{"id":364,"date":"2007-10-12T11:56:27","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T16:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2007\/10\/12\/state-of-the-buggy-whip\/"},"modified":"2007-10-12T11:59:26","modified_gmt":"2007-10-12T16:59:26","slug":"state-of-the-buggy-whip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/10\/state-of-the-buggy-whip\/","title":{"rendered":"State of the Buggy Whip"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nobel folks awarded its 2007 literature prize Thursday to Doris Lessing. The wire service story was the usual. It began with the summary lede. Then it had a sliver of who she is — elderly and English but with first-hand knowledge of the Near East and southern Africa, prolifically writing fiction often sci fi, honored by feminists — then fresh reporting about how she heard she won and the committee’s reasoning. Mingled through this were third parties saying why she did or did not deserve this highest honor.<\/p>\n

If you were an editor and felt this belonged in a top but small spot, which forced cutting, what goes? I’ve done a lot of editing for a long time and found it easy. Cut the comments, then cut the judges’ notes, all of which are obscure if you don’t know this non-mass-market writer — no movies have been made of her books. Keep her biography and summaries of her top books. Put in her immodest comments about winning because they show her spunk. Close with the names and nationalities of the 2005 and ’06 winners for context.<\/p>\n

Going on about what “Readers Want” or even what my bosses want or think readers want is a pretense. Even good focus group studies are reconstructive guesswork. In editing, a reasonable craftsman gets by with thinking, “What do I want to read tomorrow morning?”<\/p>\n

I read newspapers, print or online or even read aloud to me by radio and TV types, for two contradictory things: unvarnished information and the offbeat voice. Doris Lessing? I’ve read an essay or two of hers so tell me more. No, not that all-round Professor Harold Bloom thinks she’s overrated, now the text has to take more time and tell me why he’s being quoted and not, say, comparable novelist Margaret Atwood.<\/p>\n

Last month or so the story writer Grace Paley died, and I read a summary of her life. But it was the offbeat that taught me who she was. Editorialist Paul Greenberg wrote a column explaining her<\/a> by parody — this Southern gentleman writing in a strongly female, strongly New York, strongly Yiddish voice.<\/p>\n

I don’t read the school board story in the paper to find out what an audience member or two thought but to find out what happened in the meeting. My former sister-in-law finds her Los Angeles Times is driving her nuts by such meandering stories and that her mother’s Joplin Globe does the same thing. A stranger at the recent Lucinda Williams concert only reads the news online but doesn’t bother with the local papers’ Web sites. In fact, he would have missed this show but a neighbor told him about it. We agreed when I said that clicking either local paper’s site would take very little time so he doesn’t miss anything in the future. He said, yeah, but we both knew he’s not going to bother going anywhere but cnn.com. I asked what we could do to be more appealing, and he had no answer.<\/p>\n

We of journalism have a couple of sad analogies. One is that we’re “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” whenever we try to be more reader-friendly. The other is that we’re just the latest outmoded product, the buggy-whip makers of our time.<\/p>\n

One of these years, I may well lie dying in a hospital bed; when possible, surely I will be fiddling with its remote control moving the angle of my head and legs to be more comfortable, also to get a better view of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

Buggy whips just need some 21st-century marketing. Maybe they can be pointers for office PowerPoint presentations or part of Halloween costumes. We have a misunderstood product of our time. If you needed a ride somewhere, couldn’t it just as well be on a horse-and-buggy? You’re right, this is a buggy tease. We have seen the buggy and it is us, and we’re not getting any: We are buggy-whipped.<\/p>\n

-30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nobel folks awarded its 2007 literature prize Thursday to Doris Lessing. The wire service story was the usual. It began with the summary lede. Then it had a sliver of who she is — elderly and English but with first-hand knowledge of the Near East and southern Africa, prolifically writing fiction often sci fi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":26,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/01\/surpassing-expectations-ltd\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":0},"title":"Surpassing expectations, Ltd.","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock Surpassing expectations by accepting limits Wednesday 4 January 2006. Last issue, The New Yorker praised James Agee. Actually, it was New Yorker movie critic David Denby. (If I don't always agree with Denby, he's about the only current writer who every once in a while\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5740,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2017\/08\/crystal-clear-strategy\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":1},"title":"Crystal Clear Strategy","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY -- \"All it takes is patience, Ben. When you're right, sooner or later the world sees things your way,\" Crystal Britches said of Fayetteville. I set up an interview to hear what she thought of the football stadium's new clear bag rule. We were sitting on the steps\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chronicles of Crystal Britches"","block_context":{"text":"Chronicles of Crystal Britches","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/chronicles-of-crystal-britches\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Illustration of bags permitted at University of Arkansas football games","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Permitted-Razorback-Bags-300x136.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":269,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/paving-the-road-to-heaven\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":2},"title":"Paving the Road to Heaven","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The recently late Art Buchwald said something to the effect of that writing political humor meant he never ran out of ideas, he had five or six every morning (when I find that quote I'll revise this). The even-more recently late Molly Ivins said something like she thanked the good\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":151,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/run-bride-run\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":3},"title":"Run, bride, run","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Monday, May 2, 2005. The news has been full of a woman in Georgia who just before her wedding disappeared. The times being the times, allegedly the family presumed kidnapping or even that the fiance killed her. The police, according to the AP, considered this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":262,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/01\/cast-bread-upon-the-voters\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":4},"title":"Cast bread upon the voters","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not fair to blow up a quotation of a state legislator, even adding context to show that he or she probably did mean it the way it sounded. But when remarks fall into your lap, courtesy of alert journalists, who can resist? I have written previously about opposing the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":153,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/02\/second-adolescence\/","url_meta":{"origin":364,"position":5},"title":"Second adolescence","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 25, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, Feb. 25, 2005. The local paper ran a feature photo this morning of an old man playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. I couldn't tell what he thought of this; the blindfold covered most of his face. A photog grabbing this sort of shot is easy-pickin's, just head\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}