 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I still remember the advice I was given by my professor of journalism, the late Keith Watson: always try to write objectively.
I heeded the advice and tried to put it to practice during my first stint with journalism, when I became a columnist for Le Journal d'Egypte. I was still a student at the English Department of the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, though my French was good enough to get a temporary job with the newspaper. Of course my writing required a great deal of sub-editing, but, somehow, I managed.
When I wrote my first column -- a commentary on the French play, Le Cid -- the chief editor, Edgar Gallad, one of the leading journalists of the time, read the article, looked at me and said, "Not bad. But you should put more of yourself in it." That meant that I had to make it more subjective. It was my second lesson, and between the two pieces of advice I felt lost. Now, having matured in the profession, I realised that there are differences between articles and columns. The writer should be objective when writing a lengthy article, but when it comes to a column, the attitude is different.
Going through my English newspapers recently, I came across an article which proved to me that other columnists were facing the same dilemma. It was by a woman columnist, Zoe Heller of the Daily Telegraph, and in it she talked about the same problem. Most journalists, she said, will at some stage be handed back the first draft of an article, with a request to "put more of themselves" into the piece. "Let's hear how you felt about it," the editor will say, or, "I think we need a more subjective approach".
Zoe Heller's article dealt with the problem of women columnists. Putting more of oneself in a column can be flattering, and few journalists are immune to such flattery. The new journalists, Heller explains, are not asked to do more research, carry out more interviews, think up a new introduction, or rewrite that boring middle section. They are simply being asked to insert more of themselves into the copy.
Heller goes on to explain the specific problems of women writers. Historically the role of the female newspaper writer "has been to liven the serious (male) stuff of reportage and analysis with light dispatches, news from the realm of the domestic, the emotional, the personal". She mentions the categories in which women's writing operates. There is the good humoured (home front) column in which she writes about her kids and lazy husband. Then there is the stern commentary piece, in which public affairs are examined from a female point of view. There is also the confessional genre, in which a woman writer describes her escapades. Yet all women avoid political writing. What women reveal in their writing leads readers to feel that they have come to know the writer in person. But women columnists, according to the writer, are not necessarily models of journalistic excellence. The quality of women's prose tends to be extremely uneven, but, "at their best, girl writers achieve a startling level of honesty".
Having finished her comments on women's writing, Zoe Heller goes on to give some general remarks about column writing. All column writing is prey to a certain theatricality. Column writers may start with something new to say about life, peppering it with their own experiences, but having said what they have to say run the risk of repetition. Their writing hardens into a formula and producing a weekly column can become a tiresome act -- often as tiresome for the reader as it is for the writer.
The article reflects some degree of self-pity and sympathy for female columnists. There is not much difference between male or female columnists. The main issue is how to give the reader something entertaining without being unnecessarily trivial or funny. Column writing should be authentic, combining an attractive style with a sense of humour while dealing with something that concerns the reader. This being the recipe which I hope I have managed to use.
