Who or whom? In journalism, careful writing still wins the day
Whether you shoot video, produce radio or program a story for virtual reality, you still need to be able to write clearly and compellingly.
Imagine the annoyance of a hypothetical editor who finds a just-filed column hides this gem of a sentence: “Waiting for the bus to come, the rain poured down on Mary Wilcox, 42, who hadn’t seen home for days.”
Spot the dangling participle? The rain can’t wait for the bus, but Mary can. For our editor, the hour is late. The dog hasn’t been fed. And now a part of the article some cub reporter sent in needs to be rewritten.
Where did they go to school?, the slightly irked editor thinks. Hastily, she pounds out a reshaped sentence, checks the rest and sends the copy on its way.
If I learned one thing on a recent trip to media outlets in New York City, it’s that journalism is evolving. Virtual reality is pushing reporters into new frontiers. Staff writers must crank out social media fodder at break-neck speed. Journalism students are told to become proficient in videography, photography and multimedia. It’s all very exciting and innovative. And then there’s writing, which may get lost in the mix.
Now that last part, that just won’t do. In a very biased way, I would argue that writing should be top priority, because it is the foundation on which the rest of your reportage stands.
Journalism professor Damian Radcliffe alluded to this before: Even radio journalists need to be able to write clearly.
At Ethos Magazine, I want all my writers to know the difference between two words: “Who” and “whom”. It’s an old rule, but one that can elevate the distinction of your writing if you get it right.
A bit of a grammar digression: “Who” and “whom” are a pair, but they act differently in a sentence. “Who” is a subject, and it needs a verb. For example, let’s say you ask the question, “Who drove my car off the Willamette bridge?”
“Who” is the subject, “drove” the verb. Make sense? And in this sentence, the unlucky car is the direct object, because it gets driven. (We’ll not worry about the bridge for now.)
If you have a person that acts as the object in a sentence, then you use “whom,” not “who.” For example, “On whom did the rain fall at the bus stop?” The rain is the subject, fall is the verb, and the object recieving the action of the verb is poor Mary Wilcox, our patient heroine from the top of this post.
A few question-and-answer style examples before we move on:
-Q: “Whom did you call last night at 10 p.m.?” A: “Dominoes.”
-Q: “For whom does the bell toll?” A: “For thee.”
-Q: “Whom should we interview today” A: “How about the governor?”
(P.S: For a great extended primer on the two, head to this post by the Grammar Girl. P.P.S.: Another way to better your writing is to take a second language. Often native speakers can converse fluently without knowing thoroughly the rules of their language. That all changes when you dig into the grammar of a foreign tongue.)
The thing is, one of the only tools a journalist has is her reputation. This has to do with trust, yes, but it also has to do with how you comport yourself, both in person and on the page. The reader wants to know: Will you tell me a story? Will you excite me? Make me learn something new? Will you do so without too many typos or misspelling my aunt’s first name?
As reporters, we have to care about our words — and write with that care in mind.
Let me share a quick story. One summer day in Vienna, a friend and I decided to cover a protest breaking out at a city square, the famed Schwarzenbergplatz. President Vladimir Putin had come to town to talk oil with Austrian President Heinz Fisher. He visited the square during his trip.
Some were pleased with the Russian president’s coming, others weren’t.
My friend and I whipped around the scene, hearing from both sides. Afterward, I pitched the story to a local editor by email. He wrote back that he’d consider an op-ed on the topic. At the time, I wasn’t too familiar with the form of an op-ed — which I’ve since come to love — but I decided to send him one anyone.
Getting published is getting published, eh?
Here’s part of his reply (at least the part that has stuck with me most over the years):
“Sorry, we can’t run your piece… Some of the use of language is a little inept — you don’t seem to be an experienced writer, sorry.”
For a young writer, hearing that your writing is “a little inept” hurts. But it’s necessary — and reading through the old, sloppily written op-ed, I can’t help but agree with his assessment.
Over the years, I’ve looked back at that note, showing it to those close to me. It serves as a reminder that no one starts off a fantastic writer, as another journalist and I were talking about recently over the phone. You have to pound out word after word, article after article, treating the act of storytelling as your craft. As easy as it is to laugh at the term “wordsmith,” a term that seems very en vogue, I believe it carries some weight.
We are smiths of language, we writers. Each time we sit down at the desk is a chance to hone our storytelling process.
Here’s a last piece of famous advice: read ceaselessly. As many have said before, a good writer is a good reader. Right now, in preparation for a 10-week assignment in Detroit, I’m reading former New York Times reporter Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy. It’s a punchy, in-your-face account of a world weary journalist’s going back to the Rust Belt city that raised him.
When you read, take notes. See what narrative devices draw your attention; what turns of phrase make you stop mid-page. Develop a love of words, and it will shine in your prose, whomever you write for.
