Some newsroom managers have a knack for imposing preposterous
rules that baffle the staff and spark a steady flow of in-house grumbling.
When I worked on UPI's National Radio desk, the boss outlawed the
word "harass" in our copy because, he said, too many announcers stressed
the "ass" part when reading it on the air. I don't recall any similar
restrictions on "bass," as in fish, or "acetate."
At ABC Radio News, one of the best copy editors I ever met was
promoted into management and quickly instituted a series of rules for
writing for the ear. Most of the rules made sense, and they were backed
up by frequent reminders to the staff about what he wanted. Good radio
copy seldom needed adjectives. (God help you if you forgot and strung
two or more adjectives together.) Tape inserts should be placed high in
the story. Don't search for synonyms, use simple words. A rose is a rose
is a rose is a rose. A ship is a ship is a ship and not a vessel.
While I agreed in general with that last rule, really talented writers
and broadcasters know how to pick the perfect, but not always the
simplest, word to capture a scene, a situation or a person and should be
free to do so. Although I'm not sure it's true, legend has it that, when
the manager once got very upset about something at work, a cheeky
staffer suggested he calm down before he "burst a blood ship."
At CBS News, Radio there was a rule restricting how soon a piece of
tape - even a very dramatic or important one - could be re-used on a
newscast. If the President of the United States said, "I am not a crook"
you obviously used the tape right away but had to wait a few hours
before you could put that same cut on another newscast. During that
interval, you scripted the key quote and had to make do with a less
compelling piece of tape.
In today's world of constant repeats of everything, that rule seems
really nutty. As a copy editor, there were times when I asked a tape
room to re-cut the main sound bite from a big event - start it a little
earlier or trim the end of it - and then asked a manager for permission
to use it in afternoon drive for the many listeners who hadn't heard it
yet. I can't remember being told "no" but having to ask felt illogical and
somehow demeaning.
Later, when I was in management at CBS News, part of the staff
probably thought I was all wet, all the time and despised me for pressing
my editorial whims on them. Since it's much too late to do anything
about that, let's move on to "All the News That's Fit to Print," always an
easy target of criticism.
The New York Times ran a news item earlier this month on the
contents of 11 letters J.D. Salinger wrote over the years to a commercial
artist. Throughout the story, Salinger's best known novel, "The Catcher
In The Rye," was referred to as "Catcher In The Rye."
When you're retired and you see something in the paper or on TV
news that bothers you, what do you do? Yep. Fire off an e-mail. I got a
polite response within hours from an editor at The Times - on a Saturday
no less - stating that it was the newspaper's policy to drop the "The" at the
beginning of book titles. (I take it he was talking about books mentioned
in news stories not in book reviews.) The editor said he personally
thought the policy was "bizarre." He had argued against it in the past and
would do so again. The Times, he said, was inconsistent in implementing
the rule, noting that the paper's obit on Salinger had the book as "The
Catcher In The Rye," and that readers and publishers frequently
complained when "The" was cut from book titles.
In that Sunday's Times, "The" was the first word in eight of the 16
books on the fiction best seller list. The number one seller was "The
Help," described in the paper's Book Review as a book about "a young
white woman and two black maids in 1960s Mississippi." If The Times
did a news story that truncated the title to "Help," someone who knew
nothing about the book might think it was the history of SOS or EMS.
Until The Times changes its style rules, I think writers - just for the
hell of it - ought to see if they can come up with titles that force the
paper's editors to keep their hands off the opening "The." I'm thinking
of writing a book called "The The Stutterer."
(Posted February 22, 2010)