Good advice

It's a long time since I was a journalist, writing primarily for in-house magazines.

Nevertheless, having grown up with the ambition of working in Fleet Street, I love reading the memoirs of some of Britain's greatest hacks, most of whom are now dead, sadly.

Several involve heroic amounts of alcohol but one thing I have never forgotten are the words of the late Ian Wooldridge, a wonderful sports writer and a hero of mine when I was young.

According to Wooldridge, when faced with a blank piece of paper, the lesson he learned very early in his career was "It doesn't matter what you write, just get it written."

The point was that an editor could excuse the occasional poorly written piece but an empty column was a sackable offence.

I was reminded of this when reading some of the tributes to Barry Cryer (see previous post) at the weekend.

According to the Daily Mail, the late Denis Norden once said of Cryer:

"Barry lives in the world of 'we don't want it good, we want it Monday', and he delivered. Any script is better than no script."

As someone who often worries that something I have written is not up to scratch as the deadline hurtles towards me, this is useful to know.

It's only half true though. As a former editor myself I can confirm that while it's a relief to receive a commissioned article on time, it's also a huge disappointment if it's no good.

That's where a top sub-editor earns their money because in the right hands most articles (or scripts) can be resuscitated into something passable, even if it's unrecognisable from the copy submitted.

Failing that, make sure you have something in reserve.

I read recently that one leading newspaper commissions many more op-eds than it needs and as a result articles frequently go unpublished.

The writers get paid though so although their egos may be bruised they don't complain. It's just part of the job of being a hack for hire.

Talking of sub-editors, something else I learned from the golden age of Fleet Street is that while many reporters were great at investigating or uncovering a story their talent usually lay in that field not in writing.

Again, that was the subs' job. The reporters' role was principally to provide the information, often dictated to a secretary over the phone who would take it down in shorthand, type it up and pass it on to the subs.

Today the secretarial pool is long gone and many newspapers can't afford to employ specialist sub-editors so we have a profession in which journalists are increasingly jacks of all trades and masters of none.

The reduction in staff also explains why so many reports are seemingly cut 'n' paste straight from a press release with very few tweaks or independent reporting.

But that's another story.