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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
April 27, 2003
Dic Doyle
Journalism a sage once explained is a profession that takes about four days to master and which one quickly abandons when something better comes along. I owe my own career in journalism to the fact that nothing better ever did and it now appears I have been practising this black art in one form or another for a third of a century. In my strange little career -- it peaked at the age of 17 when I briefly became Women's and Social Editor of the Bangkok World -- writing has been an afterthought. I've been more often some kind of editor and might still be one today were it not for the propensity of publications I edit to go belly up. As I say writing and in the papers is what remains as a means of supporting oneself after every alternative path has been closed. That one does it for a living I take to be a proposition within reasonable argument. "Only a blockhead ever wrote except for money said Doctor Johnson, the patron saint of all hacks -- one of the many remarks for which he was never paid. The advantage of editing over writing being, that the cheques are more likely to be regular. I have edited, in my own right, and according to my own dim lights, but also served under various editors -- some better, some worse, few memorable. No matter how low or high a profession, one forms opinions about it from inside, and the bundle of prejudices I have accumulated about editing is by now fairly large. (Though they could be reduced to a single precept: Stand out of the way of anything that's good; get in the way of anything that isn' t.) Should I ever write my memoirs -- for money -- I should be pleased to remember three great editors. They had little in common with one another, beyond an irrepressible personal authority or charisma" (hate that word) -- each was inspiring in his own way and made one try one's best. I think only one of these gentlemen now remains alive Neil Reynolds the former editor of this newspaper and he will kill me for mentioning his name; a man who over years editing successively four regional dailies has disturbed the placidity of each; who has dared to throw bricks through the shop windows of Canadian mediocrity. Another named John Stirling (no relation to Carlyle) was a Basra-born Englishman who worked for decades as journeyman editor in the Far East his keen talent broad knowledge and multilingual cultivation almost entirely concealed behind the facades of various grim business publications. (He was a homosexual in an age when closet doors stayed closed.) He made each for a moment a little beacon of fine English writing and gentle civilization. I must assume he has died for he would now be quite old and I can no longer trace him. The third died earlier this month Senator Richard J. Doyle or as he should be remembered (in a sentence with George Brown) the editor of the Globe . He had this job for twenty years from 1963 and made the Globe and Mail in his time worthy of its reputation. He was also a very alert kind decent human being with that acute sense of paradox that marks the presence of some genius. My very first job after leaving home and school promptly at the age of 16 and doing some desultory hitch-hiking around our continent was as a copy boy in the Globe's old fabulous art deco fortress on Toronto's King Street West. This was at the tail end of the 1960s and I got the job I think by leaving the managing editor (then Clark Davey) with the impression I was the only applicant not obviously on drugs. It was the wrong moment to enter the trade at that level: for as Mr. Davey explained perhaps sardonically the Globe had just changed its unspoken policy of "never hire anyone with a journalism degree" to "only hire people with plausible credentials". There would he averred be no possible way for me to advance from the wire room to the editor's suite in the traditional manner. I met "Mr. Doyle" some weeks later after having endured several humiliations at the hands of an unpleasant man named Froggatt for dropping unsolicited copy written by myself into the night city inbox. One of these pieces had somehow found its way to Doyle's desk I assumed for more definitive disciplinary action. I was summoned by Rosemary his magnificent personal secretary into Doyle's august chamber where the man himself in half-frames sliding down his nose was reviewing my most recent attempt to supply a news article. I shall not forget his words. "Mr. Warren he began. (I had not previously been granted the honorific by anyone in the building.) This is very well written. How old are you?" "Sixteen sir." "Are you planning to make journalism your trade?" "Yes sir. ... Will you help me?" "Well Mr. Warren at my age all the thrills are vicarious. Of course I will help you." He was a man who had broken into journalism in the same way I was proposing to do and assured me that leaving school makes a good audacious start. He recommended that I get some broader experience than the Globe could offer a novice by working in a "provincial paper" then later if I wanted come home to the Globe . His recklessly generous letter of recommendation soon helped me land my first newspaper job in Asia. And while for a good reason I never came home to the Globe (Doyle was retiring when I finally returned in the 1980s) he never failed me as a mentor. He always had time; the best editors always have time. There is no space today for the rest of that story. I will conclude with his first piece of practical advice. I asked Mr. Doyle in that first encounter if there was anything in my article that should have been done differently. He said Yes, your headline. It is sharp and witty and appropriate. You should understand that the people on copy desk always change the headline. You should have suggested something pointless, so they could only change it for the better. A great editor; a man whose memory I shall always cherish. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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