Media Matters Stephen Glover
Americans should like our shorter, sharper, more readable articles
Many proud British companies have expanded into the United States amid much hoop-la, only to retreat a few years later with a bloody nose. Will the growing number of British publications striving to win a foothold across the pond be any more successful?
The Economist has long been required reading for American businessmen who take themselves seriously, and it sells about four times as many copies in the Land of the Free as it does in Blighty. Being slightly pompous, portentous and humourless – as well as dependable and authoritative – it is really a sort of honorary American publication.
More quintessentially British in character is the Spectator – witty and elegant, but not exactly famed for the thoroughness of its research. The magazine launched a US website in March, which, if successful, could lead to an American print edition. Its publishers say it will not be fanatically anti-trump, which could be a selling point in a land where most intelligent publications – foremost among them the New York Times – are convulsed with hatred for the rough-hewn President. Meanwhile the Catholic Herald, admittedly not the mightiest of beasts, also plans to instruct and entertain Uncle Sam, and will launch in the autumn.
Several British newspaper websites have already made an impact in the United States much greater than that of American newspaper websites in this country. The racy Mail Online, which is the most-read English-language online newspaper in the world, gives the New York Times website a run for its money, in terms of the size of its audience, on that newspaper’s home turf. The Guardian is among the four or five most-read online newspapers in America, and even the plucky little Independent is making useful strides with its website in the US.
Something is plainly going on. British journalism has long been more vital, succinct and generally readable than its American counterpart. New technology enables it to appeal to US audiences in a way that was difficult, if not impossible, in the past. I don’t at all deny that upmarket American journalism has its virtues, but these can also be its vices. Highfalutin publications tend to be more authoritative and more ponderous than British ones. More prolix, too.
Our late editor, Alexander Chancellor, used to tell the possibly apocryphal story of an American front-page sports piece about a football match which was so long-winded that it didn’t divulge the score until page eight. Our present editor, Harry Mount, says that, when he was a young journalist in New York, he really did read a front-page skiing story in the
New York Times which didn’t tell readers who had won the race until after the turn.
I admit that long articles sometimes work. The journalist Peter Mckay swears that a series of mammoth pieces, years ago in the New Yorker, about hydroelectric power in California, was absolutely irresistible. I don’t suppose many readers were inclined to urge John Updike to hurry along when, three or four decades ago, he graced the pages of the same magazine with essays running to many thousands of words. But lesser writers try our patience when they churn through a thousand words in setting the scene before finally getting to something resembling a point.
Perhaps the high citadel of prolixity is the New York Review of Books. British journalists usually revere it because it pays enormously better than any British literary magazine, or indeed any publication I can think of – five dollars a word, if one historian acquaintance who is an occasional contributor is to be believed.
Yet this largesse may be the nub of the problem in this and other well-heeled American publications. Samuel Humdinger III, professor of ethical organics at Harvard or Stanford, has a financial interest in spinning out his animadversions at inordinate length.
The NYRB has just acquired a new editor in Ian Buruma to succeed the late Robert B Silvers, who had been with the highly successful magazine since its founding in 1963. There are already encouraging signs that the Anglo-dutch Buruma, who had a spell in his younger days as the foreign editor of the Spectator, may be freer in his use of the blue pencil than his predecessor.
Will British publications prosper in America? I don’t doubt that there is a market for their jollier, and often better written, brand of journalism. One problem may be that they lack the huge resources their wealthy US counterparts enjoy, blessed as they are with larger markets – though this obviously isn’t true of the Economist and Mail Online. But there must surely be some niches to be filled.
Speaking of which, when will The Oldie (which already has a few devoted American subscribers) officially move stateside? I doubt it would have many, if any, rivals there. A few of our sterner and more humourless transatlantic cousins might jib at the name, but I am confident that it would be embraced by discerning readers.