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Journalism for Women
A Practical Guide
By E.A. Bennett
Contents
The Secret Significance of Journalism
Imperfections of the existing Woman-Journalist
The Roads towards Journalism
The Aspirant
Style
The Outside Contributor
The Search for Copy
The Art of Corresponding with an Editor
Notes on the Leading Types of Papers
"Woman's Sphere" in Journalism
Conclusion
Journalism for Women
A Practical Guide
Chapter I
The Secret Significance of Journalism
For the majority of people the earth is a dull planet.
It is only a Stevenson who can say: "I never remember being bored;" and
one may fairly doubt whether even Stevenson uttered truth when he made
that extraordinary statement. None of us escapes boredom entirely: some of
us, indeed, are bored during the greater part of our lives. The fact is
unpalatable, but it is a fact. Each thinks that his existence is
surrounded and hemmed in by the Ordinary; that his vocations and pastimes
are utterly commonplace; his friends prosaic; even his sorrows sordid. We
are (a few will say) colour blind to the rainbow tints of life, and we see
everything grey, or perhaps blue. We feel instinctively that if there is
such a thing as romance, it contrives to exhibit itself just where we are
not. Often we go in search of it (as a man will follow a fire-engine) to
the Continent, to the Soudan, to the East End, to the Divorce Court; but
the chances are a hundred to one against our finding it. The reason of our
failure lies in our firm though unacknowledged conviction that the events
_we_ have witnessed, the persons _we_ have known, are _ipso
facto_ less romantic, less diverting, than certain other events which
we happen not to have witnessed, certain other persons whom we happen not
to have known. And such is indubitably the case; for romance, interest,
dwell not in the thing seen, but in the eye of the beholder. And so the
earth is a dull planet--for the majority.
Yet there are exceptions: the most numerous exceptions are lovers and
journalists. A lover is one who deludes himself; a journalist is one who
deludes himself and other people. The born journalist comes into the world
with the fixed notion that nothing under the sun is uninteresting. He
says: "I cannot pass along the street, or cut my finger, or marry, or
catch a cold or a fish, or go to church, or perform any act whatever,
without being impressed anew by the _interestingness_ of mundane
phenomena, and without experiencing a desire to share this impression with
my fellow-creatures." His notions about the qualities of mundane
phenomena, are, as the majority knows too well, a pathetic, gigantic
fallacy, but to him they are real, and he is so possessed by them that he
must continually be striving to impart them to the public at large. If he
can compel the public, in spite of its instincts, to share his delusions
even partially, even for an hour, then he has reached success and he is in
the way to grow rich and happy.
* * * * *
We come to the secret significance of journalism:--
Life (says the public) is dull. But good newspapers are a report of life,
and good newspapers are not dull.
Therefore, journalism is an art: it is the art of lending to people and
events intrinsically dull an interest which does not properly belong to
them.
This is a profound truth. If anyone doubts it, let him listen to a debate
in the House of Commons, and compare the impressions of the evening with
the impressions furnished by the parliamentary sketch in his daily paper
the next morning. The difference will be little less than miraculous. Yet
the bored observer of the previous night will find in the printed article
no discrepancies, no insidious departures from sober fact; and as he reads
it, the conviction will grow upon him that his own impressions were wrong,
and that after all a debate in the House of Commons is a remarkably
amusing and delightful entertainment. If the newspapers ceased to report
the proceedings of Parliament, the uncomfortable benches of the Strangers'
Gallery would for ever remain empty, simply because the delusion which now
fills them nightly during the session would die for lack of sustenance.
Again, take the case of the amiable feminine crowds which collect upon the
Mall whenever Her Majesty holds a Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. What
has induced them to forsake lunch and the domestic joys in order to
frequent that draughty thoroughfare? Nothing but accounts which they have
read in vivacious newspapers of the sights to be seen there on these state
occasions. They go; they see; they return fatigued and privately
disappointed, with a vague feeling that some one has misled them. But with
the arrival later in the afternoon of the vendor of special editions, they
begin to be reassured. Under the heading "To-day's Drawing Room," they
encounter a description of incidents which they themselves have witnessed.
The sweet thought crosses their minds: "Perhaps that was written by the
curious woman with eye-glasses who stood near to me;" and by the time
dinner is over nothing would persuade them that the Mall on Drawing Room
day is not one of the most interesting places in the world.
So the journalist continues to gain a livelihood by forcing his rosy
fallacies upon the weary world.
* * * * *
In order to substantiate further the proposition that the art of
journalism is the art of lending interest to people and events
intrinsically dull, let me draw attention to the treatment accorded by
editors to those rare trifles of information which by general agreement
are not in themselves dull. Such an item, a jewel of its kind, was the
following: I copy it as it was allowed to appear in an evening newspaper
justly renowned for enterprise, talent, and imagination, under date 16th
January, 1897:
"While walking in the Park at Tsarskoe Selo the Tsar beckoned to a
gardener. The man hastened to obey, but a guard, thinking he was running
up to attack the Emperor, shot him dead.
"His Majesty was deeply affected by the occurrence."
Observe the stark nakedness of it. There is no decorative treatment here,
no evidence of an attempt to impress upon the report the individuality of
the paper. The Editor rightly divined that the simple, splendid tragedy of
the event offered no opportunity for a display of his art. His art,
indeed, could have nothing to do with it. If all news were of a similar
quality, the art of journalism, as it exists at present, would instantly
expire, and a new art would arise to take its place, though what the
nature of that new art would be, it is hazardous to guess. One may,
however, assert that journalism in its highest development will only
thrive so long and so far as the march of events continues, in the eyes of
the majority, to be a dull, monotonous and funereal procession. The
insensible hack may trust himself to present attractively an occurrence or
a man that all the world concedes to be inherently attractive; but it
needs a heaven-born artist, trained in the subtleties of his craft and
gifted with the inexhaustible appreciative wonder of a child, to deal
finely and picturesquely with, say, bi-metallism or the Concert of Europe.
* * * * *
And how to create interest where interest is not? Alas, no dissertation
and no teacher can answer the question. As in other arts, so in
journalism, the high essentials may not be inculcated. It is the mere
technique which is imparted. By a curious paradox, the student is taught,
of art, only what he already knows. Anyone can learn to write, and to
write well, in any given style; but to see, to discern the interestingness
which is veiled from the crowd--that comes not by tuition; rather by
intuition.
The best treatise on art can only hope:--
(1) To indicate the lines of study and training which should be pursued
in order to acquire the measure of mechanical accomplishment
necessary to the right using of the artistic faculty.
(2) If the artistic faculty exists but is dormant, to awaken it by
means of suggestion; and having awakened it, to show how it may be
properly excited to the fullest activity of which it is capable.
This book is an attempt to do these things, for women, in the art of
journalism.
Chapter II
Imperfections of the Existing Woman-Journalist.
Despite a current impression to the contrary, implicit in nearly every
printed utterance on the subject, there should not be any essential
functional disparity between the journalist male and the journalist
female. A woman doctor (to instance another open calling) is rightly
regarded as a doctor who happens to be a woman, not as a woman who happens
to be a doctor. She undergoes the same training, and submits to the same
tests, as the young men who find their distraction in the music-halls and
flirt with nurses. Her sex is properly sunk, except where it may prove an
advantage, and certainly it is never allowed to pose as an excuse for
limitations, a palliative for shortcomings. Least of all is she credited
(or debited) with any abnormality on account of it. But towards the woman
journalist our attitude, and her own, is mysteriously different. Though
perhaps we do not say so, we leave it to be inferred that of the dwellers
in Fleet Street there are, not two sexes, but two species--journalists and
women-journalists--and that the one is about as far removed organically
from the other as a dog from a cat. And we treat these two species
differently. They are not expected to suffer the same discipline, nor are
they judged by the same standards. In Fleet Street femininity is an
absolution, not an accident. The statement may be denied, but it is
broadly true, and can easily be demonstrated.
Such a condition of affairs is mischievous. It works injustice to both
parties, but more particularly to the woman, since it sets an arbitrary
limit to healthy competition, while putting a premium on mediocrity. Is
there any sexual reason why a woman should be a less accomplished
journalist than a man? I can find none. Admitted that in certain fields--
say politics--he will surpass her, are there not other fields in which she
is pre-eminent, fields of which the man will not so much as climb the
gate? And even in politics women have excelled. There are at least three
women-journalists in Europe to-day whose influence is felt in Cabinets and
places where they govern (proving that sex is not a bar to the proper
understanding of _la haute politique_); whereas the man who dares to
write on fashions does not exist.
* * * * *
That women-journalists as a body have faults, none knows better than
myself. But I deny that these faults are natural, or necessary, or
incurable, or meet to be condoned. They are due, not to sex, but to the
subtle, far-reaching effects of early training; and the general remedies,
therefore, as I shall endeavour to indicate in subsequent chapters, lie to
hand. They seem to me to be traceable either to an imperfect development
of the sense of order, or to a certain lack of self-control. I should
enumerate them thus:--
First, a failure to appreciate the importance of the maxim: Business is
business. The history of most civil undertakings comprises, not one
Trafalgar, but many; and in journalism especially the signal _Business
is business_--commercial equivalent of _England expects_--must
always be flying at the mast-head. _On ne badine pas avec l'amour_--
much less with a newspaper. Consider the effects of any lapse from the
spirit of that signal in a profession where time is observed more strictly
than in pugilism, where whatever one does one does in the white light of
self-appointed publicity, where a single error or dereliction may ruin the
prestige of years! Consider also the rank turpitude of such a lapse! Alas,
women frequently do not consider these things. Some of them seem to have a
superstition that a newspaper is an automaton and has a will-to-live of
its own; that somehow (they know not how) it will _appear_, and
appear fitly, with or without man's aid. They cannot imagine the
possibility of mere carelessness or omission interfering with the
superhuman regularity and integrity of its existence. The simple fact of
course is that in journalism, as probably in no other profession, success
depends wholly upon the loyal co-operation, the perfect reliability, of a
number of people--some great, some small, but none irresponsible.
Stated plainly, my first charge amounts to this: women-journalists are
unreliable as a class. They are unreliable, not by sexual imperfection, or
from any defect of loyalty or good faith, but because they have not yet
understood the codes of conduct prevailing in the temples so recently
opened to them. On the hearth, their respect for the exigencies of that
mysterious _business_ is unimpeachable; somehow, admittance to the
shrine engenders a certain forgetfulness, Or perhaps it would be kinder
and truer to say that the influences of domesticity are too strong to be
lightly thrown off. For commercial or professional purposes these
influences, in many cases, could not well be worse than they are. Regard,
for a moment, the average household in the light of a business
organisation for lodging and feeding a group of individuals; contrast its
lapses, makeshifts, delays, irregularities, continual excuses, with the
awful precisions of a city office. Is it a matter for surprise that the
young woman who is accustomed gaily to remark, "Only five minutes late
this morning, father," or "I quite forgot to order the coals, dear,"
confident that a frown or a hard word will end the affair, should carry
into business (be it never so grave) the laxities so long permitted her in
the home?
I would not charge the professional woman, as I know her, with any
consistent lack of seriousness. On the contrary, she is in the main
exquisitely serious. No one will deny that the average girl, when she
adopts a profession, exhibits a seriousness, an energy, and a
perseverance, of which the average man is apparently incapable. (It is
strange that the less her aptitude, the more dogged her industry.) The
seriousness of some women in Fleet Street and at the Slade School must be
reckoned among the sights of London. It seems almost impossible that this
priceless intensity of purpose should co-exist in the same individual with
that annoying irresponsibility which I have endeavoured to account for.
Yet such is the fact. Scores of instances of it might be furnished; let
one, however, suffice. Once there was a woman-journalist in the North of
England who wrote to a London paper for permission to act as its special
correspondent during the visit of some royal personages to her town. The
editor of the paper, knowing her for an industrious and conscientious
worker and a good descriptive writer, gave the necessary authority, with
explicit information as to the last moment for receiving copy. The moment
came, but not the copy; and the editor, for the time being a raging
misogynist (for he had in the meanwhile publicly announced his intention
to print a special report), went to press without it. The next day, no
explanation having arrived, he dispatched to his special correspondent a
particularly scathing and scornful letter. Then came the excuse. It was
long, but the root of it amounted to exactly this: "I was so knocked up
and had such a headache after the ceremonies were over, that I really did
not feel equal to the exertion of writing. _I thought it would not
matter._" Comment would be inartistic. The curious thing is that the
special correspondent was an editor's wife.
* * * * *
Secondly, inattention to detail. Though this shortcoming discloses itself
in many and various ways, it is to be observed chiefly in the matter of
literary style. Women enjoy a reputation for slipshod style. They have
earned it. A long and intimate familiarity with the manuscript of hundreds
of women writers, renowned and otherwise, has convinced me that not ten
per cent of them can be relied upon to satisfy even the most ordinary
tests in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I do not hesitate to say that
if twenty of the most honoured and popular women-writers were asked to sit
for an examination in these simple branches of learning, the general
result (granted that a few might emerge with credit) would not only
startle themselves but would provide innocent amusement for the rest of
mankind. Of course I make no reference here to the elegances and
refinements of written language. My charge is that not the mere rudiments
are understood. Even a lexicographer may nod, but it surely requires no
intellectual power surpassing the achievement of women to refrain from
regularly mis-spelling some of the commonest English words. The fact that
there are niceties of syntax which have proved too much for great literary
artists, does not make less culpable a wilful ignorance of the leading
grammatical rules; yet the average woman _will_ not undergo the brief
drudgery of learning them. As for punctuation, though each man probably
employs his own private system, women are for the most part content with
one--the system of dispensing with a system.
These accusations, I am aware, have no novelty. They are time-worn. They
have been insisted upon again and again; but never sufficiently. And now
the accusing sub-editors and proof-readers seem to have grown weary of
protest. They suffer in silence, correcting as little as they dare, while
all around are appearing women's articles, which, had their authors been
men, would either have met with curt refusal or been returned for thorough
revision.
The root of the evil lies, as I think, in training. The female sex is
prone to be inaccurate and careless of apparently trivial detail, because
that is the general tendency of mankind. In men destined for a business or
a profession, the proclivity is harshly discouraged at an early stage. In
women, who usually are not destined for anything whatever, it enjoys a
merry life, and often refuses to be improved out of existence when the
sudden need arises. No one by taking thought, can deracinate the mental
habits of, say, twenty years.
But some women are as accurate and as attentive to detail as the most
impeccable man, while some men (such as have suffered in training) present
in these respects all the characteristics usually termed feminine. Which
shows that this question at any rate is not one to be airily dismissed
with that over-worked quotation: "Male and female created he them."
* * * * *
Thirdly, a lack of restraint. This, again, touches the matter of literary
style. Many women-writers, though by no means all, have been cured of the
habit of italicising, which was the outcome of a natural desire to atone
for weakness by stridency. (Every writer, of whatever sex, must carry on a
guerilla against this desire.) It is useless, however, to discipline a
vicious instinct in one direction, if one panders to it in another. Women
have given up italics; but they have set no watch against over-emphasis in
more insidious forms. And so their writing is commonly marred by an undue
insistence, a shrillness, a certain quality of multiloquence. With a few
exceptions, the chief of whom are Jane Austen and Alice Meynell, the
greatest of them suffer from this garrulous, _gesticulating_
inefficacy. It runs abroad in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Aurora
Leigh_ and _Sonnets from the Portuguese_. And George Eliot, for
all her spurious masculinity, is as the rest. You may trace the disease in
her most admired passages. For example:--
"It was to Adam the time that a man can least forget in after life,
--the time when he believes that the first woman he has ever loved
betrays by a slight something--a word, a tone, a glance, the quivering
of a lip or an eyelid--that she is at least beginning to love him in
return. The sign is so slight, it is scarcely perceptible to the ear
or eye--he could describe it to no one--it is a mere feather-touch,
yet it seems to have changed his whole being, to have merged an uneasy
yearning into a delicious consciousness of everything but the present
moment." (_Adam Bede_, p. 187.)
Observe here the eager iteration of the woman, making haste to say what
she means, and, conscious of failure, falling back on insistence and
loquacity. Exactly the same vehement spirit of pseudo-forcefulness
characterises women's journalism to-day. And the worst is that these
tactics inevitably induce formlessness and exaggeration; the one by reason
of mere verbiage, the other as the result of a too feverish anxiety to be
effective.
I submit that this lack of restraint shown by women writers as a class is
due (like other defects) less to sex than to training. The value of
restraint is seldom inculcated upon women. Indeed, its opposites--gush and
a tendency to hysteria--are regarded, in many respectable quarters, as
among the proper attributes of true womanliness; attributes to be
artistically cultivated. When at length the principles on which women are
brought up come to be altered, then this fault (and the others which I
have mentioned) will disappear. In the meantime much can be done in
individual cases by suitable moral and intellectual calisthenics.
Chapter III
The Roads towards Journalism
More women long and strive to be journalists than by natural gifts are
fitted for the profession. By itself, the wish is no evidence of latent
capacity. Such desire may be induced by the need to earn a livelihood; or
by the peremptory impulse to do _something_ which drives forward so
many women to-day; or perhaps through conversing with an enthusiastic
journalist; or by printed statements as to the incomes and influence of
certain famous members of the craft; or by the mere glamour which
surrounds the newspaper life; or in forty other ways. The practice of
journalism does not demand intellectual power beyond the endowment of the
average clever brain. It is less difficult, I should say, to succeed
moderately in journalism than to succeed moderately in dressmaking. Any
woman of understanding and education, provided she has good health and the
necessary iron determination, can become a competent journalist of sorts
if she chooses to put herself into hard training for a year or two--and
this irrespective of natural bent. Yet even so, I would recommend you,
unless you are assured of a genuine predisposition towards it, to find
another and less exhausting, less disappointing occupation than
journalism. For it will surely prove both exhausting and disappointing to
those whose hearts are not set fast upon it.
But how are you, the woman who desires to be a journalist, to ascertain
whether you have that genuine predisposition, those natural gifts which
will renew your strength and take away the bitterness of disappointments?
You may come some way towards deciding the point by answering these three
questions:--
1. Are you seriously addicted to reading newspapers and periodicals?
2. Does the thought regularly occur to you, apropos of fact or
incident personally observed: "Here is 'copy' for a paper"?
3. Have you the reputation among your friends of being a good
letter-writer?
If you cannot reply in the affirmative to two of these queries, then take
up pokerwork, or oratory, or fiction, or nursing, but leave journalism
alone. If by good fortune you are able to say "Yes" to all three of them,
you may go forward rejoicing, for only perseverance will be necessary to
your success; you are indeed "called."
* * * * *
There are several ways of entering upon journalism. One is at once to
found or purchase a paper, and thus achieve the editorial chair at a
single step. This course is often adopted in novels, sometimes with the
happiest results; and much less often in real life, where the end is
invariably and inevitably painful.
Another way is to buy the sub-editorship of a third-rate paper, by
subscribing towards its capital. By such a transaction one gains
experience, but the cost is commonly too dear.
Another way is to possess friends of high influence in the world of
journalism, who will find for one a seat in a respectable office; an
office where one will be in a position to learn everything without
pecuniary risk, and where one can look forward to earning a salary within
a reasonable time. The sole objection to this method is that it is usually
quite impracticable.
Another way is to learn shorthand and the use of the typewriter, and so
obtain an editorial secretaryship. An editor's secretary has every
opportunity of conning the secrets of the profession, and it is her own
fault if she is not soon herself a journalist.
But the time-honoured, the only proper way of entering upon journalism is
to become what is called an "outside contributor." The outside contributor
sends unsolicited paragraphs and articles to papers, on the chance of
acceptance. By dint of a thousand refusals, she learns to gauge the
public, which is the editorial, taste, and at length, fortified by many
printed specimens of her work and a list as long as your arm of the
various publications for which she writes, she is able to demand with
dignity a position (in the office or out of it, as her tastes lie) on the
staff of some paper of renown. Some journalists are so successful as
outside contributors--writing when, how, and for whom they choose--that
they would scorn the offer of any regular appointment; but such are rare.