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Home » Opinion » Opinion Columns
Will the illiterate inherit our earth?
By Wan Lixin |
March 26, 2009, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A BRITISH publisher told me a couple of months ago that he predicted the life of print media to be no more than five years.
Though I would predict a much longer time frame, recent developments show that some US newspapers can die more quickly.
On March 17, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer rolled off the presses for the last time, as the 146-year-old paper goes Web-only, becoming the second American newspaper to die this year.
This is a grave warning to writers, reporters and intellectuals whose existence is more or less maintained by the print media.
Common estimates suggest that a Web-driven New York Times could support only 20 percent of its current staff.
As veteran Post-Intelligencer copy editor Glenn Ericksen said, the Web "lowers the standard of literacy all around. Who needs copy editors on the Web?"
It is ironic that American newspapers have become cultural monuments and appear too elevated for modern tastes.
Over 100 years ago, in their "The King's English," H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler warned of "our literature's being americanized and that not merely in details of vocabulary ... but in its general tone."
They cite the example of Rudyard Kipling whose style "exhibits a sort of remorseless and scientific efficiency in the choice of epithets and other words that suggests the application of coloured photography to description; the camera is superseding the human hand."
I regret to say that the kind of language condemned by the Fowlers is exactly the kind required of reporters today.
Ever since my initiation into the craft, I have been constantly lectured to use simple words and syntax.
Ideally a reporter should lay out the key elements in a lead of 25 words, for that is about the upper limit of a modern reader's attention span.
The trouble is, even if you set out your best in 10 words, they still stand little chance of competing with the excitement offered by TV and the Internet.
It's not correct to say that all print media are dying everywhere.
In China, for instance, some newspapers are thriving by publishing bland lifestyle fluff, offering panegyrics regularly to property developers and auto makers, and titillating readers by gossiping about what may or not be happening in a Hong Kong star's bedroom.
But the market is tightening the noose on those papers that stick to journalistic standards, and believe in values that transcend money.
The future is grave, indeed, for those who buck the trend and refuse to vulgarize.
For instance, purely literary journals in China are vanishing from the market.
Late last year, Shanghai-based Yiwen magazine (Rendition) ended publication. Its surviving rival in Nanjing, Yilin (Translations), caters to more popular tastes.
Some publications must reinvent themselves to survive.
Tianjin Wenxue (Tianjin Literature), a once highly revered journal, debuted again last year after being suspended for sometime, announcing proudly its determination to embrace a new business model based on corporate-minded management.
It has recently been exposed that another literary journal Baogao Wenxue (Reportage) began to charge 1,000 yuan (US$146) for every 1,000 words, as a publishing fee. When criticized, the editor retorted that some journals in Beijing are charging much more.
Literary critic Dong Qiao remarked some years ago that there's an ongoing battle between two forces: the culture of feelings, tradition and justice and the tide of corporate efficiency and market values.
"Some are bent on diluting the human values in cultural enterprises through corporate management, turning written characters into hamburgers and aspiring to the earnings miracles of listed companies," he said.
But we must confess that a new human species has inherited the earth after TV and the Web took over.
They are instructed but not educated, assimilative but incapable of thought.
They are destroying anything that is not functional and efficient.
A lost art?
Although some characterize print media's dilemma in terms of the rapid rise of the Web, this should also be understood in the context of traditional reading that is threatened by more exciting channels of communication.
Inherent in print media is an insuperable "disadvantage," compared with the more graphic Internet and TV presentation: the print media still presupposes an elementary degree of literacy.
Thus, there is good reason to be concerned with the fate of the Chinese characters, if we see how anything not immediately efficient or profit-enabling is becoming obsolete.
How one writes a hand with an ink brush used to be an indicator of a Chinese scholar's character, moral tenor, and inclinations ("the force hinted by the stroke actually goes through the paper").
A good hand takes a lifetime to cultivate.
When I saw a photocopy of Chiang Ching-kuo's handwritten diary, I was shocked by the elegant calligraphy. I found it hard to associate the author of the writing with the scoundrel I had been taught that Chiang was.
Well-known painter Fan Zeng recently asserted that in judging a Chinese painter's worth, all he has to do is to ask the painter to write a few Chinese characters.
But calligraphy today is nothing because it is useless. At a matter of fact, few of us write at all, since we have long outsourced that function to printers.
Ultimately our objection to reading would be that it still entails a certain degree of thought, while TV and online entertainment makes few such demands.
When information and answers can be recalled at a click, there is little incentive to learn and think.
The machines are taking over.
Though I would predict a much longer time frame, recent developments show that some US newspapers can die more quickly.
On March 17, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer rolled off the presses for the last time, as the 146-year-old paper goes Web-only, becoming the second American newspaper to die this year.
This is a grave warning to writers, reporters and intellectuals whose existence is more or less maintained by the print media.
Common estimates suggest that a Web-driven New York Times could support only 20 percent of its current staff.
As veteran Post-Intelligencer copy editor Glenn Ericksen said, the Web "lowers the standard of literacy all around. Who needs copy editors on the Web?"
It is ironic that American newspapers have become cultural monuments and appear too elevated for modern tastes.
Over 100 years ago, in their "The King's English," H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler warned of "our literature's being americanized and that not merely in details of vocabulary ... but in its general tone."
They cite the example of Rudyard Kipling whose style "exhibits a sort of remorseless and scientific efficiency in the choice of epithets and other words that suggests the application of coloured photography to description; the camera is superseding the human hand."
I regret to say that the kind of language condemned by the Fowlers is exactly the kind required of reporters today.
Ever since my initiation into the craft, I have been constantly lectured to use simple words and syntax.
Ideally a reporter should lay out the key elements in a lead of 25 words, for that is about the upper limit of a modern reader's attention span.
The trouble is, even if you set out your best in 10 words, they still stand little chance of competing with the excitement offered by TV and the Internet.
It's not correct to say that all print media are dying everywhere.
In China, for instance, some newspapers are thriving by publishing bland lifestyle fluff, offering panegyrics regularly to property developers and auto makers, and titillating readers by gossiping about what may or not be happening in a Hong Kong star's bedroom.
But the market is tightening the noose on those papers that stick to journalistic standards, and believe in values that transcend money.
The future is grave, indeed, for those who buck the trend and refuse to vulgarize.
For instance, purely literary journals in China are vanishing from the market.
Late last year, Shanghai-based Yiwen magazine (Rendition) ended publication. Its surviving rival in Nanjing, Yilin (Translations), caters to more popular tastes.
Some publications must reinvent themselves to survive.
Tianjin Wenxue (Tianjin Literature), a once highly revered journal, debuted again last year after being suspended for sometime, announcing proudly its determination to embrace a new business model based on corporate-minded management.
It has recently been exposed that another literary journal Baogao Wenxue (Reportage) began to charge 1,000 yuan (US$146) for every 1,000 words, as a publishing fee. When criticized, the editor retorted that some journals in Beijing are charging much more.
Literary critic Dong Qiao remarked some years ago that there's an ongoing battle between two forces: the culture of feelings, tradition and justice and the tide of corporate efficiency and market values.
"Some are bent on diluting the human values in cultural enterprises through corporate management, turning written characters into hamburgers and aspiring to the earnings miracles of listed companies," he said.
But we must confess that a new human species has inherited the earth after TV and the Web took over.
They are instructed but not educated, assimilative but incapable of thought.
They are destroying anything that is not functional and efficient.
A lost art?
Although some characterize print media's dilemma in terms of the rapid rise of the Web, this should also be understood in the context of traditional reading that is threatened by more exciting channels of communication.
Inherent in print media is an insuperable "disadvantage," compared with the more graphic Internet and TV presentation: the print media still presupposes an elementary degree of literacy.
Thus, there is good reason to be concerned with the fate of the Chinese characters, if we see how anything not immediately efficient or profit-enabling is becoming obsolete.
How one writes a hand with an ink brush used to be an indicator of a Chinese scholar's character, moral tenor, and inclinations ("the force hinted by the stroke actually goes through the paper").
A good hand takes a lifetime to cultivate.
When I saw a photocopy of Chiang Ching-kuo's handwritten diary, I was shocked by the elegant calligraphy. I found it hard to associate the author of the writing with the scoundrel I had been taught that Chiang was.
Well-known painter Fan Zeng recently asserted that in judging a Chinese painter's worth, all he has to do is to ask the painter to write a few Chinese characters.
But calligraphy today is nothing because it is useless. At a matter of fact, few of us write at all, since we have long outsourced that function to printers.
Ultimately our objection to reading would be that it still entails a certain degree of thought, while TV and online entertainment makes few such demands.
When information and answers can be recalled at a click, there is little incentive to learn and think.
The machines are taking over.
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