Page 3
Friday, July 7, 1961 Summer Session Kansa
4.95.
history of staff,
story," in de-
earned Wilde rilby" illard
From the Magazine Rack
t can n and
The Press and Language
The newspaper man has no occasion to write in any other way than simply. He has nothing to hide. If he is in possession of the facts, he has only to marshal them in orderly fashion. He is trained to see and evaluate news and once he has done that his mental problem is solved. Muddy writing comes from muddy thinking—nothing else. And since the reporter can have no opinions about the news there is little chance of his getting mixed up in his thinking.
The trouble comes in other departments of the paper: interpretive writing such as that of the columnists, the editorial writer and the critic. There we are concerned with opinion, and opinion—unless there is perfect clarity of thought—is bound to becloud the prose. There is another factor: and that is the feeling that the writer must demonstrate his competence, singularly true of the critic but common also to the columnist and the editorial writer.
The reader does not think to question the competence of the critic unless the latter has demonstrated his incompetence. But until that time comes, the reader accepts the authority of the critic as the man who has the job—and he wouldn't have it if he were not competent. Yet the critic too often wants to demonstrate it anyway—especially if he hasn't any cogent thoughts about the event or the art he is discussing. That's where the critic reaches into his lingo repertory and spoils his piece with obfuscation.
I think that is the reason for obscurity professorial language. They are too much concerned with demonstrating their competence which, as with the critic, has never been questioned. What they say and what they write, they feel, must be important, brainy, cryptic, arcane.
That is the reason for their allergy to journalistic English. It is transparent, and they call it over-simplified; it is direct, and they call it childish. It is usually correctly spelled; but spelling being arbitrary cannot therefore possibly be important. Thus the transparency of newspaper English exposes the man who does not know grammar; its simplicity unclothes the brain where no thinking is in progress. If it is correctly spelled, you are never in doubt as to what word the writer is reaching for.
No other discipline than journalism is making a stipulation of grammatical accuracy, a requirement of orthography, or a study of communicative English. ...
It is the problem of journalism schools—and I speak now out of my experience as an editor rather than in my new capacity of teacher—that they cannot send their graduates out into the world of practical newspapering illiterate, in the sense that illiteracy—and I use the word in its literal sense—is no particular handicap to the engineer, the lawyer, the doctor and, I am most happy to say, the teacher. It is rather a pity that a person can be graduated with a mastery over the substance and have a sadly deficient grasp of its medium.
The newspaper world is still full of editors who know too little of what is going on in journalism schools. They repetitiously cry: Give us good liberal arts graduates. I am quite sure that what they really mean is: Give us reporters who can spell and write understandably...
Lord Conesford has written: "There are three good reasons why we should fight for our language: The need for clarity of thought, the need to be understood, and the duty to enrich and not to injure the noblest language and the richest literary heritage in the world."...
Didn't Robert M. Hutchins say to the editors of America: "Do you realize that the written word may become an anachronism?"
(Excerpted from an article "The Bulwark of Sound Writing" by Carl E. Lindstrom in the Quill Magazine.)
Yes, we might lose, but today the daily press and the journalism schools are giving battle. It sometimes looks like a rear-guard action but the cause is a good one: The preservation of functional written English.
Worth Repeating
The professional man, above all, should know his field thoroughly, and this knowledge includes an understanding of its origins, its past, and its present, and a capability to deal with its future. From the standpoint of ethics he should be aware of his relationships to others and of the interdependence of individuals. He should know the art of communication, for to be incapable of writing in a literate fashion or incapable of speaking articulately truncates his professional worth and his professional growth. Beyond his professional activities, he should be capable of making a contribution outside his own field of endeavor. To do the latter, he should be cognizant of the humanities and the social sciences.—W. Clarke Wescoe
We are overfed, overindulged egocentrics. We are pampered, petulant, and selfish individualists, suspended in a state Reinhold Niebuhr calls "sophisticated vulgarity." We are unwilling to implement the ritual we mouth on Sundays and share with our neighbors. We have contrived a series of deals with pseudo-truth which has left us bloated with food and drink but ideologically naked.
For too many of us the brotherhood of man has degenerated into a glorification of the rugged individual and his ability to acquire and keep more material goods than the neighbor he does not love.—John Scott
...Letters...
Co-editors
University Daily Kansan
Dear Sirs.
Once again as I pick up the Kansas I find fuzzy thinking on the editorial page! In an unprovoked attack on Mr. Goldwater, we are asked to sneer with Mr. Morelock at the thought that conservatism could be considered dynamic.
Now what could be more dynamic than a dog-eat-dog laissezfaire free-for-all, the logical end
of reaction? (Goldwater, for all his caution over the Birch Society is strictly speaking reactionary rather than conservative.)
No ed., you were misled by the word "conservatism." You thought it meant maybe the security of boyhood, when it actually means a retreat from civilization — for better or for worse.
And what could be more static' in the state which awaits at the exhaustion of social democracy, sitting with a traffic light in either hand, contemplating its navel? Let's face it, dynamism is accepted only in very tame form by Americans today, for we have lost the old nerve of the social Darwinists.
John Sommerville
Lawrence graduate student
KU BARBER SHOP
One Block Down the Hill 411 $ _{1/2} $ W. 14th FINEST BARBERS
Clearance
Our Entire Stock of
Spring & Summer Shoes
Delmanette & Mademoiselle 1090 1190 1290 Entire Stock Formerly priced to $19.95
Old Maine Trotters
590 690
All Discontinued Patterns
Formerly priced to $10.95
Town & Country-Fiancees 790 890 990 High and Medium Heels Formerly priced to $14.95
Dress Flats
390 490 Broken Sizes All Colors Formerly priced to $10.95
Men's Shoes Freeman — Nunn - Bush from 790 Selected Patterns
No Calls - Exchanges - Refunds, Please Entire Stock Not Included
ROYAL COLLEGE SHOP 837 Mass.
N