I'm thinking of a career in Journalism, and this stuff is very interesting.

(In unrelated questions, would you say that someone who owned a silica mine in South Africa would be well off?)

"Try to steel yourself for the prospect that some Kevlar-vested prick with an automatic rifle might try to take your cat away."

Try is the operative word here. They'll get my cat when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Remember, an armed American is an American who gets to keep his cat.

HOW I USED MY PSYCHOSIS AND PARANOIA TO MAKE MONEY IN MY SPARE TIME

AND YOU CAN TOO

or

Spinning the media for your own amusement and profit until it all becomes too much like work.

This should really be in the "Write something now" section, but because I think New Orleans was the beginning of a genuinely new phase of reported life on the planet, and this seems to interest people, and because my e-mail's crashed so I can't do any work, and I've already negotiated a discount at the sunset cafe and don't want to waste it...

Once upon a time, there was a man who was the world's greatest dragon slayer. There wasn't anything he didn't know about killing dragons. Then someone quietly pointed out to him that there weren't any dragons to kill any more. He was quite depressed for a while, wondering what to do. Then he had a bright idea. He started teaching people how to kill dragons.

I'm setting up a business to teach report writing and media skills to businesspeople, because I've had to correct so much of their shit (I was a temp for five years -- serious stuff, typing, tea and filing). Now I've been sub-editing businessmen writing opinion columns on why oil is expensive, and thinking -- someone should REALLY teach these people to write. There's nothing like staring at a quote box on a screen, looking for a quote in an article, and going from one end to the other and finding nothing has been said.

So I thought, the e-mail being down and all, I would trial some of my material on you. Because I think it would be a fabulous idea for a few other crazies to get into the game. I'm just a little jaded, see. Don't mind me.

I just want to talk about sub-editing at newspapers now. Forget about writing -- that's for people with names. This is the behind-the-scenes stuff, where you get all the blame and none of the credit. It's a really good deal. I just want to outline the requirements for the job.

If you aren't aware: sub-editors in newspapers cut the stories to fit the box on the page (funny how the stories always seem to fit when you read the paper) and put a headline there. I could never work out (when I was a little kid) how stories always came with a headline that somehow said what the story was about. I asked my mom (I really did) -- Mom, where do headlines come from? And she said -- there are PEOPLE who WRITE them.

It was a great revelation to me at the time.

Now, research has proved that 85 percent of what people remember of a newspaper story is -- the headline. So in fact, truth be told, you ARE writing the story.

And it's a real kick, a few hours after you wrote a headline, to see it in huge letters all over town. It's a kind of instant gratification that very few writers get. And you get to skew the language of the day in any direction you see fit.

Question: If history is written by the winners; and:

If journalism is a first draft of history;
then:

Why the fuck are we all such losers?

Sorry, old jaded sub-editor speaking here.

So I just want to outline the requirements for the job. See if your profile fits, and you too can insult the assholes of your choice with cunning headlines. And think for one instant: who has the more power: he who has the last word, or he who decides WHO has the last word?

JOB REQUIREMENTS

1. You must have an absolutely total no-shit grasp of the written language and its idiom. No nonsense. Its and it's, who and whom, three years' imprisonment or three years in prison: you must be in no doubt at all. There are huge arguments of style, and I have seen pitched wars fought over years about a single hyphen. But the basics must be at your command.

2. You must have an absolutely solid working knowledge of ALL the assholes -- all the politicans, their names and titles, all the organisations, all the issues of the day. (You know you're working for a business publication when a writer refers to the UN Securities Council). The day changes, and it's always shifting, and assholes come and go (except of course Alan Greenspan) but you just have to know. And people have real funny names. And get real funny if you spell them wrong. It's actually great fun to spell names right. I've seen people go to great lengths to hide a newspaper that spelled their name exactly right.

3. You must have absolute command of machines and backing up and saving and working under pressure and not panicking when the machine crashes on deadline -- because you SAVED. When I was temping, I used to say: Jesus saves, and the temp saves. Same for subs.

That is just all absolutely basic. Then, you need the following personality traits (to be polite, these are all major disorders -- but the whole point is to turn your disorder into a hobby you can play for fun and profit, after all):

1. Obsessive compulsive. This is essential. Do you remember the Dilbert where Ann L. Retentive sees a typo, and faints? Is she dead? No, she's in a comma. You will only survive if you are COMPLETELY obsessive about full stops, colons, spaces, m dashes and n dashes, and non-breaking spaces, and that's all long before you even start looking at the WORDS.

2. Schizophrenia. I know this is a really tricky disease to define, but when you move from one publication to another -- sometimes on the same day -- you have to become a completely different person on the spot. You have to dissociate yourself utterly from the person you were sitting at the next desk. If you freelance (as I do) then schizophrenia or multiple-personality disorder is a way of life. I am the person who is most not other people -- they always say to me at the office, gosh, you're not Janet, are you. But that's just me.

3. Psychotic. This is a tricky one. I believe all writing for a mass audience is a kind of controlled psychosis, but you have to remember when you're writing a caption for a multiple family murder, how many different people will be reading all the gory bits, including surviving family members. You have to put yourself in their shoes, and try imagine ALL the different kinds of reactions people will have. To do this, you need to get right inside a story, blood and guts, and then step out again and put a caption kicker to it. An ordinary good imagination is not enough -- you don't have time. You have to go a little psychotic.

4. Paranoia. This is definitely compulsory where I've been working, because this place is still crawling with spooks of all kinds, in fact more so than ever before. You have to be aware that the media are being spun like a top by all kinds of people, and I could write a small book just giving the names of spooks with whom I've worked. And then there is the competition, and one phone call can wreck a scoop (although scoops are vastly overrated -- it's been said "Scoops are for journalists.")I've seen people fired virtually on the spot for sending one e-mail to a competitor near deadline.

5. Psychopathy, or "antisocial personality disorder". It's very difficult to do this job on a daily basis without insulating yourself from the ordinary sufferings of the world. Thus those funny jokes that come out after disasters are almost invariably spawned in newsrooms. Minutes after the news of Jack Kennedy's plane crashing into the sea, they were saying in the newsroom, well the movie's going to be called "Three Funerals and a Wedding". You don't have to overdo this, and I have a lot of trouble with some of it, but you need some kind of surgeon's mentality if you're going to survive the job unscathed.

George Orwell actually said it best. He said to be a writer you have to have an "infinite capacity for intellectual brutality". That's even more true for subs. You have to be able to hack ANYTHING down to size. Hemingway said something like an automatic foolproof bullshit detector was required -- that's standard also.

OTHER USEFUL SKILLS

You need to have a highly developed sixth sense, you just KNOW that there's something wrong with a story. The number of times I've saved newspapers from absolute disaster by just thinking -- I don't like this, I'm cutting it out -- is more than I can count.

Patience -- dealing with lunatics (ie writers) and then the other lunatics (the general public and politicians out there). But you have to know when to move, also. If a story looks funny, you phone the president and say listen bud, did you really say this? You are the final port of call.

You have to get used to cutting a story, writing a headline and a caption and a quote and a strapline and a subhead, and getting it all fitting, and then they junk the whole page because there's a new story, or they've decided to put in a full-page ad. You just go "Spike" and get on with the next story.

You also have to be extremely flexible -- going from an earthquake tsunami hurricane disaster to Ben Affleck's love life without missing a beat. (Sorry, not such a good example). You might think -- gosh, that's a stupid headline, and think of something much better. But remember, you have to come in every day, and write headlines for every story, no matter whether it's interesting or you're not in the mood. Someone was talking in another thread about writing under gunfire -- you are ALWAYS writing under gunfire, you can't always hear it, but when I was editing raw Robert Fisk reports from Baghdad, and seeing his grammar getting jumbled, you could hear the flak.

PROBLEMATIC TRAITS

1. Depression. This is a killer in the business, and anyone with any depressive qualities will rapidly find the news of the day sucking them into a black vortex from which there is no escape. Depression is the great killer in this business. If you have even the slightest disposition in this direction, being a sub will sink you, sooner or later. You have been warned.

2. Dangerous addictions of any kind. Subbing is a very strange job, done at odd hours (often at night for the next day's paper) and then you have to clear your head of all the clutter. I know subs who swear that cocaine is the only drug to sub by. Others go for heroin (we found a colleague dead in the toilet not so long ago). Traditionally, we drink ourselves to death. Personally -- seriously -- I recommend coffee. There was a sign in one of our newsrooms that read -- (with that French Revolution poster with the girl with a bloody dagger in hand) -- JUST GIVE ME THE COFFEE AND NO ONE GETS HURT.

I'm going to read this through once and post it, I've spent too much already. Any mistakes in my grammar, you will forgive. You're getting this for free, don't forget.

And my favourite quote on the subject: a well-known one, Douglas Adams of course:

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

crazy carlos
for whatever it's worth
reading your stuff is a lot of fun.
I find myself looking forward to them.

ditto here.

It's worth, believe me.

I forgot one crucial trait any sub-editor needs, which is a severe form of autism, where you have to shut out all the noise around you (and there's always a racket) while focusing on the screen. There's a name for it, it's called "the sub's ten-thousand-yard stare".

Look into my eyes, and believe.

Keep posting. You're facinating.

Yep - great post. Thank you.

Phew. Just in case you think I'm joking about any of this -- I had a conversation in the pool saloon last night. Highly intelligent young chap, highly involved in the diamond business, at the very sharpest end. Highly informed and very interesting on shady diamond dealings that get people killed. Last night I was talking about how one has to play this game, of what you let out (in terms of information) that keeps you safe, and what you keep behind, that also keeps you safe. You have to talk a bit, so they know you're not scared to talk, but you have to hold back, so they know if they hit you, there will be nasty surprises that will come out. They have to have a vested interest in seeing you alive.

Yes, he says, he knows the game. He then adds that by the way, he's been asked by National Intelligence to keep an eye on me.

Oh yes, I say. That's exactly the kind of little bit of information I'm talking about. And then I order a Guinness and we change the subject.

That's the third time someone's said this to me in a pub lately. I'm beginning to wonder what they're putting in the beer here.

And a more excellent 100th post on this forum I have not seen.

quote:

Originally posted by crazy carlos:
Oh yes, I say. That's exactly the kind of little bit of information I'm talking about. And then I order a Guinness and we change the subject.

Scary little reality you've got, Carlos.

Whoa.

I work at a university with a prestigious school of journalism. How I wish I could find way to let the students there, and the staffers on the award -winning student newspaper, read "HOW I USED MY PSYCHOSIS AND PARANOIA TO MAKE MONEY IN MY SPARE TIME".

...the little shits.

Yeah, well, let's keep it among us for now. It really is all a bit of a hairy reality. I'm not exaggerating. For the record, a really good friend and namesake of mine, Carlos Cardoso, a really brilliant journalist, was assassinated in Maputo, Mozambique, on November 22 (recognise the date?) 2000, for investigating a huge bank scam involving the government. I was on the desk when the news came through and I got the real chills. That was when I stopped writing, it was all getting a bit close.

Then a couple of years ago I decided to do a story on the mess in education here -- a hugely explosive subject. I started making some fairly heavy inquiries. This was when two other friends of mine, who I used to meet in a bar frequented by government heavies and intelligence types (I remember seeing our present Minister of Intelligence there one night) were seriously heavied by Intelligence. One (an extremely unstable journalist and the very last person I would earmark for a spying job) was approached and asked to spy on me. He came and told me about it instead. The other, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic poet, lovely guy except for when the voices in his head were telling him to "kill the white shit" (i.e. me) -- "don't listen to them tonight", I would say -- was heavily quizzed about me and was also told all sorts of things about himself to show they were watching him. Because of me. That was at least a good trick, it really freaked him out and I lost a good friend for quite a while, guess the voices in his head were telling him to avoid the white shit.

Ah, well. Again for the record, one of the other Carlos's big ideas was the Green Economy -- he really seriously wanted Africa to run on marijuana, for fuel and just about everything else. I always think when I see a little car with a body made of hemp panels chugging along with a sweet-smelling exhaust, Carlos's revolution will have happened. They wrote a book about him, I took great care to meet the author and tell him all about this side of Carlos. Needless to say, the Green Revolution never featured in the book (written by a highly doctrinaire British Marxist).

What can I say. It's all downhill from here.

Oh, and PS, the minister of education then started saying that people who were criticising education were "destabilising the country". I never wrote the story. Even crazy carlos can take a hint.

Keep posting and continue to take care.

This page has been great reading crazy carlos and yes, do take care.