Learning Journalism by Degrees

What an almighty pother we have been enduring lately, about that entire field of human thought and interest called “journalism”, broadly interpreted. To use a term attributed to that great character lately departed, Margaret Whitlam, I never saw such a “hoo-hah” in my life. What ever is going on? Sometimes it seems that “journalism” now exists only in some impalpable, metaphysical sense, floating in the air like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. Or, as defined by Lewis Carroll’s card-pack Queen, it means exactly what someone says it means, from time to time.

As just a few of the issues which fill our newspapers and journals at present, and our radio and television programs, we might mention the following:

Is journalism essentially a hard-nosed practical craft, taught to cadets by experienced senior journalists actually on the job, and supplemented by short courses of formal instruction of practical orientation?

Can anyone actually be taught to write? Or is the skill a gift which the neophyte either has or doesn’t? Is the whole concept of courses in ‘creative writing’ largely a delusion?

Does journalism really offer an appropriate field for full academic attention—to the theory, philosophy, analysis and general baloney of a university degree course?

As if these questions were not enough, the present brew is being pumped up to an unhealthy emotional fizz by the Finkelstein inquiry and the regulation of the Australian media; also by the parliamentary inquiry in Britain into the alleged nefarious activities of the Murdoch press. These are important questions, but am I qualified to offer useful answers?

Just briefly, then:

My first contribution to a metropolitan daily was made when I was sixteen; it was about a famous aged racehorse, which I had uncovered while the old fellow was working under an assumed name in a Melbourne suburban riding school. Tonight, aged eighty-eight, I write these words you are reading now, intended to be (roughly) my 180th regular monthly article for Quadrant.

In between, I have published six books; been general editor of a three-volume encyclopaedia; over twenty-six years directed the fortunes of a leading Australian publishing house; written long-running signed regular columns for the dailies; provided (writing mostly as “The Melbourne Spy”) a contribution for nearly every issue of Tom Fitzgerald’s independent fortnightly Nation (1958–72). Add numberless book reviews and special articles for the dailies and the general press, and I estimate (very roughly) that 2,200,000 words have made it into the permanence of print. Quantity alone proves nothing more than garrulity, and it is for others to judge the quality of it all. But it does establish me as a long survivor in the racket. And not every scribbler was a card-holding member of the former journalists’ trade union for (I think) forty-one years.

From such a lifetime of observation, it is plain to me that journalism and universities (though maintaining always a polite nodding acquaintance) have little to teach each other, and should not try; that no honest intellectual basis exists for university “chairs” offering “degrees” in journalism; indeed, that many of them stand on foundations which are dubious. Think of all those cushy academic jobs for the boys (and girls) among marginally employed journos and lightly qualified arts graduates; think of our predatory and expansionist entrepreneurial universities, beady-eyed in their alertness for funds to create yet another chair/faculty/degree.

It is fatuous to think that “creative writing” can be taught to anyone in whom the spark is not already alight, even if heavily shaded at the start. Some sympathetic criticism and basic craft hints can help; so can guidance to good model literary masters. That’s about it; after that, young would-be writers have to do it for themselves, mostly by voracious and discriminating reading. To think otherwise is to believe that a horse-trainer can take any old plough horse and mould it into Phar Lap.

It was not the scholars who first sought alliance with the press. In the late 1890s, the famous Joseph Pulitzer offered big money to support advanced teaching of journalism within the American Ivy League, but the professors found the idea rather quaint, and remained aloof. Someone said that it would be just as sensible to create a “graduate school in swimming”.

Things have changed. That great Australian journalist and editor J.F. Archibald once remarked jocularly that he regarded his job to be “a heeler and soler of paragraphs”. Overheard today by one of our alert modern vice-chancellors, Archibald might well be overwhelmed by offers to found “The J.F. Archibald Postgraduate School of Literary Footwear Repairs”. (Only half-joking.)

Based thus only on my own direct experience, I have always seen university courses leading to “degrees in journalism” as a blight from which young people should be shielded. Much of the curriculum is lightweight intellectual garbage, very like the vapid stuff which contributes such air-headed buoyancy to the modern study of the humanities in general.

Recently someone dared to criticise the academic teaching of journalism. The fact that the critic happened to be a widely experienced and level-headed senior daily journalist did not count; some thirty academics rose instantly upon their affronted hind legs, and meowed in loyal unison: “Who dare criticise us, and our life-elevating mission!”

Their whinge of self-justification was not well-conceived. Such sensitivity showed up cry-babies, not resolute writers and editors who can dish it out on an issue in which they truly believe, and then stand toe-to-toe to slog it out with the opposition, however prominent or powerful it may be. 

My old alma mater, Melbourne, now has its department and degree of journalism, but at least it came late, and the pressures (some subtle, some open) were long held at bay. Its resolute opponent was the university’s head and Professor of Political Science, Macmahon Ball; by fortunate conjunction he was also Chairman of the Board of Studies in Journalism, which offered a one-year diploma course, useful indeed to intending journos, but with no pretentions whatever to being a degree. This Mac thought was the proper balance, and was how it should remain.

Of all the happy turns of my fortunes, none was happier than my early chance social meeting with Mac in 1945, when I was a young ex-service rehabilitation student waiting to begin his undergraduate course (Honours History) at Melbourne University. We “clicked” mightily, and we became the most intimate of friends until his death late in 1986. An early bond was riding our quiet horses around in the bush then surrounding outer Melbourne. He was (another happy chance) Chairman of the Board of Management of Melbourne University Press when I became its Director in 1962.

His background of service to Australia was remarkable. His disposition was mildly left-wing, which did not deter Robert Menzies from appointing him to control our wartime radio broadcasts to South-East Asia. When a conquered Japan was to be ruled by a Control Commission of all the Allies, led by the Americans, the whole of the British Commonwealth was to be represented by Australia—a move not deeply appreciated by Whitehall—and Mac was appointed to this extraordinarily difficult diplomatic ant’s nest, where he had to deal face-to-face with the supreme autocrat, American General Douglas MacArthur. Mac’s appointment had largely been arranged by our then prime minister, Ben Chifley. Chif, who knew that Mac and I were friends, said to me later with a grin: “I just liked the cut of Mr Ball’s jib.”

Whether in high-level diplomacy or in the media, Mac’s grasp of relationships was masterly. As a broadcaster his ABC talks were magic, plain-language talks on complex international matters addressed to ordinary citizens. My wife and I recall how, strolling at Sunday lunchtimes down quiet streets in Melbourne suburbs or country towns, the only sound to be heard from behind most front doors was the mellow tone of Mac giving his Sunday broadcast; Australia stopped for that.

In peacetime, Mac found Sir Keith Murdoch an uncongenial employer for a writer of special articles for the Melbourne Herald, so he resigned and devoted himself to his academic pursuits. Nevertheless, freelance articles and book reviews continued to appear with agreeable frequency in the Melbourne Age. His presidency of the Melbourne University Academic Staff Association showed the confidence felt in him by his colleagues.

The principles behind the current argument about university degrees in journalism did not catch me by surprise, for Mac and I had discussed the matter over years in great detail. That supremely qualified authority believed that a journalism degree had no proper place in a university. I agreed with him then and I agree with him still. So out with them! That would be a good place to start the inevitable and looming process of university economy and contraction.