What do you ask the man who has read everything? This was the question which haunted me as I climbed the stairs to the top of the Corner Club. Sir Peter Stothard, Editor of the Times Literary Supplement, is probably one of the most intensely literary persons on the planet. He can probably quote the Iliad backwards.
This was my unfounded impression of the man who would later greet me with a beaming smile and direct me into a side room decorated with bookish wallpaper.
Stothard is a Cherwell icon primarily due to the fact that he edited the paper in 1970, while he was up at Trinity, reading Classics. From there, he went to the very top, editing The Times for ten years and becoming one of the foremost names in British journalism. Stothard, like most ex-Cherwellians, looks back upon his days editing the paper with mixed feelings; a combination of joy and the pangs of panic which result from too many late nights and not enough copy.
When Stothard was at Oxford, Cherwell consisted not of the ever-expanding Orwellian nightmare it is now, but of a small hut-like building behind the Union – a far cry from the rooms filled with technology (albeit faulty) of Matthew Comfort Ltd on St. Aldate’s. All the same, under Stothard, Cherwell was printed weekly, and had a wide range of sections.
However, there existed yet another, fundamental, difference between now and then: the method of printing. Back then, Adobe had not been invented, and the computer existed only in the form of an object with the dimensions of a moderately-sized room.
Instead, editors would send documents via snail mail to the printers, who would then lay out copy (journo-speak for articles) and images in the received way. In an age of Photoshop, in an era dominated by the looming shadow of the Guardian Student Media Awards, design can make or break a newspaper. Today is the day of white space, of shadow highlighting, of the cleverly crafted info box.
Not so when Stothard was editing. In fact, as he mentions, the principal fault of student journalism is the concentration on form over content: something which is probably due to the nature of the readership; good design is necessary to pull the casual reader into the article.
As Stothard observes, edgy design should be no substitute for good copy, and conceptual design must be met with groundbreaking journalism. In an age of libel, of Heather McCartney, university is the only real opportunity for students to write journalism which expressly places itself on the side of contrariety, of contention.
The atmosphere surrounding student journalism during Stothard’s editorship was rather different to what it is today. He bemoans the ‘get to the top quick’ culture, the age of the internship, of the CV point, the race to accumulate a vast and diverse portfolio of cuttings, of experience (both journalistic and editorial), and, of course, a sharp and keen eye for the value of white space.
So it comes as no surprise that Stothard’s rise to the top of British journalism was somewhat different. After a brief stint at the BBC as a trainee reporter, he went on to work for the National Theatre and Shell before picking up his reporter’s notebook for freelance work on the New Statesman. This led to work for the Sunday Times as a political journalist – including a large and influential piece of the 1981 Budget.
Stothard comments that in a time of such unrest and hostility, working from Whitehall was particularly stimulating. Nevertheless, The Times shut down in 1978-79, and the resulting purchase of the paper by Murdoch meant Stothard was quickly elevated through the paper, becoming Editor in 1992-2002.
Having moved to the Times Literary Supplement in 2002, Stothard is now at the forefront of literary journalism, titillating the cultural sensibilities of the middle class intelligentsia week in week out. This, of course, makes him highly authorities on a whole range of broadly literary issues. A natural question arises: what, according to Sir Peter, is hot at the moment? To ask such a question is to broadly misunderstand what the TLS stands for: the revelation, or revaluation, of the neglected in culture at large Moreover, as Stothard notes, the notion of ‘hot’ is hugely subjective anyway. Recent issues have included lead articles on Elgar or working class fashion. Both niche topics, of course, but both reveal a wider relevance to modern day Britain.
The question of subjectivity, and, indeed, of what constitues ‘top notch’ literary journalism is central to the future of criticism. A whole host of articles have been written about the rise of the blog culture, either in praise of the globalisation and universality of opinion, or decrying the move away from print, and into a world of normative, dull conformism. Stothard appears undecided on the matter, acknowledging that there is, of course, a great value in the blog. He notes a time when he discovered a really very interesting piece of Icelandic philosophy, pointed out to him by a friend on a really very obscure blog. However, Stothard astutely notes that ‘intellectual life was globalised before globalisation was invented’; the internet was not necessary for the development of a world-wide literary community; letters and newspapers served us perfectly well.
On the whole, it seems that Stothard is widely sceptical about the normalisation and democratisation of opinion which the blog can bring, and the error of the view that the opinion of Socrates is as valuable as the fool. He uses a good analogy to describe the phenomenon: imagine a crowd of Arsenal supporters, all chanting for the same team, but shouting different slogans. The end result is the same, the players on the pitch are spurred on, and someone watching the spectacle would be aware that this particular stand was definitely full of Gunners supporters.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the result is the same. The main difference between a publication like the TLS and the blog is a distinction between a ‘judiciously argued judgement and a quick fix of opinion’. All the same, on the whole, Stothard seems to subscribe to the views of J.S. Mill: only within a free market of ideas will truth emerge, as good ideas displace bad ones and ignorance is progressively banished. As Mill has argued, the value of open debate and discussion is that ‘bad’ ideas are exposed as bad, meaning that ‘good’ ideas prevail. The blog helps this process along nicely.
Finally Stothard airs his views on the future of journalism. Modern media is all encompassing: the Telegraph has a TV channel on its website, and journalists aren’t ready to report unless they have a good digital camera with video-recording capabilities. Nevertheless, one simple, golden rule of journalism, in whatever form, remains true: the good journalist will have an eye for the interesting, and will find a way of bringing the reader or viewer into the story. This, for Stothard, is the reason that Plato’s Republic is still so widely read: the opening line is arresting and draws the reader in. Its literary merit, which need not be incompatible with journalistic appeal, is timeless.
It is for this reason, then, that publications like the TLS prevail: the fascinating will always be so. The same was true when Stothard was editing handwritten copy in his hut behind the union, and is still true today. When OSPL is able to open up a state of the art media centre, Cherwell will still be looking for intriguing articles to fill pages. After all, white space isn’t the only thing which wins awards.
