Produced by Curtis A. Weyant and The Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
Journalism for Women
A Practical Guide
By E. A. Bennett
Contents
The Secret Significance of Journalism
Imperfections of the existing Woman-Journalist
The Roads towards Journalism
The Aspirant
Style
The Outside Contributor
The Search for Copy
The Art of Corresponding with an Editor
Notes on the Leading Types of Papers
"Woman's Sphere" in Journalism
Conclusion
Journalism for Women
A Practical Guide
Chapter I
The Secret Significance of Journalism
For the majority of people the earth is a dull planet.
It is only a Stevenson who can say: "I never remember being bored;" and
one may fairly doubt whether even Stevenson uttered truth when he made
that extraordinary statement. None of us escapes boredom entirely: some of
us, indeed, are bored during the greater part of our lives. The fact is
unpalatable, but it is a fact. Each thinks that his existence is
surrounded and hemmed in by the Ordinary; that his vocations and pastimes
are utterly commonplace; his friends prosaic; even his sorrows sordid. We
are (a few will say) colour blind to the rainbow tints of life, and we see
everything grey, or perhaps blue. We feel instinctively that if there is
such a thing as romance, it contrives to exhibit itself just where we are
not. Often we go in search of it (as a man will follow a fire-engine) to
the Continent, to the Soudan, to the East End, to the Divorce Court; but
the chances are a hundred to one against our finding it. The reason of our
failure lies in our firm though unacknowledged conviction that the events
_we_ have witnessed, the persons _we_ have known, are _ipso
facto_ less romantic, less diverting, than certain other events which
we happen not to have witnessed, certain other persons whom we happen not
to have known. And such is indubitably the case; for romance, interest,
dwell not in the thing seen, but in the eye of the beholder. And so the
earth is a dull planet--for the majority.
Yet there are exceptions: the most numerous exceptions are lovers and
journalists. A lover is one who deludes himself; a journalist is one who
deludes himself and other people. The born journalist comes into the world
with the fixed notion that nothing under the sun is uninteresting. He
says: "I cannot pass along the street, or cut my finger, or marry, or
catch a cold or a fish, or go to church, or perform any act whatever,
without being impressed anew by the _interestingness_ of mundane
phenomena, and without experiencing a desire to share this impression with
my fellow-creatures." His notions about the qualities of mundane
phenomena, are, as the majority knows too well, a pathetic, gigantic
fallacy, but to him they are real, and he is so possessed by them that he
must continually be striving to impart them to the public at large. If he
can compel the public, in spite of its instincts, to share his delusions
even partially, even for an hour, then he has reached success and he is in
the way to grow rich and happy.
* * * * *
We come to the secret significance of journalism:--
Life (says the public) is dull. But good newspapers are a report of life,
and good newspapers are not dull.
Therefore, journalism is an art: it is the art of lending to people and
events intrinsically dull an interest which does not properly belong to
them.
This is a profound truth. If anyone doubts it, let him listen to a debate
in the House of Commons, and compare the impressions of the evening with
the impressions furnished by the parliamentary sketch in his daily paper
the next morning. The difference will be little less than miraculous. Yet
the bored observer of the previous night will find in the printed article
no discrepancies, no insidious departures from sober fact; and as he reads
it, the conviction will grow upon him that his own impressions were wrong,
and that after all a debate in the House of Commons is a remarkably
amusing and delightful entertainment. If the newspapers ceased to report
the proceedings of Parliament, the uncomfortable benches of the Strangers'
Gallery would for ever remain empty, simply because the delusion which now
fills them nightly during the session would die for lack of sustenance.
Again, take the case of the amiable feminine crowds which collect upon the
Mall whenever Her Majesty holds a Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. What
has induced them to forsake lunch and the domestic joys in order to
frequent that draughty thoroughfare? Nothing but accounts which they have
read in vivacious newspapers of the sights to be seen there on these state
occasions. They go; they see; they return fatigued and privately
disappointed, with a vague feeling that some one has misled them. But with
the arrival later in the afternoon of the vendor of special editions, they
begin to be reassured. Under the heading "To-day's Drawing Room," they
encounter a description of incidents which they themselves have witnessed.
The sweet thought crosses their minds: "Perhaps that was written by the
curious woman with eye-glasses who stood near to me;" and by the time
dinner is over nothing would persuade them that the Mall on Drawing Room
day is not one of the most interesting places in the world.
So the journalist continues to gain a livelihood by forcing his rosy
fallacies upon the weary world.
* * * * *
In order to substantiate further the proposition that the art of
journalism is the art of lending interest to people and events
intrinsically dull, let me draw attention to the treatment accorded by
editors to those rare trifles of information which by general agreement
are not in themselves dull. Such an item, a jewel of its kind, was the
following: I copy it as it was allowed to appear in an evening newspaper
justly renowned for enterprise, talent, and imagination, under date 16th
January, 1897:
"While walking in the Park at Tsarskoe Selo the Tsar beckoned to a
gardener. The man hastened to obey, but a guard, thinking he was running
up to attack the Emperor, shot him dead.
"His Majesty was deeply affected by the occurrence."
Observe the stark nakedness of it. There is no decorative treatment here,
no evidence of an attempt to impress upon the report the individuality of
the paper. The Editor rightly divined that the simple, splendid tragedy of
the event offered no opportunity for a display of his art. His art,
indeed, could have nothing to do with it. If all news were of a similar
quality, the art of journalism, as it exists at present, would instantly
expire, and a new art would arise to take its place, though what the
nature of that new art would be, it is hazardous to guess. One may,
however, assert that journalism in its highest development will only
thrive so long and so far as the march of events continues, in the eyes of
the majority, to be a dull, monotonous and funereal procession. The
insensible hack may trust himself to present attractively an occurrence or
a man that all the world concedes to be inherently attractive; but it
needs a heaven-born artist, trained in the subtleties of his craft and
gifted with the inexhaustible appreciative wonder of a child, to deal
finely and picturesquely with, say, bi-metallism or the Concert of Europe.
* * * * *
And how to create interest where interest is not? Alas, no dissertation
and no teacher can answer the question. As in other arts, so in
journalism, the high essentials may not be inculcated. It is the mere
technique which is imparted. By a curious paradox, the student is taught,
of art, only what he already knows. Anyone can learn to write, and to
write well, in any given style; but to see, to discern the interestingness
which is veiled from the crowd--that comes not by tuition; rather by
intuition.
The best treatise on art can only hope:--
(1) To indicate the lines of study and training which should be pursued
in order to acquire the measure of mechanical accomplishment
necessary to the right using of the artistic faculty.
(2) If the artistic faculty exists but is dormant, to awaken it by
means of suggestion; and having awakened it, to show how it may be
properly excited to the fullest activity of which it is capable.
This book is an attempt to do these things, for women, in the art of
journalism.