A reminder of what true journalism is all about

Whenever an application form asks for my occupation, I’m always proud to write ‘journalist’. I could use ‘PR Consultant’ or ‘Company Director’ but ‘journalist’ is what I’m most comfortable with.

Although good writing is at the core of what we do here at team de Winter - www.thinkdewinter.co.uk - and all of us write content of one kind or another on a daily basis on behalf of our clients - I admit that I haven’t actually been commissioned to write anything for any journal of any kind for more than thirty years. I did plenty of that over more than a decade as a reporter on a series of Weekly newspapers, and enjoyed every minute. Journalism is where my heart is.

Reporting is a function. It involves writing with style, purpose and accuracy for newspapers or magazines, or preparing news to be broadcast on radio or television. And what a rewarding role it is.

The greatest thrill during my newspaper days was watching people on the bus or in a café reading what I had written. That feeling of connecting with people, touching them through the written word is indescribable.

For me, journalism is something far more subtle. To be a great journalist requires values, masses of integrity and the ability to tell right from wrong.

Working in a busy newsroom with proper journalists has been a highlight of my working life. ‘Proper’? Well, people with a genuine love of the English language and an innate ability to pick the right word and put it in the right place to create impact or illicit the required response from the reader, be it joy, anger or wonder.

They are people who use words as a force for good, have a real concern for their fellow men and a need, more than a desire to connect with them.

To my mind proper journalists are driven to make a difference through their writing, to right wrongs, teach and inform and, in some small way, improve the quality of life for the ‘man on the street’. At their best, they have the ability to touch souls.

You can add passion, resilience and a generous helping of courage to the mix. It’s a massive thrill to work amongst kindred spirits but working with journalists takes that to a whole new level. 

I’ve worked with people who have embodied and displayed the best of these qualities and it’s been particularly depressing these last few weeks to see the spotlight focused so sharply on the worst of them. Devoid of any integrity, they have betrayed their duty to protect and educate their fellow man in favour of figures and personal power. Instead of exposing malpractice, they have engaged in it with enthusiasm.

For those who may be starting out in the business, or forging their own reputations in journalism, I’ve pulled out of my wallet, where it has been kept for over three decades, a tattered newspaper cutting that sums it up perfectly.

The late John Gordon wrote these words in the diary of a struggling 22-year-old journalist in 1949. They were subsequently published in a national newspaper in the ‘70s.

‘Gold amongst the rubble’

‘Great reporters are born, not made. They have minds that are acutely sensitive to what interests most other men and women. They are tireless in their digging out of facts. They have an uncanny sense of the one little gleam of gold in a heap of rubble. And they are as accurate as a plumb line.

Many of the best of them cannot write. But when they can they are treasures beyond price.

The really great journalist is always first a reporter. If to reporting he can add the rarest gift of all – the power to crusade, to make articulate what is in the minds of millions of his fellow men, with such vitality that he merges their thoughts together and so creates what is called ‘public opinion’ – then he becomes a dazzling star in the sky.

If he uses that power to change life for the greater good of his fellow men, he in time joins the immortals and deserves his place among them.’

 See de Winter's latest blog: http://www.thinkdewinter.co.uk/news-and-views/look-back-in-wonder.aspx

The loss of a nation’s heritage

Without ever having given it any detailed thought, I assumed that the process of finding and exploring – or should that be ransacking? – the tombs of the Pharaohs and their entourages in Egypt had all but been exhausted, and that the unearthing and subsequent display of the magnificent Tutenkhamun artifacts had been the pinnacle of well over a century of formal digging.

Not so, it would seem. I had the honour of being invited last week to a regular dinner of well-retired members of various branches of the seafaring fraternity at the naval shore base, HMS Eaglet in Liverpool.

Having served for some years in the Naval Reserves, an opportunity to share lunch with like-minded people and all the traditions that go with such an event was a rare treat.

It’s nearly always the case at such events that you meet real characters, members of the ‘old school’ of living and doing things the like of which I doubt we’ll see again.

I had the privilege of sitting next to one such character, the spritely Michael, a quiet, unassuming ex-Naval man now well into his retirement who is a keen and very experienced Egyptologist living in Cairo and with his finger firmly on the pulse of all things do to with exploration of the tombs of the grand and not-so-grand!

During a fascinating discussion he explained that only a tenth of the tombs that actually exist have so far been unearthed, despite an unrelenting process of intense exploration that has continued uninterrupted for well over a century and a half!

It was shocking to hear his revelations of how many of the tombs that have taken decades to locate as part of ‘official’ explorations are often found to have been ransacked years before, their treasures systematically removed and even entire sections of walls bearing ancient graphics and art cut away and disposed off by unscrupulous people, perhaps forced by poverty, and sold to even more unscrupulous collectors.

It seems that these tombs often appear at first inspection to be sealed and undisturbed and yet once entered they reveal a depressing scene of theft and wanton vandalism.

Egypt has been robbed of so much of its heritage. The grim fact that mummies were dug up and made into medicine until the 18th century (the medieval doctors of Alexandria in Egypt prescribed powdered mummy as a kind of wonder drug) can’t account the full extent of what is a real cultural tragedy.

Michael explained that the pillage continues to this day. Tombs are discovered on a regular basis but it appears that their priceless contents are removed and find their way on to the black market, sold and exported for a fraction of their monetary and historical value without ever being officially catalogued.

Those in overall charge appear unable to address this. How immensely heartbreaking and frustrating it must be for the proud people of Egypt to know that their heritage is being plundered on a daily basis and lost to future generations, thanks to the unscrupulous few.