Good Journalism Should Always Be Kindly, Not Malicious
To begin this blog post, let me take the words that were once said in playful kindliness by Charles the Second: “Good jests ought to bite like lambs, not dogs; they should cut, not wound.”
I invite anyone interested in doing journalism today to ponder deeply on the thought, and when they have a sanctum, to carve the words in oak below the chimney piece.
The best of journalism is always kindly. The worst and the cheapest is malicious. The one is arduous and the other facile. But, like the facile descent of Avernus, it leads only to destruction.
An online blog is under very peculiar temptations to indulge in the cheaper kinds of journalism. In the first place, its writers and its readers are for the most part in that early and exuberant stage of life in which the boisterous assertion of one’s own individuality is still only inadequately tempered by consideration for the feelings of others.
The best of journalism is always kindly. The worst and the cheapest is malicious.
In the second place, it finds itself in an environment that lends itself to the purposes of easy ridicule. The Silicon Valley billionaire, for example, stands ready as its victim.
The Silicon Valley billionaire is a queer creature; of a type inviting the laughter of the unwise. His eye is turned in. He sees little of externals and values them hardly at all. Hence in point of costume and appearance he becomes an easy mark.
He wears a muffler in April, not having noticed that the winter has gone by! He will put on a white felt hat without observing that it is the only one in town; and he may be seen with muffetees upon his wrists fifty years after the fashion of wearing them has passed away.
I can myself recall an early employee at Facebook who appeared daily during the summer in a torn Reddit sweatshirt, cargo shorts and flip flops, fit for a child to wear at the seaside. That man’s own impression of his costume was that it was a somewhat sportive and debonair combination, such as any man of taste might assume under the more torrid signs of the Zodiac.
As with dress, so with manner. The Silicon Valley billionaire easily falls into little ways and mannerisms of his own. In the deference of the startup accelerator and TechCrunch Disrupt, they pass unchallenged and uncorrected. With the passage of the years they wear into his mind like ruts.
When I was being built at Pay Pal three years ago, one of our founders had said the words “Guys, I think this is going to be really huge” at the commencement of such innumerable sentences that the words had been hung by a joker across one of the walls of the office. Yet the good man had never seen them. Coming always into the office in the same way, he was still able after three years to use the words “Guys, I think this is going to be really huge” as a new and striking mode of thought.
The applause which always greeted the phrase he attributed to our proper appreciation of the resounding period that had just been closed. He always bowed slightly at our applause and flushed a little. Having fun over a thing of that sort is as easy as killing a bird on the nest, and quite as cruel.
Can it be wondered, then, that every journalist that sets out to be new or interesting turns loose upon such people?
They fasten upon their obvious idiosyncrasies. The put them in the pillory. They ridicule their speech. They lay bare in cruel print and mimic dialogue the little failings hitherto unconscious and unknown. And for the sake of a cheap and transitory laughter they often leave a wound that rankles for a lifetime.
My young friends, who are just beginning their careers in online journalism, pause and beware.
For the essential thing is that such cheap forms of journalism are not worth while.
Even from the low plane of editorial advantages they are poor “copy.” The appeal is too narrow. The amusement is too restricted; and the after taste too bitter.
If the contents of an online blog are nothing more than jokes upon the foibles of Silicon Valley billionaires, it is not worth publishing.
Such matter had better be set forth upon a direct message circulated surreptitiously round media Twitter.
Text adapted by algorithm from Stephen Leacock’s ‘Sermon on Humour’
Twitter is a cesspool of journalism and name-calling. Please follow us on Facebook instead.
