The art of conversation
What French cafes are for.
Quote of the Day
”Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops; it’s easier to get away with murder.
- James Carville
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Keith Jarrett | Shenandoah
Long Read of the Day
From Cockburn to clickbait
Lovely essay by my friend Andrew Brown.
Claud Cockburn, one of the finest hacks there has ever been, wrote that journalism is very simple: it is a mixture of advertising and entertainment and to succeed you need only decide who you want to entertain and what cause, as it were, you wish to advertise. He had no time for journalism as the pursuit of abstract truth, and – as a member in good standing of the British imperial class and an intermittent Stalinist – he would have laughed at the idea that journalists had a sacred duty to democracy until tears of neat whisky streamed down his cheeks.
Cockburn wished to lose his illusions without losing hope, as he wrote admiringly of a Stalinist friend. His energy, optimism, and courage are still inspiring; he was also an excellent stylist, whose plain and forceful manner concealed a great deal of art. He cared more for the English language than for all of his causes and most of his wives. So if there is any guide who can lead us, like Virgil, through the descent into dreadful clickbait hell, Cockburn is the man.
He must have inspired many people into journalism with his autobiographies, but I don’t think he ever set out to be a journalist. What he wanted was to savour the variety of the world and to write about it. Working for the Times offered the least constrained way to do this. “The press, sir, and the gentleman from the Times” as a Victorian flunkey is said to have introduced journalists to the Prime Minister.
So he started off respectable; what makes him timely, though is that he invented – at least in English speaking countries – a form of journalism that did not depend on advertising and was aimed squarely at an elite audience. To put it another way, he invented Substack 80 years before Substack did…..
Do read on. I love it partly because it’s such a readable account of why the journalistic trade (for it is a trade and not a profession) is in trouble. But also because I knew and admired Claud Cockburn, who (with his wife, Patricia) were very kind to me when I was an undergraduate in Ireland. (They lived in Youghal, a seaside village near Cork, where I studied.) The last time I saw him was after my graduation; he asked me what I intended to do next. I replied that I was thinking of journalism. At this, he grinned wickedly and said, solemnly: “One word of advice: make sure that early in your career you libel somebody famous!”
Books, etc.
You’ll be hearing a lot about Dave Eggers’s new book. He’s a truly remarkable writer. His book The Circle provided the most insightful glimpse I’d ever seen of what it’s like to work inside a tech giant. But his reportage is also shrewd and perceptive. Way back in the Summer of 2016 I was on holiday in Provence and brooding on the upcoming US election. As a devout reader of the New York Times I was reassured on a daily basis by Nate Silver that Hilary Clinton was on track for election. And then I read a very long piece by Eggers who had been to a Trump rally in California and had spent a lot of time talking to attendees who seemed to him to be ordinary Americans. And I started to wonder if the pollsters might be missing the picture. But then I looked at the NYT polling figures and thought “Nah!”. The rest turned out to be history, as they say.
Let’s teach Meta a lesson
For the background see here.
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