Why Authors Go Wrong, and Other Explanations

by Grant M. Overton

9

Perhaps the reader is grumbling, in fact, we seem to hear murmurs. What has all this about the genesis and nature of good reporters to do with the publication of new books? Why, this: The only person who can deal adequately and amply with 99 new books out of a hundred—the 99 that require to be taken as they are—is the good reporter. He’s the boy who can read the new book as he would look and listen at a political convention, or hop around at a fire—getting the facts, getting them straight (yes, indeed, they do get them straight) and setting them down, swiftly and selectively, to reproduce in the mind of the public the precise effect of the book itself. The effect—not the means by which it was achieved, not the desirability of it having been achieved, not the artistic quality of it, not the moral worth of it, not anything in the way of a corollary or lesson or a deduction, however obvious—just the effect. That’s reporting. That’s getting and giving the news. And that’s what the public wants.

Some people seem to think there is something shameful in giving the public what it wants. They would, one supposes, highly commend the grocer who gave his customer something “just as good” or (according to the grocer) “decidedly better.” But substitution, open or concealed, is an immoral practice. Nothing can justify it, no nobility of intention can take it out of the class of deception and cheating.

But, they cry, the public does not want what is sufficiently good, let alone what is best for it; that is why it is wrong to give the public what it wants. So they shift their ground and think to escape on a high moral plateau or table land. But the table land is a tip-table land. What they mean is that they are confidently setting their judgment of what the public ought to want against the public’s plain decision what it does want. They are a few dozens against many millions, yet in their few dozen intelligences is collected more wisdom than has been the age-long and cumulative inheritance of all the other sons of earth. They really believe that.... Pitiable....

10

A new book is news. This might almost be set down as axiomatic and not as a proposition needing formal demonstration by the Euclidean process. Yet it is susceptible of such demonstration and we shall demonstrate accordingly.

In the strict sense, anything that happens is news. Everybody remembers the old distinction, that if a dog bites a man it is very likely not news, but that if a man bites a dog it is news beyond all cavil. Such a generalization is useful and fairly harmless (like the generalization we ourselves have just indulged in and are about proving) if—a big if—the broad exception be noted. If a dog bites John D. Rockefeller, Jr., it is not only news but rather more important, or certainly more interesting, news than if John Jones of Howlersville bites a dog. For the chances are that John Jones of Howlersville is a poor demented creature, after all. Now the dog that bites Mr. Rockefeller is very likely a poor, demented creature, too; but the distinction lies in this: the dog bitten by John Jones is almost certainly not as well-known or as interesting or as important in the lives of a number of people as Mr. Rockefeller. Pair off the cur that puts his teeth in the Rockefeller ankle, if you like, with the wretch who puts his teeth in an innocent canine bystander (it’s the innocent bystander who always gets hurt); do this and you still have to match up the hound of Howlersville with Mr. Rockefeller. And the scale of news values tips heavily away from Howlersville and in the direction of 26 Broadway.

So it is plain that not all that happens is news compared with some that happens. The law of specific interest, an intellectual counterpart of the law of specific gravity in the physical world, rules in the world of events. Any one handling news who disregards this law does so at his extreme peril, just as any one building a ship heavier than the water it displaces may reasonably expect to see his fine craft sink without a trace.

Since a new book is a thing happening it is news, subject to the broad correction we have been discussing above, namely, that in comparison with other new books it may not be news at all, its specific interest may be so slight as to be negligible entirely.

But if a particular new book is news, if its specific interest is moderately great, then obviously, we think, the person best fitted to deal with it is a person trained to deal with news, namely, a reporter. Naturally we all prefer a good reporter.