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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 18, 2009
Backward glance
It is coming up to 40 years since I walked into this curious trade of journalism, not entirely by accident, though mostly.Forty-seven since I launched my first newspaper -- the Comet Express, a weekly sheet, printed in purple on a tray of gelatin, to a maximum of about 30 copies, by a process I was taught by my father. It was the true precursor of this column, though I must confess a rather amateur effort, to be partly forgiven by my age at the time, which was just shy of 10. But I was fully 16 before landing my first "serious" job, from which I now count the anniversary. This was as a copy boy, at the long-defunct Globe and Mail, in their long-since demolished art-deco offices on King Street, Toronto. (There is still a newspaper published under that name, but it appears unrelated to the one I used to work for.) The job came via Clark Davey, later a publisher of the Ottawa Citizen. In 1969, he was managing editor of the Globe. I walked rather boldly into his office, to announce my willingness to do any job. And by sheer luck, I correctly answered his one skill-testing question, viz., "Are you on drugs?" "If you can remember the '60s, you weren't there," according to the baby-boom adage, and I benefited from the fact that the Globe's "wire room" (some old technology I won't try to explain) was being attended, at that moment, by a lovable but seriously alcoholic old man on the eve of retirement, and a commune of drug-crazed hippies. My task, as Mr. Davey quickly explained, was to "try very hard not to fit in." I am of an obedient nature, and have been trying to follow Mr. Davey's instruction ever since. It strikes me, after two-score years in and out of the "profession" (as it is now called), that my entry into it would be inconceivable today. My critics might perhaps celebrate this indubitable indication of "progress," but in my own view it is a great pity. Today, most journalists arrive at their first job at a relatively advanced age, and at the end of a long process of streaming, as the accredited graduates of "schools of communications." They are already specialists in the "communication arts," now sometimes called a "science." They arrive, by comparison with recruits in the past, with attitudes towards work and world fully formed in that other place, after many years of exposure to standardized postmodern forms of (erroneous) moral, spiritual and political indoctrination. Teachers' colleges did approximately the same thing a little earlier to our schools. There was a time when teachers did not necessarily require a high school certificate. Most were taught, even self-taught, on the job, which is an extremely effective way to weed out those not suited to it. The number of teachers tended to swell and shrink with the number of pupils to be "educated," and of course there were no unions. And hardly any administration, either. Our ancestors couldn't afford such things, and the unavoidable administrative tasks tended to be pieced out among the teachers. A principal was in effect the senior-most teacher, captain of the team hired by a very local school board. Today, we have layers of specialized administration, reporting to a vast provincial bureaucracy, and while a teacher may aspire to be promoted into the administrative ranks, the people who make the key pedagogical decisions have generally no experience of teaching whatever. It is not so bad in journalism, a profession still exposed to what are called "market forces," as well as to the natural dynamics of large, top-heavy organizations. Administrative departments are smaller than in the "public sector," but nevertheless huge, because of the scale and complexity of the government reporting requirements to which they must answer from hour to hour. Looking back, over 40 summers, I realize that this is by far the biggest change: the metastasis of bureaucracy. I think of it as a grey toxic sproo, seeping down from an elevated cistern, and infecting all life forms below. It is an arthritis that has not been killing our whole civilization, but, rather, making it defenceless against its natural enemies. By contrast, the way of the world, before, was simpler and more comprehensible. You learned, you mastered, or you were out. (Sometimes you were out, anyway, by some infernal accident; but there are accidents under all systems.) The year after I joined the Globe -- by when I'd gone off to Asia -- I understand a policy decision was reached. Whereas the paper's "underqualified" though very capable senior staff had been in the habit of looking suspiciously upon "J-school" graduates -- whom they rightly or wrongly believed to be characteristically shallow and unenterprising -- a new consensus emerged that only persons with journalism degrees should be considered. This was felt to be "more professional." I think of it now as the beginning of the end, and of myself as perhaps the youngest surviving dinosaur David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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