Journalism for Women

Journalism for Women

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Title: Journalism for Women A Practical Guide
Author: E.A. Bennett
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8405] [Yes, we are more than one
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JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN ***

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Journalism for Women
A Practical Guide
By E.A. Bennett

Contents

The Secret Significance of Journalism Imperfections of the existing
Woman-Journalist The Roads towards Journalism The Aspirant Style
The Outside Contributor The Search for Copy The Art of
Corresponding with an Editor Notes on the Leading Types of Papers
"Woman's Sphere" in Journalism Conclusion

Journalism for Women
A Practical Guide
Chapter I
The Secret Significance of Journalism

For the majority of people the earth is a dull planet.
It is only a Stevenson who can say: "I never remember being bored;"
and one may fairly doubt whether even Stevenson uttered truth when he
made that extraordinary statement. None of us escapes boredom
entirely: some of us, indeed, are bored during the greater part of our
lives. The fact is unpalatable, but it is a fact. Each thinks that his
existence is surrounded and hemmed in by the Ordinary; that his
vocations and pastimes are utterly commonplace; his friends prosaic;
even his sorrows sordid. We are (a few will say) colour blind to the
rainbow tints of life, and we see everything grey, or perhaps blue. We
feel instinctively that if there is such a thing as romance, it contrives to
exhibit itself just where we are not. Often we go in search of it (as a
man will follow a fire-engine) to the Continent, to the Soudan, to the
East End, to the Divorce Court; but the chances are a hundred to one
against our finding it. The reason of our failure lies in our firm though
unacknowledged conviction that the events we have witnessed, the
persons we have known, are ipso facto less romantic, less diverting,
than certain other events which we happen not to have witnessed,
certain other persons whom we happen not to have known. And such is
indubitably the case; for romance, interest, dwell not in the thing seen,
but in the eye of the beholder. And so the earth is a dull planet--for the
majority.
Yet there are exceptions: the most numerous exceptions are lovers and
journalists. A lover is one who deludes himself; a journalist is one who
deludes himself and other people. The born journalist comes into the
world with the fixed notion that nothing under the sun is uninteresting.
He says: "I cannot pass along the street, or cut my finger, or marry, or
catch a cold or a fish, or go to church, or perform any act whatever,
without being impressed anew by the interestingness of mundane
phenomena, and without experiencing a desire to share this impression
with my fellow-creatures." His notions about the qualities of mundane
phenomena, are, as the majority knows too well, a pathetic, gigantic
fallacy, but to him they are real, and he is so possessed by them that he
must continually be striving to impart them to the public at large. If he

can compel the public, in spite of its instincts, to share his delusions
even partially, even for an hour, then he has reached success and he is
in the way to grow rich and happy.
* * * * *
We come to the secret significance of journalism:--
Life (says the public) is dull. But good newspapers are a report of life,
and good newspapers are not dull.
Therefore, journalism is an art: it is the art of lending to people and
events intrinsically dull an interest which does not properly belong to
them.
This is a profound truth.