The Journalist Defined

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 321 Report by A. M. 0. S.

A prize of six gidneas was offered for a definition of 'journalist' as it might be or might have been described by any one of the following : Bernard Shaw, Godfrey Winn, Beachcomber, Ogden Nash, C. A. Lejeune, J. L. Garvin, Alistair Cooke, Winston Churchill, or any well-known (named) journalist.

'THE Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a journalist as 'one whose business is to edit or write for a public journal'; but broadly true as that is, it was not the kind of definition I expected or (thank goodness) got from this competition. No entrant was disqualified because he ignored lexico- graphical limitations. Indeed, some of the most irrelevant were the most amusing. Fully two-thirds of the entries concentrated on Shaw or Ogden Nash. A tremendous amount of ingenuity, in the matter of good and bad rhyming was expended on the Nashes, without, I thought, producing much that would have satisfied Nash, even in his off-moments. The Shaws, too, were disappointing. Few entrants understood that Shaw, in spite of the ruthless contempt of his description of the journalist in The Doctor's Dilemma, always regarded him- self first and foremost as a journalist, declaring more than once that only what was journalism in his works would survive. Mr. Findlay P. Murdoch came nearest winning with his Shaw, but he spoilt his entry by ignoring this fact. There were several good Beachcombers ('A journalist is a hack on the sins.'-G. J. Blundell), one or two soulful Godfrey Winns, and a not very convincing sprinkling of Alistair Cookes.

I recommend Nancy Gunter and J_Aitken for prizes of two guineas each, Xico for one guinea, and John A. S. MacDonald and J. R. Till for half a guinea each.

PRIZES

(NANCY GUNTER)

BEACHCOMBER

Determined to secure a prize in this com- petition, I called on my lifelong friend and patroness Lady Gawdstreuth who is known to harbour a tame journalist in a small potting- shed in her grounds. 'There are journalists at the bottom of my garden,' she shrieked play- fully when asked for a definition of the species; `So tell the Spectator that the dear little things are as happy as the day is long. given a pen and a few facts to distort.' When pressed for a closer definition she turned a somersault and chirped, 'Well, 1 call mine "My Spotted Newshound."

(J. AITKEN) SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

In our time it would, be truer to say of journalists than of poets that they are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,' and that it would be 'better to have a bad epitaph than their ill report while we live.' They can 'see the world in a grain of sand,' and describe it so that ordinary men can see it too, and, absorbed in watching that microcosm, they are not perplexed by the whence, whither and wherefore of the universe.

(xico)

OGDEN NASH The man who begiifs, with youthful stamina, 'By covering all local activities for the. Chowbent Examiner,

Till eventually, in a Bangkok cable, Is describing Asian politics as 'extremely able,' Or telling us exactly why Popovsky was liquidated, (When we could have got just as authoritative an opinion on the subject from the very last chick we dated).

(JOHN A. S. MACDONALD) ALISTAIR COOKE A man in a shabby raincoat, munching ,a midnight hamburger, his 'eyes shut so that he can better see a passage from Lear that has troubled him all day; a fat woman, unfashion- able, climbing the Capitol steps like an office

cleaner and caring not a damn because has a Ph.D. and a powerful column; a * W0,"

hal man, thirty stories up, whose ail; unbelievable but who would work for n 0 because he believes in it: in a thousand guise sometimes fine and often coarse, but ah‘; the competent technician : the Ameo' journalist.

(J. R. TILL) GODFREY WINN

A terribly real person who bares his 11 daily or weekly for You.

COMMENDED

(A. MACDONALD) BERNARD SHAW A writer to popular journals; sometiino formed, but seldom inspired; better fitn:j. tickle the palate than stimulate the On ' writer of transient and undistinguished PI not infrequently grammatically correct, 110,,i the most part devoid of enduring floa'l! one who writes for today rather than for morrow; prolific raker than precise; skl, ficial rather than exhausive; robust rather ill restrained; who disports' himself in the shill -the deeps being beyond him.

(NAN WISHART) BEACHCOMBER

He wasteth paper Right and Left But words he doth not waste, For if his words he writeth wrong He eateth them in haste.