Here's a contrarian thought on good writers ...

I think writing today is just as good, if not better than it was decades ago, it's just taken on a different form. We've convinced ourselves that readers no longer have time for long stories so we've pretty much eliminated them. As a result, we've turned the newspaper into an Internet version on paper. Makes no sense.

 

Death of a Racehorse worked as a "column" because it was a first-person account of what happened to "Air Lift, son of Bold Venture, full brother of Assault" (I feel unworthy to write those words). It could be mistaken for not being a column because it didn't use the contemprary crutch of constant "I" or, if the columnist is feeling particularly wimpy but wants to express an observation, "we" language.

That said, many columnists today are masters of the single-source, 40-50 inch profile feature. And those are just poorly reported features with a mug on them.

 

There's no getting around the fact that when aspiring writers grow up being exposed to fewer tough reads -- notice I didn't say people are reading less, just that they're inundated with quick, easy reads (including their textbooks) that demand no sustained effort to digest -- well, you're just likely to deliver more of the same. The generation before mine was certainly better educated than mine is, and it just keeps getting worse every decade. It's not a matter of IQ, it's a matter of exposure and practice.

Also, I think that the lack of daily newspaper competition in most cities has made more journalists and more newspapers more self-satisfied because in all but a few markets there is no longer that daily right-sizing of the ego in which you have no choice each day but to compare your work against someone else's. The best sports section I worked on used to include on each day's story budget a "competition report." I arrived shortly after the city's other daily died, so the "competition" was USA Today and a good-size daily one county north of us. I think that SE understood as few do that daily competition and taking a good hard look at how you compare is an essential component to maintaining a pulse. There really isn't much thrill, except for the extremely egotistical, in out-opining another paper. The blood coursing through our veins has always been hard news.

As for the orginal point of this thread, there are newspaper and magazine writers I enjoy very much, but actually I was always more a fan of overall products than individual writers, even before I ever considered editing. There was a sense of anticipation in picking up a publication and invariably finding something surprising that I never would have thought to study on my own. That's the big thing missing today, that sense of adventure when you open the thing. I still have it with Esquire, even though I wind up disappointed as many times as I don't, because at least the possibility exists. The New York Times and Washington Post still have it. But most papers leave me cold -- they are too busy trying to figure out "what readers really want" and then squeezing that stupid notion into a format, a process that almost guarantees the life and intellectual depth will be wrung right out of it. Mostly, though, I blame today's dullness on newsrooms largely being run by smooth phonies instead of the profane but honest bastards who are for the most part retired now. Phonies want to be surrounded by other phonies because it's less threatening -- and then what we wind up with is no reality check at all, no in-town competition to kick our ass and no devil's advocates in-house to call us on bullshit and, soon, as we become more and more focused on reaching niches instead of a diverse readership, not even civilians complaining anymore. And won't that be just perfect?

 

Beautiully struck, Frank.

 

The truth SF is that the reading gets in the way of our drinking, and at our age drinking is important.

More important than the bushwha that passes as commentary these days. Are conservatives, for instance, really represented by an overweight, drug-addicted recluse? Or liberals by a failed comedian?

Like you, I seldom find myself thinking, "Damn I wish I could write like that." Only one that turns my crank these days is Lennie Pitts.

Must be an age thing. We are, alas, entering our curmudgeon-hood.

 

Totally agree on Esquire. I'll read articles on people/things I might not be too interested in because I know the writing is going to be good -- and often different from the writing you find elsewhere.

 

I disagree with this exact statement.

I understand the sentiment, that simply slapping a mug on a feature shouldn't pass for a column.

To me, point of view is a pre-requisite for a column. But "point of view" isn't synonymous with "opinion."

W.C. Heinz presents the "Death of a Racehorse" as seen through his eyes, from his point of view. So, yeah, I'd say it's a column.

 

I think what bothers some people are the columnists who write almost anything but opinion.
Personally, I like a mix.

 

What a columnist chooses to write about gives us a pretty good idea of what his or her point of view is. The columnist doesn't need to beat us over the head with it by trying to tell us how to think. It's like all those people who claimed to be shocked and disappointed when Springsteen became overtly politically active. I suppose it's possible that some dumbasses could have hummed along to all those songs all those years without realizing that the man had liberal sensibilities, if not a partisan interest that ran contrary to theirs. More likely, they were annoyed that he crossed the line between storyteller and preachy lecturer. A very fine line indeed, but one is a work of art that draws us into an unfamiliar world yet allows people to think for themselves at least a little bit, and the other puts the public in a passive role of observer to someone's rant.

 

how about just writing what you feel? if you do it well (and have the freedom to do so), that's it. and then the opinions of others, whether they view it as feature, column, news, opinion, etc., matter little.

 

M Ridgeway,

Thanks you. My point exactly about Heinz. The art is in what he left out, the implicit.

YHS, etc

 

All that stuff is fine if it fits the market. But the market in which I work is podunk and people want their kids' names in the paper and not much more. And there's no way I'm writing columns on national sports and come across as a know-nothing tool. If we want national columns, we'll run the national columns. Also, it seems more apparent that people don't want to be challenged in their thinking. They want to be reaffirmed. Therefore, I don't think people give a shit what I think.