“If reporters are the lifeblood of a newspaper, sub-editors may be said to be the main arteries,” writes W Roy Nash in his book How Newspapers Work (Pergamon, 1964) – by which of course he means that we are vital to a news organisation’s functioning, not that we steadily lose capacity and become hardened in middle age.
His book, which I came across quite by chance in Google Books, forms part of the Commonwealth and International Library, an educational series created by Pergamon (and therefore, yes, Robert Maxwell) in the early 1960s mainly for scientists, with the occasional arts subject thrown in to broaden horizons. And Nash, although a reporter (he was education correspondent for the Daily Mail), writes with sympathy about the “special sort of of craftsman*-cum-technician” sitting back in the office, and the symbiotic relationship between those out on a story and those eyeing the word count.
“For example,” he writes, “an industrial correspondent may be away from his office covering a trade union conference. As a specialist, absorbed in his particular field, he is closely interested in the events of the day and feels they warrant a fairly lengthy report.” Very delicately put. “All over the country, other reporters are doing the same sort of thing, applying their own personal yardsticks to the values of the stories they are writing.
“Back at the office the copy takers pound away at their typewriters as the industrial correspondent and his colleagues dictate their copy over the telephone. Gradually the total of words builds up … thousands upon thousands of words which will, in the course of a morning newspaper’s working night, be sufficient to fill a large-size novel. Clearly a newspaper has space only for a small amount of this gargantuan output, and so much must be discarded and much cut.”
Over to the subs’ desk, where, alas, the industrial correspondent’s work has fallen into the hands of the copy taster, who has passed it to Bill with the instruction: “Knock this down by a third and give it a K2 top across two.” Bill, “armed with a black soft-lead marking pencil”, sets to work with the clock ticking. “All sub-editors work at maximum pressure for each page of a newspaper must be ready for the printing presses at times laid down with all the exactitude of railway timetables – and far more rigidly adhered to.” Er, yes.
And so to the cut itself, “one of the most exacting and perilous of all sub-editorial activities”. Bill “must not transform himself into an editorial butcher, slashing away wildly with his pencil. Only rarely can a story be cut by drawing a line at the end of the first two-thirds of the copy and throwing the rest away.” Ahem. “So he must work his way through the copy with the utmost care, discarding a sentence here, reducing the length of a paragraph there.”
And then, with tremendous magnanimity for a reporter, Nash adds:
Of course, mistakes do occur from time to time as a result of sub-editorial cuts. Some ambiguity in the original copy may mislead the sub-editor or he may himself not appreciate the change of emphasis that will arise from a re-written sentence. He is working against the clock, and cannot sit indefinitely weighing up the pros and cons of his method of contraction. These are the really great hazards of newspaper work, and with the best will in the world they may be reduced to a minimum but they cannot be entirely eliminated. Reporters, correspondents and sub-editors are only human and not infallible machines.
Further on in the chapter, he has interesting things to say about another subject not often written about – the unspoken social contract between readers and journalists about what headlines mean.
Headlines today are an indispensable part of the clothing and style of a major daily. The telegraphic form of a modern headline is now acceptable because readers are accustomed to it and have learned to translate it at a glance … The U.S. show business journal, Variety, holds the record for extremes in telegraphic headlines but is apparently able to rely on the translating skill of its very specialised readership. Its most famous line read: HIX PIX NIX IN STIX. In translation it meant that comedy movies (“pix” for pictures) about rural characters (“hix” for hicks) were no box office attraction (“nix”) “in the sticks” (the rural areas themselves).
And, strikingly for a British book, flying verbs get a mention too:
US daily newspaper readers are now sufficiently schooled in headline-absorbing techniques to suffer no confusion even when nouns are omitted. They automatically supply the missing word for themselves. From the line RAID RICH VICE NEST they correctly infer that it is the police who do the raiding.
I’d never heard of Nash or the book, or seen it recommended. It’s more than 50 years old now, as well, and no one’s using marking pencils any more. But it’s still engaging, still relevant and, it appears, still on sale. I’ve already ordered my copy.
*Or craftswoman, of course. But this was written in the 1960s.
Ten minutes past deadline 