Reviews

Anna McKane (2006) News Writing

London: Sage. ISBN 9781412919150. 196 pages. £17.99 paperback, £60 hardback.

Angela Phillips (2007) Good Writing For Journalists

London: Sage ISBN 9781412919173. 218 pages. £18.99 paperback, £60 hardback.

Back in the day, in the UK at least, there was Harold Evans' unfortunately titled Newsman's English and, when it came to recommending books that showed how to report in a clear and lively style that was about it. These days, with the rise and rise of journalism in British universities as an area of study [within higher education], books of journalistic instruction seem to be coming off academic publishers' presses at an unprecedented rate.

Evans' volume now goes under the more unwieldy but less gendered title of Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers and, although it remains useful, even the updated edition from 2000 is getting a bit long in the tooth. Two recent books by journalists who now lecture at UK universities stand out from the crowd by being worthy of consideration as successors to Evans. Anyone wishing to improve the quality and clarity of their writing - whether or not they aspire to be journalists - would do well to read McKane and Phillips, whose books complement rather than duplicate each other.

As its title suggests, Anna McKane's book is a guide to how to write news. It covers all the expected ground such as intros, the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why), the ubiquitous greengrocer's apostrophe and the ever-faithful inverted pyramid of news; but it does so with a lightness of touch and plenty of useful examples from a range of media, including the redtop tabloids that are too often overlooked when news writing is discussed. Different ways of presenting news are also discussed, from combining several related stories in one 'wrap' to 'blobbing it onto the bottom' (don't ask), and the overall tone is helpfully instructive rather than overly prescriptive.

With a welcome chapter on the subject of accuracy, McKane makes the point that superficially good writing is in fact no good at all if it is factually wrong. The chapter is sub-headed 'Check, check and check', and the wisdom of this mantra is illustrated with genuine stories such as the discovery of a 30kg bat or the news that the UK imports 50 million tonnes of foie gras every year, both pretty terrifying statistics. Of course, the reporters meant 30g and 50 tonnes respectively, and both errors might have been avoided if McKane's advice to 'visualise what you are writing about' had been followed.

She offers the following equally valuable guidance on how to minimise errors, particularly with the names of people and places: 'There is no foolproof way of getting things right. Probably a general assumption that you have got it wrong, rather than a general assumption that you have got it right, would help. So develop the habit of checking everything three times.'

Angela Phillips' book doesn't cover news as such, although it certainly deals with reporting. Its subject matter is journalism that digs beneath the inverted pyramid and goes beyond simple facts that in any event rarely turn out to be all that simple. Journalism, for Phillips, should be 'more than a means of bringing news about disasters and changes in government policy. It is also a critical weathervane for cultural change… It should be animated by the quest for truth, but tempered by an understanding of how difficult that quest can be. It should bring us news of how we feel as well as news of what is done in our name.'

It is to explore and encourage such journalism that, after a couple of introductory and contextualising chapters, she has selected 22 'examples of great writing' from Martha Gelhorn to Gary Younge (twice). The text of each article is reproduced, interspersed with paragraphs from Phillips offering a critique of the writing. The idea is simple - not only to expose readers to some excellent writing but also to draw attention to the tools and materials used in its construction - and it works. Set off to one side in a different font, the commentary does not get in the way of the pieces under consideration, and if anything I could have done with more of her pithy observations.

However, Phillips could and probably should have selected features from a wider range of sources; nine of the 22 are from the Guardian, for example, and there is nothing from what might be termed a popular newspaper. Equally disappointing is the appearance in print of some unfortunate errors: Anthony Loyd's name is correct in the text but wrongly spelt Lloyd in the references, Bob Franklin's name is rendered Franklyn in both, and Matthew Engel becomes Engels.

What was it that Anna McKane was saying about checking things three times? It is good advice for all of us, including the publishers of academic books that cost the best part of 20 quid apiece.

Tony Harcup, University of Sheffield.