You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
The author misuses “that” for “who.”
Or uses single quotation marks randomly where a double is required.
It really smacks of amateurish, a warning of some less than savvy writing ahead. Still, there’s a chance the content will outweigh faulty prose – no guarantees, though.
Are you a fellow blogger? Or did something else grab your notice here?
Let me confess that in playing creating titles for posts at the Red Barn, I’ve undergone a shift from the strict rules of writing newspaper headlines back when I was a professional journalist. For the record, I wrote hundreds of thousands of those, even while fixing the texts that followed or placing stories on the many pages I designed, all under a ticking clock and backlog.
One of the things I’ve discovered in blogging is that the title can stand on its own without having to quote from the text that follows. Instead, it can be a tease or even the first sentence of what then follows rather than a summary.
For another, it can be as long as I want. Not just up to ten counts or so of lettering on each of three lines, for example, which might turn out to be three to five words. Haiku looks easy in comparison. In blogging, the title might even be longer than the text that follows. Could you even summarize your post in a handful of words and still seduce readers? That was the newspaper challenge.
What we’re doing here seems all rather liberating or even lazy.
Not that it’s any less difficult.
Now, what grabs you next?
I’m still reeling from the decision at the New York Times to disband its sports department.
Admittedly, for much of my career, a newspaper’s sports staff was a mystery, set aside in a different room or even more elaborately from the rest of the reporters and editors. Sports seemed to demand a disproportional amount of newsprint, too, compared to, say, world news or even politics.
Only later, working at the fringe of Greater Boston with its intense team fanaticism, did I come to see things differently.
For one thing, the Boston Globe had some great sports coverage and I soon admired some of the writers. For another, I could see how the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins held the region together at a gut level as an extended community. Many of our obituaries, for instance, included the line, “She was an avid Sox fan” or the like. Devoted? Sometimes “rabid” would have been more accurate, but “avid” was the term of choice.
As a journalist, I envied the excellence at the top papers that resulted from deep planning and commitment as well as top talent. I could see that a few papers stood head and shoulders above the rest on that front – the Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and, of course, the New York Times. Gee, they even had expense accounts and travel.
~*~
Thus, the idea of shuttering a first-class operation seems extremely drastic.
Yet, the Times does differ from most other dailies. It is, for one thing, a national newspaper far more than a New York paper. High school sports are trivial in its scope, as are many college games. The city itself has not just one or two professional teams – or even four, like Boston – but two in baseball alone and two in football plus two in basketball, does anyone even care about hockey or soccer or tennis or golf or whatever else in that crush? There’s only so much space in a paper, after all.
Much of the coverage will be drawn from the Times’ subsidiary website, The Athlete, which already has a national focus and staffing. There is reason for concern, though, that those positions do not have union representation, unlike the Times.
The decision likely reflects a recognition of major shifts in sports coverage across the city and the county as well. Internet access means that scores and other statistics can be instantly browsed from anywhere, rather than having to wait for the paper to arrive.
Cable has expanded game availability to fans, even those living far from the teams.
And then what’s there left to say after ‘round-the-clock sports talk radio and all the call-in chatter?
The Times’ arts coverage has already undergone a similar evolution, with less coverage of events and more emphasis on trends and influences. That seems to be what we can expect on the athletic front next.
In the newsroom, we were always perplexed that a section that generated so much readership – presumably male – failed to garner much advertising support. Department stores and supermarkets didn’t want to appear there, nor did auto dealers and parts stores. As for restaurants or movie theaters or politicians? Remember, advertising, rather than subscribers or newsstand sales, paid the bulk of the bills.
Deadlines, too, often hinged on the final score of the day, at least for the morning papers. Back in the day when we still had afternoon papers, you could get a more leisurely account there before the next game. Either way, those deadlines have moved up for other reasons. No waiting around breathlessly.
~*~
How this will play out on local papers remains to be seen. All I know is that staffing and space and advertising are all way down there, too.
Creatively, I’m feeling a lull or perhaps more accurately adrift.
After my Cape Cod presentation via Zoom earlier this month, I have no other Quaking Dover events on the horizon. Nor do I feel compelled to undertake another big writing venture.
Authors these days are often saddled with the promotional end of any publication, and I’m coming up on a year of launching the marketing push on my latest book. Admittedly, I am proud of my public appearances on its behalf – each one unique, reflecting what another writer declared a “rich feast of a book” – but it’s also exhausting, especially, as I hate to confess, at my age.
Do I cut the ties and say it’s time for the book to sink or swim on its own, or do I find new ways to try to generate a buzz? It is the one book that seems to speak to a wider audience, especially, say, than poetry or my hippie novels.
The blogging hits have slowed down, perhaps as many viewers have shifted to other platforms. Social media and mass media both appear to be hemorrhaging there, so I can’t say I’m alone.
I’m certainly out of touch with youth and often can’t understand their conversations. That really hurts. I believe there’s so much knowledge that needs to be handed down but don’t know where to begin. Besides, I’ve often found them a source of great energy in my own outlook.
In short, I don’t have a big project calling for my attention and devotion. That part feels really weird.
I do have a big backlog of periodicals and books to finally tackle as well as a shelf of personal journals that deserve visiting, so that points to an overdue reading orgy.
There’s plenty of outdoors around here to indulge in, too.
I may even have to look at my remaining possessions and reorganize and cull them.
As I’m saying, I’m feeling a bit strange.
I‘m feeling defeated. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post, as I’m seeing, have capitulated. As a copy editor who spent a career trying to preserve the language from utter erosion, this hurts.
Quite simply, it was two words, not one.
Oh, the enormity here! Where do we draw the line anymore? Or is that any more?
As a newspaper editor, I was often startled in looking at coverage from the other side when something I was affiliated with was subject to a story. Or even more startling, when I was quoted and seeing how it looked it print.
It was like working in a restaurant kitchen and shipping dishes to the dining room and then, on a night off, going in for a celebratory dinner.
Seeing a report through the readers’ viewpoint really could be eye-opening. It’s not the “names-is-news” philosophy that many small-minded editors and publishers pursued, either. That approach could be even more boring than reading the phone book. Remember those?
The backbone of most of American newspapers has been the way they connect with their local communities. As one wise editor once told me, it should be news of local interest, rather than just happenings in the place itself. I spent much of my career trying to open parochial outlooks to an awareness of the wider world, both directions, and I do believe that can happen and even be exciting.
When I was calling on daily newspaper editors across the Northeast as a syndicate features field representative, I was surprised by how few of the papers gave a taste of a unique nature of each of the communities. Many of the editors thought of local news as city council and school board meetings plus high school sports scores. As I argue in my novel Hometown News, the real stories – the kind that come home – are found elsewhere and require more reportorial digging. That’s one reason I’ve long advocated local columnists (real writers, not dilettantes, though skilled amateurs are welcome). Few papers had even that much.
When former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously proclaimed “All politics is local,” he understood those roots.
~*~
A decade after I’ve left the newsroom, I’m directly experiencing that again, or more accurately, its lack.
In the past 20 years, the number of people employed in newsrooms at American papers has dropped about 60 percent. That leaves far fewer people to write about what’s happening or even be aware of what’s going on at the grassroots level where they live. Much of the nuts-and-bolts editing is being done in clusters far from the paper itself, removing another layer of local nuance and understanding.
In my case, in my participation in events celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Dover, I’m seeing the local paper is doing far less coverage than I would have expected. Not after the family that owned it for generations finally sold out to a media conglomerate.
That disconnect isn’t just print media, either. New Hampshire Public Radio no longer originates any content in the Granite State, as far as I can see. Two decades ago, appearing on one of its shows would have been a natural for a local author like me.
Quite simply, it’s disappointing and a bit scary.
If you’re a musician or writer or some other kind of performance-potential artist, you probably find being part of an open mic event invigorating. Not just because you get to air your own work and see how it fares on exposure, but also because you’re amid so many kindred spirits.
Tonight has a kind of hybrid version — six featured published writers at the wine bar downtown — and it is creating a buzz in our small community. Each of us gets about 15 minutes in the spotlight, as well as a book-signing and chat time afterward.
I’ll be reading a chapter from my new book, Quaking Dover, one that details a remarkable but often overlooked outburst in early New England, the bohemian colony called Merrymount. I had settled on that excerpt, a side I hadn’t yet presented in my presentations, before realizing how appropriate it is for this weekend’s ArtWalk festivities, many of them reflecting Pride awareness.
So, here we go … just as the summer season is beginning in our oceanside setting.
Coming up at the Phoenix wine bar downtown on Thursday from 6-8 pm, I’ll be one of six local writers reading from our books.
It’s organized by Catherine SJ Lee, whose wonderful collection of short stories Island Secrets is well worth acquiring. One secret she doesn’t mention is how many fine writers and other artists dwell on the charming island I now call home. Honestly, I feel honored to be among those invited to read and am certainly looking forward to personally meeting others.
Each of us will present a 15-minute selection of our work and then engage in a meet-and-greet over a bookselling and signing at the end.
These days, presenting my case without including an accompanying PowerPoint does feel a bit strange. Still, as a writer, I do love having the text itself be the sole focus, as I have enjoyed in our monthly open mics at the arts center.
The wine bar event is part of the first ArtWalk weekend of the season in Eastport and Lubec. Other planned activities include gallery tours, rock painting, sidewalk chalking, games, musicians around town, an outdoor contradance, and perhaps a street dance or two.
Despite nearly 60 years of writing, I’m still not accustomed to having readers come up to me in public with enthusiastic reactions.
My book Quaking Dover just may change that.
Here are two recent examples.
“It’s like you’re speaking right to me! It’s not like a history at all!”
That’s from a city councilor far from Dover.
I do hope that doesn’t put off history book addicts, though.
On the other hand, a Dover history buff said this:
“The clearest presentation of George Burdet I’ve read. Usually the histories of him are convoluted and hard to follow.”
When she first mentioned him, I felt some trepidation. Burdet wasn’t a Quaker and in fact predated them. He was one of those side details that could trip up the central argument if I had misread something.
More important than any praise is the confirmation. Or correction, too, for moving forward.
If He’s so perfect, why didn’t He do a better job of it? (See any masculine references here as traditional and object to them as you wish.)
Even in Hebrew, so I’m told, many key passages are unintelligible. As for the King James English, which many Protestant fundamentalists hold as inerrant (meaning flawless, perfect, unblemished), let me object. There’s a lot of clumsy translation – and outright mistranslation. Add to that the ways our own language has shifted in the centuries since. (To wit: I find myself having to retranslate many key Quaker writings from the mid-1600s on for modern readers, even those with PhD credentials. Those early Friends were conversant with the KJV lingo. Does thee understand?)
For perspective. When’s the last time you read Shakespeare? Without relying on footnotes?
More to the point. He (yes, He, in the current argument) certainly could have used a better editor, in any language. As for revisions? Let me contend that no work of language is ever perfect, it is ultimately a human artifact. Including the arcane collection known as The Bible.
For me, the best we have in those pages is all the more exalted because of that edge of imperfection and decay. It allows humanity to creep in. I’m thinking of some very cutting-edge contemporary poets, actually.
My fascination with that divine text has turned to the struggle to accurately record our own, very personal, experiences of the Holy One. Name it as best you can. And, from the other direction, the ways our own lives have reacted to the struggle from our own first-hand encounters with those haunting great mysteries.
I’ve come to see – and treasure – what we have in that book more as a set of deeply personal journals of individual and group experiences, including their failures, than as any set of how-to steps to eternity.
Jnana's Red Barn 