Sans style, sans content, sans perspective

BY Darius Nakhoonwala| IN Opinion | 24/03/2008

You don¿t say! 

Darius Nakhoonwala

In a few weeks from now, eight to be precise, this column will have appeared for the 150^th time. Given some unavoidable breaks, some of which were fairly extended, that comes to almost three years. It seems a good idea, therefore, to do some stock-taking of the art, skill, and need for edits as also, of course, this column itself. Indeed, in many ways the two are inter-twined. And let me make one thing clear right here: this is not a farewell.

When the editor of Hoot and I were discussing this column in 2004, we had not thought it would last this long. A year was what I had given it. But Mrs Ninan, as a firm believer in Newton¿s First Law, was more optimistic. "Once you start, there will be enough to go on week after week." How right she has been proved.

The reason stares you in the face: newspapers feel obliged to write edits day after day and, given the expanding number of dailies, edits have proliferated. But, alas, not good edit writers. Quite amazingly, we now have a situation where the same editors going on and on for the last two decades but having to work either with their own contemporaries or sub-standard youngsters who can¿t write three lines properly, let alone think an issue through sensibly.

So in many cases, re-writing by the editors has increased – some editors re-write simply out of ego – and with it, the sameness of the content. As part of the homework for this column, I read around a 100 edits a week, and believe me, commercially the sensible thing would be to outsource them to an edit writing company that mass produces edits. A lot of staff salaries could be saved that way.

There are several reasons why there has been an overall deterioration in the quality of edits. For one thing, the dumbing down of language has meant that style has been sacrificed. The need for brevity has also been a major culprit. There is no longer any room for flourish. This functional approach has reduced the pleasureable aspect of reading edits.

Another factor has been the conflicting pulls of the political alignment of a newspaper and political correctness. This has led them to taking inconsistent stands. (In some cases this has been due to the memory lapses of aging editors – they forget what they wrote on the same subject last year). As they say, what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Depending on what the newspaper¿s political alignment is, the same sort of action of policy draws opposite responses.

New electronic technology has also played a part. In the old days, when paper clippings used to be kept in files, before writing an edit, it was expected that you¿d glance through them. But ever since physical storage vanished and was not replaced by systematic, topic-wise digital storage, the historical perspective that used to inform edits until the mid-1990s has also disappeared.   

Am I being too harsh? After all, a newspaper is a newspaper and a quick opinion – the Mint has a front page slot of 165 words, no less and no more – is more valuable than some deathless prose. Well, yes, but then editors have to answer two questions: how are their papers different from TV and what about that much-vaunted value that a newspaper is supposed to offer: gravitas? Can you really have a proper public debate without it?

I hope editors and edit-page editors will respond to what I have said above and that Hoot will start a debate. Silence, I must warn them, will be taken as assent.