newnotes

Hampstead Authors' Society No. 35 Issue 5. October 2002

HASwalk led by Jennifer Potter
&
HAS AGM
&
HASConcert by Corrado Canonici, Double Bass Virtuoso

Time: 2:00 - 2:15 p.m. Meeting at Waterstone's Hamsptead; leave for walk at 2:15 sharp
         2:15 - 3:30 p.m. Walk on the Heath, led by Jennifer Potter
         3:30 - 4:15 p.m. Tea and cake at South End Green
         4:15 - 5:00 p.m. HAS AGM (HASmembers only)
         5:00 - 5:35 p.m. Concert by Corrado Canonici, Double Bass Virtuoso
         5:35 - 6:30 p.m. Wine and discussion; wrap up by 6:30.

Date: Saturday 26th October 2002

Cost of refreshments:
Reservations made before 20th October: £4.00 for HAS members; £6 for guests.
After 20th October: £6 for HAS members; £8 for guests. Places are limited.

Many thanks to those who have helped in some way or another to make things happen for HAS over the past year; special thanks to Mariane Rosel-Miles, Pat Farrington, Stoddard Martin, Nouritza Matossian, Robert Solomon and Philip Williamson.

If you feel you can spare some time to get actively involved in HAS, do drop Zsuzsanna a line, saying what you'd like to do. Please email nominations and suggestions for the AGM agenda to her.

Membership renewal: Please send back the form attached.
Reminder: The walk and attendance at the AGM are, of course, free for present and prospective members - but if you have tea and stay for the concert and party, please contribute as requested.
HAS Membership and HASnotes contributions
Membership is £8, if you are already a member of the Society of Authors; otherwise it's £12 per year. To apply, please send your short bio, with list of publications, to: Zsuzsanna Ardó, HAS Chairman,

Contributions to HASnotes are welcome. Copyright remains with the authors and HASnotes. Permission is hereby granted for any article published herein to be reproduced in full or in part, subject to the consent of the Author(s), as long as HASnotes with its URL (http://www.societyofauthors.org/HAS/) is clearly indicated as the original source.

This HASconcert is a unique opportunity to hear - live - some of the major contemporary/classical works for solo double bass. The programme includes compositions written for - and/or premiered by - Corrado Canonici. It will be a voyage of discovery in the fascinating world of the double bass, an instrument which has become a soloist instrument only in recent times, with its amazing powers of communication.

Corrado Canonici has been awarded the 1993, 1997 and 1999 New York INMC Award, the Darmstadt Prize and the "Xenakis" Prize for Interpretation, Paris 1992. Canonici is now primarily a soloist: he has given concerts in France, Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Holland and the USA. In the States he also held master classes at, amongst others, New York University (1996 Performer-in-Residence), Harvard University, Boston University, Arnold Schönberg Institute (University of Southern California) and the Manhattan School of Music. He recorded two compact-discs for the Capstone Label, New York.

"This remarkable bass virtuoso showed himself to be a master of modern bass technique. [...] Canonici played it from memory and gave a riveting performance". The Strad
"Phenomenal bass player" The Wire
"Striking for the subtlety of interpretation" Sunday Times

News writers and reporters are often accused of 'dumbing-down', focusing on trivial stories and trivial details whilst leaving more serious happenings unreported. Last year's terrorist attacks in America have led to a renewed interest in world events and - for the time being at least - news editors no longer shy away from 'serious news'. But despite the recent focus on more serious topics, the unreflected use of journalistic language remains. Like 'collateral damage' and 'surgical strikes' before them, the 'war on terror' and 'weapons of mass destruction' are phrases which are repeated in every news bulletin, insidiously shaping our views on world events and, at a stroke, turning comment (or propaganda) into fact.

Whilst on a work placement in a radio newsroom early last year, I experienced many of the pitfalls of being a trainee journalist, and discovered why much of today's news has lost its serious edge. I had always thought of 'news' as simply reporting the bare facts of a story. Anything else would be 'comment' or 'features'. But my editor had other ideas. My first lesson was that our primary raison d'être as modern-day journalists was not to impart information and inform our listeners, but to sell a packaged product. And the packaging was the most important aspect.

The first few days of my work placement were a shock: my story ideas were rejected wholesale and my copy totally rewritten. I began to wonder how I had gone from being a good news writer to being a dismal one in a matter of hours. Was I really so bad or was this some kind of newsroom initiation process? I bit my tongue and accepted my role as 'trainee'. After all, I was there to learn.

On my second day, I was asked to write a story about the first woman appointed to be head of the London Stock Exchange. To my mind, this was clearly a story about women being successful in a very male environment, so I discarded all references to her personal life which would have been considered irrelevant for a man. But after my (extremely young) editor had checked my work, the words 'mother of three' appeared in my copy. Was this addition really necessary? What about women's rights and equality? A radio newsroom was clearly no place to be analytical or pedantic. All of the newspapers had mentioned the woman's family and few editors would want to be caught stepping out of line.

A couple of days later, David Trimble had commented on IRA decommissioning and this was being widely reported in the newspapers. I suggested writing this up but my editor was reluctant, clearly considering the topic to be too serious. Eventually, he gave me the go-ahead but he had quite different ideas about how the story should be written. Instead of focusing on the decommissioning of weapons, which was what the story was really about, I was supposed to focus on peace talks - a much simpler concept for our listeners to understand. I also got the impression that my twenty-something editor was not quite sure himself about what was going on in Northern Ireland or how it should be reported.

In general it was not easy to have my work continually changed and rewritten, particularly since I couldn't always see that there was anything wrong with it. I became increasingly aware of the fact that the news editor - who was a fair bit younger than me - had a completely different world-view to mine. This translated itself into a very different understanding of which stories were important, what certain stories were about and how they should be reported. The news agenda of the day and the style of writing had the hallmark of a young and carefree generation. Rather than informing our listeners by writing well-researched stories, our main aim seemed to be to keep them entertained. Over-burden our listeners with anything too serious and they might flee to another radio station. Better to play safe, stick to stories being covered by other news providers and tailor our writing to the lowest common denominator.

The following day, I was asked to write a piece on the Glastonbury Festival. The editor's main criticism of my copy was that I needed to explain what the Festival was, as some of our listeners might not know. This was a fair enough comment and I set about inserting an appropriate paragraph. But, dissatisfied with my explanation, the editor rewrote the piece, adding that festival took place in the 'beautiful English countryside'. Now I was thoroughly confused. Was I supposed to be writing news or prose? The style of writing and the adjective were clearly intended to make the piece more accessible to the listeners. But they also blurred the line between fact and comment - a mortal sin at journalism school. Had news consumers become bored with just facts? Would they only tune in if a little something extra were added? Looking at how the current 'war on terrorism' has been reported, I'm sure my editor was not the only one to dispense with the rules in order to attract a wider audience.

On day six of my internship, the news was dominated by the Lockerbie trial. Real news at last. The journalists in the newsroom started talking about what they were doing when the crash happened in 1988 - they were playing in a school playground. I remembered that I was at university at the time and had followed the events in quite some detail. The editor started tapping furiously at his keyboard. This story was his. Maybe just as well since I do not think I could have matched his speed. I could not help feeling that a historical perspective would have given the story a bit more depth. But there was no time to be too analytical in a fast-moving newsroom.

Enthused that we were finally focusing on real events, I suggested a Northern Ireland story for myself as there were talks going on at Downing Street. I was asked, instead, to do something on the Bafta nominations. I was gutted. This was not what I had expected journalism to be. I didn't mind the odd bit of fluff but most of what I had done so far had been lacking in substance. Writing something out of nothing is, of course, part of the journalist's skill, but did news consumers really want light entertainment stories before political ones? Or was my editor underestimating their intelligence? Maybe a war, involving Britain, was the only way to focus people's minds. It seemed to me that news had to be either deadly banal, or deadly serious. Nothing in the middle would do.

By the beginning of the second week, my watch-and-learn approach seemed to be paying off and I had made some steps towards becoming one of the team. Having some of my ideas accepted felt like quite a victory and increasingly, the editor began to leave my copy pretty much as it was, only inserting a couple of words here and there. Either I was getting the hang of news writing, or I was getting the hang of keeping my editor happy. But mostly I had got the hang of conforming to the simple ideas, the repetitive vocabulary and the formulaic writing style that most news providers expected of their journalists.

The author is a journalist, with degrees in Arabic and German, Middle Eastern Studies and Journalism. Her experience includes working for the BBC and Bloomberg TV.