From the ArcaMax Publishing, Kathleen Parker Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/kathleenparker/s-644081-546343
WASHINGTON -- The so-called "newsroom brawl" between an editor and a
writer at The Washington Post recently has been a fine distraction for
the health-care-weary.
The two men apparently came to blows over, of all things, words. Not
ad hominems necessarily, or at least not exclusively, but words as in
the quality of writing. So began the argument that led to a punch
being thrown.
Be still my fibrillating heart.
The pugilist was one Henry Allen, a renowned writer and an editor with
the Style section. On the other end of Allen's fist was Style writer
Manuel Roig-Franzia, co-author of a "charticle" (an appetizer-sized
combination of words, images and graphics) that Allen called the
second-worst story he'd seen in 43 years.
Roig-Franzia responded by suggesting that Allen not be such a
"(bleep)." Allen, 68 and just a few weeks from retirement, lunged.
Bystanders to the excitement, including Executive Editor Marcus
Brauchli, intervened -- and the Earth continued to spin on its axis in
the customary fashion.
No harm, no foul, right? Not quite.
Much harrumphing has ensued. Opinions veer between "We can't have that
sort of thing" to "Was that great, or what?" Moi? I feel like Miss
Rosie Sayer in "The African Queen," reluctantly weak-kneed in the
presence of the rough-hewn Charlie Allnut.
In an online chat, the Post's Gene Weingarten cheered the passion,
long missing from America's bean-counter newsrooms. Reporters of a
certain age remember when newsrooms bristled with heat amid the search
for light. Fights may have been infrequent, but tempers often flared
as deadlines loomed and reporters sweated over just the right word,
usually under the baleful eye of an editor whose own deadline was
bearing down.
The newsroom wasn't just a workplace. It was a rendezvous point for
renegades from the ordered life who, nevertheless, were compelled to
perform under fire. To create on demand is a contradictory skill. To
do so artfully is not usually a function of charm.
Thus, David Von Drehle, a former Post editor and writer (now at Time),
lamented the decision that Allen not return to the building, calling
him "the most dazzling and original talent I've seen in 30-plus years
in the journalism business."
"Instead of being banned from the building, Henry should have a statue
in the lobby," he told the Washington City Paper.
While some staffers have been placing bets on what might have been the
worst story ever to cross Allen's desk, others have tried to
discover the deeper meaning of the fracas. Among the theories advanced
is that Allen was reacting to New Media's advancing siege.
"What we are watching is a whole profession losing its swagger," wrote
Natalie Hopkinson on The Root, a Web site hosted by the Post.
Piffle.
Now, there's a word unlikely to have tumbled from the fingertips of
Henry Allen. Or those of Matt Labash, an ardent admirer of Allen's
and, himself, the sort of muscular writer who fashions sentences you
want to read aloud. The thought that this smallish eruption portends
or remarks on the end of journalism-as-we-know-it was enough to prompt
Labash to an e-mail rant, which more or less ranks with having Bruce
Springsteen call you up to sing "Happy Birthday."
"He's the best writer by a factor of five that the Style section's
ever seen," wrote Labash. "The problem with newspapers is there was
never enough Henry Allens to go around, which the Internet only serves
to prove daily."
Maybe, as with all things lately, we're overanalyzing what amounted to
a scuffle between two men under the influence of testosterone. Alex
Jones, longtime media critic and head of Harvard's Shorenstein Center
on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, distilled the event to its
plainer truth:
"Maybe it's because I'm from the South, but if you call me a
'(bleep),' I'm going to take a shot at you unless I know I'll get the
crap kicked out of me ... and maybe even then."
Which is to say that Allen was defending his honor, an act so
unfamiliar in today's emasculated newsrooms that we hardly recognize
it. No one would insist that fisticuffs are an appropriate route to
resolution (harrumph, harrumph), but it is sublimely reassuring that
such a passion for wordsmithing survives in a twittering, talking-head
world.
With appropriate concern for Roig-Franzia's own bruised honor, it is
still possible to cheer Allen's spirit. As Miss Rosie might put it:
"Mr. Allen, you're the bravest man that ever lived. You're just
overdue, that's all."
========
Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is
kathleenparker(at)washpost.com