A Wanderer Anecdote

“It’s too easy for theological writers to sling around Abstractions with Capital Letters, as if with each stroke of the pen they’re tapping into Plato’s realm of changeless, ineffable Forms. Or at least that they’re writing in German, where all nouns start with caps.” So begins John Zmirak, who tells a delightful story about one of America’s premier Catholic newspapers.

“A friend of mine used to write weekly for the estimable investigatory journal The Wanderer. Founded by German-Catholic immigrants, it was published auf Deutsch well into the twentieth century. As my friend recalled, ‘The editors were, I think, waiting for the rest of the country to catch up with them. At last they admitted that this was unlikely, and agreed to translate the paper. But they kept on as their typesetter someone named Uncle Otto, who for years insisted on capitalizing every noun.’”

The Mitre

I’ve uploaded the last eleven issues of The Mitre — “the quality student newspaper at the University of St Andrews” — before its demise after the Midsummer’s Day issue of 2005. The old Mitre website can be found here.

Il degrado della lingua italiana

The French are always the one’s worrying about the revolting infiltration of English upon their beautiful and august language — and rightly so — but in my experience it is the Italians who should be worrying. One need only look at their newspapers to see the wretched expansion of English into one of the most beautiful languages of Europe, and indeed the world. Carla Bruni is “la first lady”? What’s wrong with “prima signora” or some other such equivalent. (more…)

Homage to Jean Seberg

One of the earnest stalwarts of the blog was wandering around the Metropolitan recently when he came upon this curious “multi-media art work” by Barbara Bloom entitled Homage to Seberg. Bloom is a photographer, designer, and “installation artist” who was the subject of her own show at the International Center of Photography last year. This work was created in 1981 and forms part of the temporary exhibition “The Pictures Generation” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The installation includes a copy of the Herald Tribune, the newspaper sold by Jean Seberg’s character in the 1960 Godard film À bout de souffle, resting one of the butterfly chairs so popular during the 1960s. Readers will remember Jean Seberg & the Trib from our post on the continued decline of the International Herald Tribune and the follow-up from the Guardian‘s media blog.

What I didn’t know was that Ms. Seberg was American, Iowa-born, and a supporter of the Black Panthers. Sadly, she died in Paris in 1979 of an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol in an incident the French authorities ruled a probable suicide. (more…)

A new look for Argentina’s Herald

The Buenos Aires Herald is one of those newspapers that, by the grace of God, simply must continue existing no matter what horrors befall the newspaper industry as a whole. Finding up-to-date information on Argentina, in English, can be exceptionally frustrating and I had the Sunday version of the paper sent to me in New York every week; perfect reading for the train ride into work. Martin Gambarotta’s “Politics & Labour” column has to be one of the most informative and well-written political columns in any English-speaking newspaper. I also enjoyed the paid announcements section, informing readers of golf tournaments in aid of the Hospital Británico, meetings of the British-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, and when the next convocation of the South America Piping Association would be held. That said, when the Herald started denominating their subscription fee in dollars instead of pesos, I had to call it quits — though very reluctantly.

All the time while perusing the newspaper, however, I kept thinking “This could be better…”. Readers know how design-obsessed I am, especially when it comes to newspapers, and the Buenos Aires Herald would be such a better newspaper if they just tweaked a few things: a more judicious font choice, standardized white-spaces between columns, a few meliorations here and there. But now they’ve gone and redesigned the thing — without seeking the input of this devoted fan! — and they’ve got it all wrong. (more…)

The Tele-tab

The Daily Telegraph prides itself on being Britain’s top-selling quality daily newspaper, but the dear old Telly has being playing tabloid of late. Compare this 2004 front page (left) to one of just a few days ago (right).

The point of a headline in a quality newspaper should be to inform the reader of what the article is about, as well as to impart information quickly to those who are scanning the page. “Payback time” the Telegraph boldy asserts, but what on earth does that tell us? Nothing; we have to go to the subheadline to find out “Cameron orders Tories to refund excessive expenses; Hazel Blears to meet £13,332 tax bill on second home”.

There is an art in creating a headline that is both punchy and informative without being vulgar, but the Telegraph seems to have abandoned this art — for now, at least.

De Volkskrant

A FAVOURITE POSTER of mine combines a number of the things I love: newspapers, architecture, and the Netherlands. Arthur Goldsteen designed this handsome poster to advertise the daily newspaper De Volkskrant in 1950.

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Fake Newspapers: “Bright Young Things”

When it comes to newspapers, the visual element is all-important to an extent that shockingly few in the powerful parts of the industry comprehend. In the county of Westchester — my home turf — there is a monopoly when it comes to the newspaper as a means of local information delivery, and that monopoly belongs to the Gannett chain. Gannett newspapers are among the ugliest in the country, but then most American newspapers are abominations when it comes to design. The glory days of newspapers were, of course, the 1920s & 30s, and Stephen Fry’s film “Bright Young Things” — a rejigged dramatisation of Waugh’s Vile Bodies — highlights, as many Waughvian tales do, newspapers as a central plot instrument.

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IHT Follow-up

Writing about the latest changes over at the International Herald Tribune, the Guardian‘s media blog “Organgrinder” linked to our “remarkably comprehensive” post covering the subject in depth. I’m slightly embarrassed to say I’ve never seen any of Jean-Luc Godard’s films, something I will have to rectify through the DVD collection at the French Institute’s Haskell Library when I’m back in New York.

Meanwhile, Erik Zenhausern, the IHT’s former Operations Director for the Americas, corrects some errors on my part and gives us an inside look at NYT-IHT operations [boldface mine]:

The Continued Decline & Fall of the International Herald Tribune

The New York Times ‘tightens the leash’, shutting IHT website and redesigning newspaper as Times-lite; Herald-Trib loyalists cry foul

THE SAD DECLINE of one of the newspaper world’s most historic titles is continuing as the entire industry faces the challenges of the twenty-first century. The International Herald Tribune recently suffered a host of changes on the order of its proprietor, the New York Times, that have continued to assault the Paris-based newspaper’s individual identity. The paper’s website, iht.com, has been shut down and now redirects to a new portal on the New York Times‘s website, nytimes.com. Non-U.S. internet viewers are now automatically sent to the new portal — global.nytimes.com — upon accessing the Times website as well, but can switch to the U.S. edition at the click of a button. The rationalization for the move is centered on the New York Times Company’s attempts to boost online advertising revenue as print advertising and sales figures tumble. Furthermore, the actual print version of the Herald-Tribune has been redesigned, spurning the paper’s long design identity to make it look like a more light-weight version of the New York Times.

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From the provinces to power

What a change eighty years makes! What was once filed under “English Provincial Press” is now the voice, mouthpiece, and all-but-official organ of the British establishment.

Un soupçon de couleur

These two numbers of the Gaullist newspaper Le Rassemblement show what even a little dose of colour can do for a journal printed in black-and-white. The lack of additional colour was due to economical, not to mention technological, restraints, but we have now gotten well used to our newspapers being printed in a full array of colour. Yes, even the FAZ.

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Letter to the Editor

I only write letters to the editors of publications very rarely, but the Catholic Herald was decent enough to publish a missive I sent defending Franco as the lead Letter to the Editor in this week’s edition. Readers of the Times Literary Supplement will recall seeing a brief note from me on the subject of Wodehouse & banking published in that weekly’s letters page a few months ago.

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How bad journalism infects religion reporting

Tom Kington & Jamie Doward of The Observer lead the way

“Pope stirs up Jewish fury over bishop: The Vatican is reinstating a British priest who denies millions died at the hands of the Nazis. … Tension between the Vatican and Jewish groups looked set to explode yesterday after Pope Benedict XVI rehabilitated a British bishop who has claimed no Jews died in gas chambers during the second world war.”

Or rather, not. All the Holy Father has done is lift Bishop Williamson’s excommunication. Bishop Williamson’s excommunication had nothing to do with his holocaust denial, but rather with his willful disobedience to authority. Thus the lifting of his excommunication is in no way a “rehabilitation”, nor an endorsement of his dodgy views on history, but merely to do with the offense or state which brought about excommunication.

For some reason, this kind of misleading disinformation (whether out of malicious intent or just not being very good at one’s job) infects religion reporting more than any other field in the British media. You would think people would study or learn about the institutions they report about, but that no longer seems a requirement of the job as it presumably once was. Go figure.

The Pester Lloyd

The Hungarian capital’s German-language newspaper has been “independent, pluralistic, steeped in tradition” since 1854

The fall of the Iron Curtain nearly twenty years ago after a half-century of Communist domination in Eastern Europe afforded an opportunity to revive many of the traditions and institutions which — while they had survived monarchy, republicanism, and fascism — were annihilated by the all-consuming Red totalitarianism. One such institution that has risen from the ashes is Hungary’s once-revered German-language newspaper, the Pester Lloyd.

First appearing in 1854, when Buda and Pest were still two cities flanking the banks of the Danube, the Pester Lloyd was the leading German journal in Hungary. Printed daily with morning and evening editions, the “Pester” in the paper’s name refers to Pest, while “Lloyd” is in imitation of Lloyd’s List (the London shipping & commercial newspaper founded in 1692 by the eponymous properitor of Lloyd’s Coffee Shop and still going strong today). The paper first gained prominence under the editorial leadership of Dr. Miksa (Max) Falk, who had famously tutored the Empress Elisabeth in Hungarian and instilled in the consort a particular love for the Hungarian kingdom.

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NRC, among others, gets it right

The Netherlands’ premier broadsheet has gone partly English online

The moderate liberal Dutch broadsheet NRC Handelsblad is the latest of a series of European periodicals looking for a more international readership by translating part of their content into English for distribution on the world wide web. “NRC International” is partnered with the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, itself a pioneer in featuring English content in an “international” section of its website. Aside from NRC and Der Spiegel, other news outlets now featuring web-only English-language content are Germany’s Die Welt and Hungary’s Heti Világgazdaság, while Eurozine features translated and original content from a broad spectrum of continental reviews and journals. Sadly, Sign and Sight recently had to reduce their “From the Feuilletons” — looking at the culture pages of German-language newspapers — from a daily to a weekly feature. Sign and Sight also features a weekly “Magazine Roundup” doing the rounds of a wide variety of European, Asian, and American magazines.

The move comes as print newspapers of the conventional variety across Europe and America are losing circulation. Some Manhattan newsstands have seen takers for the Sunday New York Times fall by as much as 80% in the past few years. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal both recently narrowed their page width in a move to save paper costs; the change, however, also means less room for advertising and a more ungainly appearance.

South Africa’s Herald, meanwhile, has bucked the gloomy trend and increased its readership by 14.5% in the past year. The Herald, the Eastern and Southern Cape’s regional broadsheet, attributes its success to a visual redesign and reorienting content to encourage readers to link up with the newspaper’s website. South Africa is also home to The Times (not to be confused with the older Cape Times), a new upmarket broadsheet newspaper launched as a daily extension of the century-old Sunday Times. The weekday Times was started a year ago and its circulation since just June has seen a 10.4% increase.

A major problem for the industry is that formerly high-end newspapers have driven down the quality of their product to a suicidal extent over the past decades. The middle market, for better or worse, is dead, and publishers have three alternatives to this disappearing sector: 1) go lowest-common-denominator — as The Times of London has done, with only moderate success; 2) go up-market — The Times and Sunday Times of South Africa have proved worthwile; or 3) go niche — the New York Observer is still in business after two decades of aiming towards Manhattan’s yuppie community.

Whichever path taken, integrating print and web operations is vital for the survival of print newspapers and other “dead tree” media. That European newspapers are providing at least part of their content in English is helpful in keeping up with events and ideas in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and Hungary as our native English-language media are tightening their belts and cutting foreign correspondents and coverage. I hope more non-English papers follow this trend and help to permanentize it.

Subway riders, New York City, 1914

Francis Luis Mora, Subway riders, New York City, 1914
Print, 12½” x 9¼”
1914, New York Public Library

New York Sun will no longer shine for all

Center-right New York daily will cease printing at end of month

In a devastating blow to the intellectual life of the city, the New York Sun editor Seth Lipsky announced today that the small-but-influential daily newspaper will cease operations at the end of the month unless new investors can be found to put many millions of dollar into the revived title. The newspaper — known for its excellent arts & cultural coverage and willingness to lift the veil on corruption in addition to its hardcore neoconservative politics — is believed to be operating at a loss of tens of millions of dollars a year. Seth Lipsky announced the perilous state of the Sun in a letter to readers this morning:

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The Newspaper for People in Sunglasses

Watch this splendidly dated television advertisement for The European from 1991. In that year, the Soviet Union still existed, Eastern Airlines closed after sixty-two years in aviation, the IRA was still bombing London, Archbishop Lefebvre went on to his eternal reward, Édith Cresson became premier of France, and the Dow Jones closed above 3,000 for the first time — today it closed at 11,532.88.

The Catholic Herald

First Christian de Lisle, now Jennifer Roche: at this rate within a year everyone I know will have contributed to the Catholic Herald! (And, incidentally, I did have a brief chat in the Travellers Club once with the chap who wrote the piece on the Assumption).

I might just have to take out a subscription, though an electronic one — probably the most convenient for we across the seas — is still a hefty £38: at today’s exchange rate that’s seventy good ole American smackeroons! Probably worth it, though.