First rule of journalism: draw your reader in with a catchy, but informative headline. Avoid difficult, foreign, or obscure words, such as “schimpflexikon.”
Rule two: be straightforward, factual, and direct.
Rule three: If someone says “Stop!” or goes limp or taps out, the fight is over.
(Oops. Wrong list.)
Newspaper writing isn’t exactly “Fight Club.” It’s certainly not glamorous, and only very rarely leads to hand-to-hand combat.
This week, I’d like to single out Thom Casey, a reporter whose stories in these pages have set a high standard for clarity, accuracy, and relevance. After several years of exemplary work, Thom has moved on professionally, but has agreed to continue serving Perry County’s readership on a part-time basis.
I happen to like Thom, so I’m biased, but, in my opinion, his coverage of local issues – in particular, the social and political fabric of this community – has been exactly what reportage should be: fair, non-partisan, and timely. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Thom received a 2010 Keystone Press Award for News Beat Reporting, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
Even his boss likes him. “In my 30 years of journalism, I have never met another reporter as productive,” says Wade Fowler, editor of this paper. “Each week, he made it his business to ensure that our subscribers and our advertisers got their money’s worth.”
In an era that has seen the cynical blurring of news and entertainment, Thom represents a kind of throwback to a time when reporting was about the five Ws (and one H):
Who is it about?
What happened?
When did it take place?
Where did it take place?
Why did it happen?
How did it happen?
These seemingly simple questions have an august history – and not just in the realm of journalism. They represent a form of philosophical inquiry that has been handed down to us from ancient times, by way of Hermagoras of Temnos, and, more familiarly, by Cicero, Quintillian, and Thomas Aquinas. There’s a simple idea at the core of the Ws: knowledge is the sum of concrete facts. Without answers to these basic questions, how can we even know what we’re talking about?
Unfortunately, the five Ws lost ground about fifty years ago with the advent of the so-called “new journalism.” This kind of reporting, which appropriated the novelist’s bag of narrative tricks, signaled a new approach to the stories of the day, one that emphasized and rewarded the journalist’s storytelling — as opposed to investigative — powers.
These days, reporting that answers the five Ws has become unfashionable. Media consumers, first and foremost, are seeking news that confirms, rather than challenges, their worldview. Facts that don’t fit a partisan agenda are “massaged” or simply overlooked.
But whatever culture wars might be raging domestically or internationally, there’s still a hunger in the land for local news. And not just a miniature version of the balkanized corporate entertainment complex that has made journalism look so much like the NFL. We want to know what’s happening at our schools; how well our municipal government is working; how our county is changing, and what those changes mean to our lives.
A local newspaper should be a home for fact-driven stories about the people and places we know. Thom Casey has delivered just that, at a very high level, during his tenure with this paper.
He’s the opposite – at least in print – of one of my other favorite journalists, Baltimore’s hometown hero, H.L. Mencken, one of the most opinionated and brilliantly offensive newspapermen of all time.
One of Mencken’s countless gifts to the American language is the word “schimpflexikon,” which comes from his beloved German, and means, roughly, “an encyclopedia of disgraces.”
In the course of a long and sulphuric career, Mencken made plenty of enemies. He was so pleased with the ink spilled in outrage against him that he collected an anthology of the best examples, which he entitled, “Menckeniana: a Schimpflexikon.”
I’m going to hazard a guess that the Thom Casey Schimpflexicon will be a very thin volume indeed.
Perhaps its only entry will be the heartfelt lament that he moved on from full-time journalism in 2011 in search of greener pastures elsewhere.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 10 March 2011
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
