The Last Person in Print

End of Blog.

News in Danish: Velkommen i taletanken

A rhetoricians' think tank, a collaborative blog devoted to everyday rhetorical criticism, has opened at http://taletank.wordpress.com/. So - if your Danish skills allow it - please drop by and think aloud.

Challenge the Straw Man #1: Still more informants become narrators

So is it really still controversial for reporters to make use of the first person or to get otherwise personal in their writing style?

In their recent article on image-evoking language constructions in written news (which appeared in Nordicom Review) Ebbe Grunwald and Jørgen Lauridsen have a pretty clear statistical answer to the 'otherwise' part of my question:

Parallel to [...] relatively rapid changes in the newspaper medium itself, new writing and narrative forms have appeared. The known genres, e.g. news journalism, constructed within the frames of the 'inverted pyramid' now often appear as hybrid forms. This means that personal styles of expression more frequently find their way into newspaper articles where they challenge the anonymous writing style of traditional journalism. (p. 93-94)

Grunwald and Lauridsen are mapping the use of exposures, a.k.a. linguistic image constructions, a.k.a. showing as opposed to telling, in five Danish national papers to discover how frequently such techniques are used.

It is a premise of their investigation that as soon as a reporter creates an image ("the faces of our creditors look more and more disbelieving") instead of making a general or abstract statement ("the credit-worthiness of the country has deteriorated"; this is Grunwald and Lauridsen's example), the reporter becomes an active narrator rather than simply an informant. When you invent an image like that you have obviously made an interpretation, selected and emphasised certain aspects of the material at the expense of others. As a consequence, the journalist's presence and her function as a rhetorical decision maker becomes visible, and readers begin to form an opinion about the journalist and her credibility.

Grunwald and Lauridsen conclude that exposures have in fact found their way into Danish news journalism, but the frequency varies from one paper to the next (the most image evoking news journalism is found in Politiken and Ekstra Bladet).

So the traditional paradigm of news journalism is still powerful - the straw man is not all straw - but our journalistic informants do seem to become still more willing to explicitly adopt the role of narrators.

As for the force and impact of these linguistic exposures as an indicator of increased narrator activity, Grunwald and Lauridsen have studied that too. I'll get back to that part in a later episode of Attack the Straw Man.

Men-of-Straw We Live By

Many research projects take a conventional truth as their starting point: "It is often said that...", "It is widely believed that..."- and then the researcher goes ahead and challenges this truth. The approach makes sense, of course, but sometimes these truths that we're up against are presented in a somewhat distorted fashion. Our supposed opponents are shaped as a caricature suited to serve as a foil to our own claims.

(Note how I'm saying 'we', as I'm just about to challenge my very own straw man.)

Well, whenever I have introduced my PhD work I have been claiming that, surprisingly, it is still possible for print reporters to cause a stir by using the first person singular. Teachers and handbooks of journalism still advise against it; readers still react strongly to it as they write letters to the editor expressing their love or hate for reporters who make the rhetorical choice to enter the stage themselves at the expense of the story they were supposed to be covering; and the recent (afore-mentioned) debate at WriterL proves that the first person singular in reporting remains (again: somewhat surprisingly) a narrative form that quite a few people, even among feature journalists devoted to long narrative forms, still take a strong and general stand against: Don't do it! Don't say I! It's too hard to do it well, and remember, as another objection goes, that you're a reporter, not an artist.

But the times they are a-changin', of course, and as professor Martin Eide wrote in a review of my dissertation (Rhetorica Scandinavica 41/2007):

Is it not a galopping norm these days that journalists must "put themselves on the line?"

In the coming posts, I'll make an effort to discover how much of a gallop we're talking about and how much straw should be pulled out of my straw man.

Input is welcome:
Do reporters (and note that we're not talking about columnists and commentators) get personal in the papers you're reading - and does it make you raise an eyebrow at all?

Facts are a dead horse

According to this weekend's issue of Information, a number of historiographic passages in Åsne Seierstad's Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechnya were removed in the editing process. It is Seierstad herself who reports this during a debate meeting in Copenhagen last week, and she argues that such passages tend to lessen the emotional impact of the narrative.

This is not a controversial statement in itself, but apparently her opponent in the debate asks about a specific part of history which he finds highly relevant to the story and yet missing from her book.

It was covered in the original manuscript, says Seierstad and refers to her editor who read that particular passage and then stated that "facts are a dead horse".

Now this is a controversial statement in itself. The phrase is an expression of resignation which completely outmatches the journalistic notion of BBIs, boring but important passages or entire boring but important stories, by saying either

BNI, boring so nevermind the importance, or worse:

IBDH, important - but dead horse.

Return of the Toggle Switch

So I presented Brian's legendary speech - and what was my point?

Well, I really like the speaker's blunt attempt to grant his audience rhetorical agency - which really, of course, he isn't, because he is not giving these people any directions or specific challenges to work with. He simply tells them that they need to think for themselves. Generally.

As a basic message listen to me, but think for yourselves is a fine principle to stick to for journalists and for rhetors in general. But there is no way to assert this freedom as a general principle. It must be done in specific relation to the given situation. Rhetorical agency must be granted from case to case by means of perhaps some more information, provocation, flattery, irony or fresh imagery.

Any rhetorical situation is heavily constrained by audience expectations that the rhetor must accept and then challenge. For "rhetorical agency is possible only within the communication practices of a given community of discourse", says a definition at Kairosnews which pops up in a google search for 'rhetorical agency'.

And now we're approaching the topic of the I's:

Somewhat surprisingly, the gesture of switching to the first person in a piece of news journalism still counts as a way of breaking the rules and thwart audience expectations (may I quote Nadja who expressed in a comment below how she "really - as in REALLY - never understood" why this is so). Saying "I" is a way of challenging the usual authoritative perspective of the press by reminding the reader that the reporter is a person with an individual sense of judgment.

But often the first person reporter not only draws attention to her own limited perspective, but also, by implication, to a false aura of authority and objectivity in the work of her colleagues. She distances herself from the rhetoric she herself is dealing in, as she decides to talk more plainly.

This is a very real dilemma - and readers may well join this brave and honest reporter in her adoption of the oppositional stance. Tell us! Tell us more!! And the first person narrative may become an appeal to free thinking and action which is really just as general and vague and paralysing as that of Brian. To distance yourself from the discourse you need to use is obviously paralysing. For it is not a question of either-or, honest or dishonest, subjective or objective, master or slave.

So what is it? What am I suggesting?

That we be specific in matter as we outline our situation.

And that we take manner seriously as part of the matter.

And, finally, that we try to change perspectives as we go along. Work the toggle switch and direct attention back and forth from manner to matter or from the fluff to the stuff (I've been told that this is Richard Lanham's latest popular rephrasing of this (his) concept of rhetorical toggling between depth and surface).

I.e. expose your rhetoric as rhetoric even as you are asserting what you consider to be an important truth. Because it is rhetoric, and most audiences need to be reminded of this, I believe, in order to be able to think for themselves.

I should exemplify and I will, but not tonight.

Now listen to me

BRIAN:
No. No, please! Please! Please listen. I've got one or two things to say.

FOLLOWERS:
Tell us. Tell us both of them.

BRIAN:
Look. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!

FOLLOWERS:
Yes, we're all individuals!

BRIAN:
You're all different!

FOLLOWERS:
Yes, we are all different!

DENNIS:
I'm not.

ARTHUR:
Shhhh.

FOLLOWERS:
Shh. Shhhh. Shhh.

BRIAN:
You've all got to work it out for yourselves!

FOLLOWERS:
Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!

BRIAN:
Exactly!

FOLLOWERS:
Tell us more!

The presidential pronoun

In a current discussion at WriterL about writing in the first person, one member suggests that you avoid "I" alright, but still allow yourself to use "me". If you follow this rule of thumb you avoid placing yourself at the very beginning of your articles and sentences and avoid looking blatantly self-centered. This is a fine piece of advice, comparable with the old and quite challenging convention of never opening a personal letter by saying: I...

Still, of course, your rhetoric may well be centered completely on yourself and address your personal supporters exclusively, if only perhaps in more of an elegant manner. Mind the following analysis. It is Joe Klein at Time who takes a look at Barack Obama's use of personal pronouns, and I quote at length:

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Barack Obama said in yet another memorable election-night speech on Super-Confusing Tuesday. "We are the change that we seek." Waiting to hear what Obama has to say — win, lose or tie — has become the most anticipated event of any given primary night. The man's use of pronouns (never I), of inspirational language and of poetic meter — "WE are the CHANGE that we SEEK" — is unprecedented in recent memory. Yes, Ronald Reagan could give great set-piece speeches on grand occasions, and so could John F. Kennedy, but Obama's ability to toss one off, different each week, is simply breathtaking. His New Hampshire concession speech, with the refrain "Yes, We Can," was turned into a brilliant music video featuring an array of young, hip, talented and beautiful celebrities. The video, stark in black-and-white, raised an existential question for Democrats: How can you not be moved by this? How can you vote against the future?

And yet there was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism — "We are the ones we've been waiting for" — of the Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you." That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

Read the rest of the article at http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1710721,00.html.

The overall strategy described here seems somehow related to the step-by-step introduction of self - first "they", then "we", then "me" and then, finally, "I" - that I have been pointing out in Lisbeth Davidsen and Åsne Seierstad's reporting. In this political context it might work well as a buildup of expectations to the elections; an approach based on pure formal identification (in Kenneth Burke's sense) on a macro (campaign) level:

Use "you", "we" and the occasional "me" on the campaign trail, but keep your "I" on hold until you're finally in a position to say: "I, the president of the United States..." Voters may swing along with the verbal gradation and decide to help their candidate release the ultimate personal pronoun.

That's me in the corner

One of the first person singular users at Rumspringa Magazine, David Jacobsen Turner, is presently (was recently?) a trainee at Weekendavisen, a Danish weekly which sports the slogan "Personlighedernes avis", i.e. the paper for personalities, strong characters.

And David Jacobsen Turner reports back to the student magazine Lixen how the atmosphere at the editorial offices is nothing like that of the notorious hectic and buzzing news room. Staff members tend to be quietly absorbed in their con amore projects, no stories are obligatory, no trips are simple duty calls. The staff consists of an equal mix of trained journalists and academics who are often able to rely on each other's expertise rather than the usual suspect experts used in other media.

It sounds like a caricature, and David Turner knows that it does: He has been assigned a snug office of his own just down the hall from these people, and the risk of developing self-obesity is immediate!

Yet he can't believe his luck: "I fucking freaking love Weekendavisen," declares the trainee and relates how he is free to dispose of the standard news pyramid structure in his articles, how he has said "perhaps" in three subheadings already and, of course, how he says "I":

I write 'I'. You bet that I do. I-I-I-I-I.

Read all about it (in Danish) at Lixen; use the search word: "egoboost".