Amazing Scenes: Adventures of a Reptile of the Press (The Fairfax Library, 1987) is a collection of Evan Whitton’s journalism. @EvanWhitton1.
Willy-nilly, the pieces amount to a sort of how-to (or how-not-to) do it in various genres: sketch, celeb interview, pattern, travel, sport, politics, the law. One or two are in the style of the “new” journalism: reportage using the techniques of the novel.
The book is on a section of a website maintained by Dr Bob Moles, an international authority on miscarriages of justice: netk.net.au/whittonhome.asp.
The art of the reptile
NO ONE, except possibly Sol Chandler, has learned all there is to know about journalism, but the great thing is: anyone can play. No qualifications of any kind are needed: the basic mechanics of reporting can be learned in five minutes, of sub-editing in a day or two. Here are some technical notes on some of the pieces in this collection.
1. Neo-journalism.
American magazine reporters of the 1960s called it the new journalism, but since, so far as we know, it was invented by Caius Suetonius Tranquillus in about 120 AD, neo-journalism seems more appropriate.
The method is simply to apply the techniques of fiction to works of non-fiction. As set out on pages 46 and 47 of Tom Wolfe’s book on the subject, they are: scene-by-scene construction, lots of dialogue, and yards of description in the style of BaIzac or, come to that, Raymond Chandler.
Wolfe had a fourth technique: the third person point of view. You went back and interviewed the other people as to what they were thinking at the time. I never got round to this, but it ought to be possible with people who are not too uptight.
The method can also be applied to a reconstruction of an event at which the reporter was not present.
2. Contextual (pattern) journalism.
There are two kinds of disclosure journalism: disclosure of a fact, and disclosure of a pattern. The method used in the latter was summed up by The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jim Steele: ‘The challenge is to gather, marshal, and organise vast amounts of data already in the public domain, and see what it adds up to.’
Putting the data into a strict chronology of events seems to be the key. Due allowance has to be made for the post hoc fallacy: the first event does not necessarily cause the second. Even so, a pattern of sorts may emerge. As V. J. Carroll noted: ‘Once you get the chronology right, everything falls into place.’
A straight chronology also permits a narrative, which is a kindness to the reader, and, so long as a joke is inserted every thirty paragraphs or so, he may be persuaded to struggle on through quite a long piece.
Scrabbling through all those yellowing files, mastering and marshalling all that material, and checking all those facts, requires a high threshold of boredom and some stamina, but the work should amount to a useful public service.
If the art of journalism is getting it in, the art of politics is brazening it out: it is easier to brazen out one fact than a dozen. Dubious politicians are thus much encouraged by newspapers that meticulously report a new fact but never go back and put it into the context of previous facts.
This may lead to solipsism in the citizen: he may come to think he is the only one who vaguely remembers previous vilenesses. This feeling of being cut off, unsupported by a shared view, can lead to alienation, a condition notably present in some thoughtful Queensland citizens in the Bjelke-Petersen era.
If however the context is supplied, the citizen may perceive that thousands share the data, and this may happily cause a declension in his alienation, and an increase in the politician’s terror, and this may even occasionally persuade him to do the right thing.
The contextual approach also allows the reporter to be quite late on a story: in the present writer’s case, a couple of hundred years on Macarthur, sixty on Blamey, and, in a rare burst of almost up-to-datedness, only ten on Vietnam.
3. The Sketch.
In Fleet Street, this term usually refers to a jocular view of parliamentary proceedings, but the form can be extended to almost anything the reporter observes, and this is what the editor is looking for when he asks: ‘Who’s doing the jokes?’
The ideal length is about 750 words. Under relentless press of deadline, even the stone-cutter can manage this in a couple of hours.
The techniques available are elements of neo-journalism: a bit of description, dialogue, mood, atmosphere, analysis, comment, an insight if possible, and a joke or two. In seeking to match the tone with the material, the earnest sketchist will of course diligently study the great master of tone in the English language, G. Chaucer.
As opposed to pattern journalism, where the work seems to stretch on endlessly forever, the sketch thus supplies in its purest form what is supposed to be the charm, or drug, of journalism: every day new and bright, a fresh page, and amazing scenes about to happen before your very eyes …
