The Degnerative State of Newspaper Columns — Circa 1950
While reading the collected Essays of E.B. White I can across a sentimental reference to the bygone quality of yesteryear’s columnists:
In 1916 to hold a job on a daily paper, columnist was expected to be something of a scholar and a poet — or at least to harbor the transmigrated soul of a dead poet. Nowadays, to get a columning job a man need only have the soul of a Peep Tom or a thrid-rate prophet. There are plenty of loud clowns and bad poets at work on papers today, but there are not many columnists adding to belles lettres, and certainly there is no Don Marquis at work on any big daily, or if there is, I haven’t encountered his stuff…I think newspaper publishers in this decade ought to ask themselves why. What accounts for so great a falling off? (“Don Marquis” pp315)
It is hard to think what White would have thought of the current state of the news industry. As a pragmatist and champion of quality in prose it is hard to wonder if he wouldn’t have given up the daily paper long before it reached its current state.
Related posts:
- Book Reviews in Peril: Or New Trouble in Paradise Excellent commentary from Peter Stothard at the Times Literary Supplement...
- Is the Kindle Killing Publishing? The fight between Macmillan and Amazon over the price of...
- Alan Kauffman Burns the Ebook In an essay in the Evergreen Review, Kaufman identifies the...
- PW’s Top 10 of 2009 Publishers Weekly’s interesting best of, complete with reviews. ...
- Stop Reading Dan Brown Since when does Maureen Dowd write book reviews? And why...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
