfully practised the writer must have a definite view-point and he must know for whom he is writing. The problem of visualising the reader is, of course, not one that is peculiar to the newspaper writer; but it exists for him in an exceptional degree. Newspapers are run for the benefit of the average man–that nightmare of all scrupulous artists. He is as much a figment of the imagination as the economic man and as difficult f to ignore or get away from. Every waking hour of his life the newspaperman is engaged in divining the tastes, the wishes and even the prejudices of this mysterious entity which he must satisfy or perish, The task has been made easier in a measure by two developments. Every intellectual stratum–the high brow, the low brow, the mezzo-brow–has its own favourite newspapers to which it presents a more or less homogeneous objective. And every newspaper, again, sets out to cater for a multiplicity of tastes; film-fans and sports-addicts are not neglected by newspapers whose appeal is primarily to serious students of current affairs, though they may not be regaled with the special jargon of the cult. But even after all this specialisation, the core of the problem remains. The writer must aim at a target which he but imperfectly sees.

The other difficulty is fundamental. The novelist, essayist or other creative writer is concerned to communicate only what he–the unique individual–authentically sees and feels. The editorial writer is in a very different plight. I am, of course, assuming reasonable honesty on his part. Not all scribblers, however hardened, have the courage and the engaging freedom from convictions of any kind displayed by the hero of C. E. Montague’s A Hind Let Loose, who, you will remember, impartially and anonymously supplied leading articles to the rival newspapers in the town in which both the Editors were made to baste each other with a will!

Even in the rare cases where he is crusader for a cause, with absolute and undivided control over policy, there are forced upon the working journalist in the daily commerce of political life compromises of one sort or other. A hundred considerations–ranging from diplomatic prudence to wholesome fear of the law of libel–conspire to muffle his thunders. As to the average newspaper, it expresses not so much a personal as a collective view-point. It may be either that of the party which it supports if it is a party organ, or, if it is independent, its policy will be the product of discussion and compromise between the key-men on it who are broadly in sympathy with one another in their aims. In either case the expression of editorial opinion necessarily bears the marks of its evolution. An impersonal, almost colourless, style is the natural vehicle of this collective mind.

But I should not like you to go away with the impression that the commentator on the passing show is condemned by the nature of his calling to the writing of drab uninviting prose. As good English, by and large, appears in the newspapers as is to be found in the less hurried and more personal writing that passes for current literature. After all, a very considerable body of great prose that has come down from the past was written as taskwork by working journalists. If the central notion of democracy–that an appeal to men in the mass can succeed if it is directed to their reason–is correct, a newspaper that reflects a point of view–even if that point of view is itself a composite product–and succeeds in persuading large numbers to accept it, must speak an idiom that has a characteristic and recognisable quality. And that is as good a definition of style as we can ever hope to achieve. The language of persuasion may be direct without being personal, compact without being obscure, argumentative, analytical and relying for its effect not on extraneous ornament but on the compulsive power of a broad humanity which never loses sight of the common man. Queen Victoria complained that Gladstone addressed her like a public meeting. The successful newspaper writer reverses the process; though addressing all the world he makes Tom, Dick and Harry feel that he is speaking to them as man to man.^*

^* By courtesy of the All India Radio.