In the Mirror

When A. B. Guthrie Jr., city editor of the Lexington (Ky.) Leader (circ. 23,000), first went to Harvard in 1944 as a Nieman Fellow, he was puzzled. Most of the six preceding groups of newsmen had used their nine months of paid leisure* to brush up on history, government and economics. What they really needed to study most, thought Guthrie, was how to write.

To teach his group, Guthrie lined up strapping Theodore Morrison, lecturer in freshman English, who was also convinced that most newspaper writing was pretty bad. After Guthrie left to write novels (The Big Sky, The Way West), Morrison continued his teaching. Last week, Morrison and 1950's twelve Nieman Fellows devoted a 60-page issue of the quarterly Nieman Reports to discussing why news writing is bad and how it can be improved. Jargon & Jabberwocky. For one thing, said Nieman Reports, too many news writers merely parrot the technical jargon or confused Jabberwocky in government, scientific, financial and other reports instead of translating it. "In economics they . . drag you, without explanation, through dollar pools and over tariff walls. In science, they ignore the oaf who doesn't know the difference between atomic fission and hydrogen fusion. In labor, they blithely skip from secondary boycotts . . . into an open shop, slamming the door in the face of the uninformed."

Furthermore, 'most newspapers are so obsessed by "objectivity" that reporters are frequently prevented from using background knowledge to clarify a story. "Somewhere," observed the quarterly, "a city editor is always saying: 'You can't write that unless you can quote somebody.' " Objectivity is often "carried to the point of unintelligibility."

Headlines & Obstacles. The worst faults in news writing were laid to the newspapers' selling tricks. In order to make every edition look and sound new and fresh, "new headlines and new leads must usually be provided . . . whether or not there have been [new] developments . . . A writer must create controversy where there is none [and] . . . worm a probe promise out of a politician not so much because a probe is needed as because a banner story is needed . . ."

Newspaper makeup practices, the Nieman Fellows decided, are also an obstacle. Stories are written so that they can be cut from the bottom up; all the essential facts are crowded toward the lead so that most stories have no suspense.

The danger in these technical obstacles to good writing, said the Reports, is that they "become excuses instead of challenges." But assuming that the barriers were gone today, could most newspapermen be classified as good writers? Answered one of the Nieman critics: "That quality that makes for good writing is gratifying and unmistakable. Most newspapermen don't have it and probably never will have." As if to prove it true even of Nieman Fellows, one Fellow discussing "comprehensible news copy" summed up: "The day when trimming a news story is not necessary will never come."

* Provided by a $1,000,000 grant left to Harvard in 1938 by Agnes Wahl Nieman, widow of the founder of the Milwaukee Journal.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.