Continuing the conversation above, Steve Lovelady replies:
Whoah, Doug. How did this conversation turn to ". . . tabloid prose . . . shocking statements . . . God . . . blood . . . sex . . . rock 'n roll . . . ?"
You're attaching a lot of excess and loaded (in both senses of the word) baggage to the imperative to entice the reader from one paragraph, to the next, to the next.
Silly me, I was thinking more along the lines of . . . convincing example . . . compelling logic . . . holding an object up to new light . . . connecting dots no one has connected before . . . and implicitly (if not explicitly) answering the reader's eternal question, "Why do I care?"
It wasn't Rupert Murdoch, or even William Randolph Hearst who said, "The reader is looking for an excuse to stop reading at the end of every sentence and every paragraph; don't give it to him."
It was Barney Kilgore, inventor not just of the post-World War II Wall Street Journal but also of its famously sophisticated and thoroughly reported front page.
Nothing is more tragic than an unread insight; that's what he meant then, and that's what I mean now.
And while I don't succeed every time out, as a writer and an editor I keep that in mind, whether I'm laboring for the Atlantic, CJR Daily, PressThink, my block association's humble newsletter, or an email correspondent. And I think I do it without reminding anyone of the depths (or the heights) of the New York Post.
However, let me be the first to second your observation that the MSM for years now has become more tabloid in tone, story by story and lede by lede. (Who could deny it ?)
But juvenile ledes on the front page of the New York Times or hopelessly cornball headlines in the Washington Post represent a failure of imagination, not an indictment of Kilgore's premise.
The principle holds: Words are about persuasion; they aren't about anything else.
And my response:
You're right, I think, Steve, that it isn't always explictly about sex, blood, gore, and rock'n'roll. A lot of times -- maybe most of the time if it's The New York Times, the Atlantic, and your other fine examples -- it is just about picking the $10 word that gets the blood flowing, instead of the solid $1 word that describes the basic facts.
In other words, meretricious writing. (And as Gore Vidal once said, "Meretricious and a Happy New Year!")
The Times piece about Wolfowitz today says his choice was greeted with "quiet anguish" in Europe. Wow! The new World Bank chief candidate is throwing European diplomats into fits of existential angst! Must be a very important story, not only about diplomacy and bureaucracy but about deep human drama and emotion.
Mountain from molehill? Well, mountains are made from molehills, and we don't spend enough time on the molehills, the actual single words and phrases we use, in journalism, IMHO.
The tendency to quickly dismiss this line of thinking as petty and ridiculous, is just the problem that I'm talking about. A truly deep look at language and its workings is deeply challenging to journalism. A sex word and the word "anguish" are in fact closely related. I know that would elicit snickers in the newsroom where I spent ten years. Part of me snickers at the idea myself. Nevertheless, it's true, at least based on the lessons of my own sex life.
You asked at the beginning of your post, "Whoaaa! How did this conversation turn to tabloid prose, shocking statements, etc." We got there because my argument is that what you call "persuasion," I call "waving ones arms and yelling loudly just to attract attention. Or, using elegant but meretricious writing to get attention."
I just don't see all of that "compelling logic" and "connecting dots no one connected before," that you claim to see in the best of the press.
I see a lot more simple goosing going on of readers and of viewers, including on the front page of The New York Times and the rest of the elite press, than you do.
Did anyone say "Pre-war WMD coverage by The New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, not to mention Fox, MSNBC, etc etc." On the biggest story by far in our day, where in our elite media was "holding an object up to a new light, compelling logic, connecting dots, etc."?
One answer is, all those ideals were absent because our elite journalists were too interested in 1) getting on page one, 2) going to Iraq so they could get "courageous foreign correspondent" added to their resume, 3) making sure they captured the once-in-a-lifetime "drama" and "epic sweep" of imminent war in their writing, 4) proving their patriotism (plenty of $10 words there, right?), and 5) being careful not to upset President Bush & Co. in print, because to do so would mean losing access to power.
We aren't getting the big things right in journalism today, because we aren't getting the small things right, is my argument. And the small things are words. Simple and single words. Single phrases. How they work. Why they work. How we might use them more responsibly.
Thanks for your really helpful and interesting comments.
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