It is also puzzling. There has been no dumbing down at the Times of London or the TLS, both of which Murdoch also owns. I know someone who worked at the Village Voice when Murdoch owned it, and mm my friend told me there was no editorial interference from Murdoch there - and my friend was a union rep.
I'm not sure if one should tarnish the Journal based on one article, but the piece he's referring to is here:
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB122566709100191517.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The sense I get is that Alistair Macdonald is merely a crappy writer. His non-simplistic sentences are abysmal:
"The most he has earned from a fight is about £3,000 (about $4,800), and the smallest crowd he has fought in front of is a handful of spectators."
"Fought in front of" instead of "fought before"? No opportunity for symmetry in this sentence by having, say, "a fistful of thousands" in the first clause with "a handful of spectators?"
Check out this abysmally clunky sentence: "Born into a family of nine children in a working-class neighborhood in Birmingham, Mr. Buckley was caught robbing a shop and sent for four months to a youth detention center when he was 15 after his father died." Jesus, where do we start?
Also ponder the phrase "On his recent streak of 88 fights without a win." Why not just say a losing streak?
Good Christ, if the WSJ needs writers, I'm available. And I know twenty unemployed writers who could write better on autopilot than this guy.
Yeah, i think you've got it, Ed. That is a pretty clunk but of writing - and I don't get the sense that Macdonald really has a feel for the sport, do you? And I thought the phrase was 10 stone, not 10 stones?
ReplyDeleteLooks like Alistair McDonald is writing outside of his beat. Perhaps this was a cost-cutting measure?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.journalism.co.uk/8/articles/530987.php
My comment was also a pretty clunky bit of typing.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading the Times (of London, you call it, but so far as I know the only paper called The Times) almost all my adult life, and I can assure you it is extremely dumbed-down now compared with say 10 years ago. I don't just mean the addition of more and more c***, a.k.a. "features", about celebrities, make-up etc (eg features on women politicians, which are actually about their clothes rather than their policies); but the main paper's content, which seems to be fuller these days of reports of inconsequential material in proportion to the consequential.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Times is alone in this, though. Most of the newspapers over here are similar. The FT is probably the only serious daily newspaper in the UK now.
PS Ed, many apparently good writers are crappy at copy-delivery stage - but good copy/sub editors can work wonders. Unfortunately, subs (copyeds) are an endangered species.
ReplyDeleteA little late; but, not too late, I hope, to ask the trio of you, sublimely fine writers all, your opinion on this particular column; and, Maxine, I've been @ The Globe on and off since '81; and, yes, I can see exactly what you mean by The Times in terms of decline. I've had to completely rewrite stories that were so poorly organised and chaotically insane, I often thought blank space would speak more eloquently. I won't say more because I don't want to reveal my bias on this exercise (and, I hope you will take a peek in order to confirm "something" in this, well, I guess, truth I seek beyond my own subjective craptuitive assessment of same). TIA, BTW . . .
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