For he's a jolly good bellow
September 29th 2008 00:53
I heard someone call my name. It was close to first edition deadline and I was deep in concentration, wrestling with a Page 3 story. Body copy too long, good headline idea too short. Good headline ideas never fit close to deadline.
Across a crowded subs desk, I heard someone call my name again.
When I concentrate, I concentrate hard, and when I am interrupted, switching attention feels like swimming in treacle.
It was the editor. He was standing, hands on large stomach, at the far end of the table, asking me a question for the second time. People were looking at me, no doubt wishing I would hurry up and deal with the intrusion, so typical of this strange leader, so they could return to the business of putting out a newspaper.
Our editor was of the New Order of Journalism. He and his precocious generation had swept aside the newspaper values of precision, punctuation and punctuality, and replaced them, in his case, with brashness, bombast and bullshit.
He bellowed. He would stand around the subs desk and assault us with stream-of-consciousness bellowing. He was a short, fat man with more front than the Great Wall of China and more confidence than a nuclear warhead. We called him the Round Mound of Sound.
He knew the newspaper business, however. He could motivate reporters to find the truth and nothing but the truth; he could write a heading that would make you laugh out loud; and he could write a caption that would twist your heart.
"Make it sing," he often bellowed, when his consciousness wasn't streaming. He understood what those words represented, and how important that concept was to good writing.
Back at the subs desk, all attention was on me, but I hadn't heard the question. As I looked at the editor, standing there like a little Buddha, hands clasped on his enormous belly, I reached into my sub-conscious and hit replay. "Champion!" I heard him say, "it's big, isn't it?"
Big? That's all I could find. I looked at him. "What is," I asked, "your stomach?"
I sat on that subs desk for seven years and the only time I ever heard instant, unanimous, full-throated laughter was at that moment. I still can't tell you what the question was; it was just one of his random, overweening interrogations. In my confusion, I had answered as best I could.
I was young then, and I had no mechanism for dealing with the terror of that moment. The Round Mound of Editor just looked at me. The laughter continued for an eternity - as much an outlet for general resentment as about the comedy of the moment.
Today, more than 20 years later, what is my primary memory of this man? It is this, "Make it sing."
It encapsulates the magic that words can have. It is what a good writer can do. Mark Twain said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
Make it sing. It is a subject which, as editor of Bloggercises, I would like to explore in future posts. I promise not to bellow.
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