Paper Monitor
11:49 UK time, Thursday, 25 September 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
All week the Guardian's giveaway is pamphlets on how to write. Obviously the nation's journalists have been squirreling away How to Write: Fiction and How to Write: Poetry, since this is what newshounds secretly would prefer to be doing. If only they were independently wealthy. (Except Paper Monitor. Who is replete as is.)
But today, a spanner in the works for the budding novelist in the newsroom. The potted lesson is How to Write: Journalism.
Talk about coals to Newcastle, but Paper Monitor is not too proud to go back to school, because who among us is perfect?
The first lesson comes from Simon Jenkins, former head honcho at the Times and Evening Standard, musing on what makes a good journalist. (Curious, he says. Cunning. A habitual diary writer.)
Aspects of the craft can be learned, and his best teacher was a "ferocious Irish subeditor" who pulled copy apart, spiked stories without compunction and dispensed maxims that every cub reporter should know.
"Never begin a paragraph with 'it'... Delete every adjective and adverb from your story and reinsert only those that appear essential... Never use sloppy words such as supply, problem, accommodate and interesting..."
It (d'oh!) sure makes for interesting (d'oh! again) reading - invaluable rules for anyone, not just journalists, who puts pen to paper or keystrokes to screen.
Further on there is a tutorial on feature writing, which requires "more atmosphere, more emotion, more colour", says tutor Peter Cole, who compares the style of storytelling to "telling a child a story, building to a climax rather that [sic] giving it all away in the intro." (Glass houses, but nice to see some things stay the same at the Guarniad.)
Paper Monitor's favourite film reviewer Peter Bradshaw shares his tips - never give away any twists, arrange to be fined £20 for use the word 'darkly', avoid boring the reader - and interviewer Lynn Barber, of the Observer, scatters her pearls before swine.
"There are various ways of presenting [celebrity] interviews but the one I prefer is the first person account that aims to answer the question, 'What was it like to meet so and so?''"
Some years ago, a friend interviewed Barber for a local rag. She returned aglow with pride, for Barber had praised her opening question as the best she'd ever heard.
What was it, acolytes ask? "Were you popular at school?"
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