Thursday, July 06, 2006

Crisis? Which crisis?

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2006/07/crisis_which_cr.html#more

[Times Online] 6 Jul 2006--When I started out in journalism, "crisis" was one of the overused nouns, some would say cliches, that we students at the London College of Printing were instructed to under use. Or not use at all. But the only one of my tutors who had worked on the staff of a national paper had only worked for the Guardian, and that was subbing not reporting, and he is now living in France. (Wynford Hicks, well known for his books on writing for journalists.) It's a bit like TS Eliot quotes, '"That was in another country, and besides the wench is dead." It was certainly another era, the fag-end of the hippy era, and none of us challenged the injunction against crises and other cliches, except me, and Wynford always marked me down. But I passed the course and landed up on the Daily Mail and discovered a whole new world of superlative. "Astonished", "Extraordinary", "Amazing". It was all of those and more, and I began to forget Wynford, which I should never have done because he was one of those extraordinary teachers who I was lucky to have and should have made more of.

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