Is there even such a thing as journalistic langauge, asked associate professor (+ literary editor and reviewer at Ekstra-Bladet) John Christian Jørgensen in a lecture given at the University of Copenhagen today on the occasion of his retirement - and yes, he offered his own answer too.
In Denmark, he said, there is indeed such a thing as news language in journalism, a style of presentation which was imported from America in the 1920'es and was still dominant when journalism appeared as a subject in Danish university courses in the late 1940'es. From then on the style was officially taught. Today it is still well known, based as it is on principles of brevity and simplicity with one piece of information per short sentence. A typical text consists of a summary lead plus a textual body and is built according to the inverted pyramid style which means putting any important information first, thus making editors able to abbreviate news articles by chopping the last sentence, the last paragraph, the second-to-last paragraph, or if need be: the whole body of the text and keeping nothing but the lead, without losing the essentials of the story.
This main current is of course challenged by counter-currents, and Jørgensen presented three of these alternative styles which he found to have been significant in Danish journalism over the years: the New Journalism (as conceptualized in 1973 by Tom Wolfe in 4 bullet points), literary journalism (as conceptualized in 1995 by Mark Kramer - but in 8 bullet points which to Jørgensen's experience is at least four too many for them to be remembered by anyone) and finally narrative journalism which seems to have caught on in a serious way, firstly by being intensively studied and theorized and secondly, more importantly, by actually being used by reporters in (at least openings of) news features where reporters present a scene or use a style indirect libre to create narrative suspense in stead of simply revealing the main points of their story from the start. This happens frequently on the front page of a big daily paper like Politiken and had, according to Jørgensen, been unthinkable just five years ago.
After his lecture came speech upon speech (upon a mock exam of graduation) upon speech from colleagues as well as students which recognized Jørgensen's immense ability to get an immense amount of good work done. Basically, he has worked hard as a researcher, teacher, supervisor, writer, journalist, reviewer in a careful, generous and enthusiastic manner. No wonder that he has chosen to retire early, that is: on his 63th birthday.
I want to thank him too for excellent support during my three years as a PhD student. Thanks a lot.
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