语言与文风2021mleverything.substack.com
大报上的写作是从什么时候起变得这么糟的？
When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?
导读
这篇讨论为什么大报的写作质量在下降：新闻业失去声望、吸引不到博学而不涉政治的写作者；报纸大量裁减文字编辑；以及一种假定读者已熟悉背景的「圈内人」文风。这些问题对写作者是极好的镜子——它提醒我们读者意识、编辑环节和对可读性工具的警惕。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
动笔前先问读者是否真的了解背景，避免「圈内人」式默认读者已熟悉人物与事件。
- 02
不要盲信可读性工具（如 Hemingway），它会把生动的文学描写判为「难读」。
- 03
清晰的写作需要专门的编辑/校对环节，别把这一步省掉。
- 04
写作的目标是传递信息与真相，而不是给读者套上预设的框架或倾向。
HN 评论精选
新闻业失去声望，吸引不到博学而不涉政治的人才，写作因此更意识形态化。
讨论这个话题时很少被提及的一点是声望的丧失。为《纽约时报》或《纽约客》工作，过去在全国几乎所有人眼里都有分量；现在已不再如此，至少几十年来都不是了。像 Lewis Lapham 这样极其博学却基本不涉政治的人，半个世纪前去了文学杂志和高端新闻业，而今天他们几乎肯定会避开这些。我想不出任何一个能称得上现代版 Lapham、甚至 Hitchens 的人。某种意义上，新闻业曾是深爱文学的富裕家庭孩子的热门职业选择；今天它更像意识形态的战场，而非对真相的追寻。
keiferski查看英文原文
Something that I think is rarely discussed when this topic comes up is the loss of prestige. Working for The New York Times or The New Yorker used to have some weight with pretty much everyone in the country. That is no longer the case. It hasn't been so for at least a couple of decades. Extremely erudite-yet-mostly-apolitical people like Lewis Lapham [1] went to literary magazines and high-end journalism a half-century ago, whereas today they almost certainly avoid it. I can't name a single person that I'd consider the modern equivalent of Lapham, or even Christopher Hitchens. In some sense, journalism used to be a popular career choice for upper class kids with a deep interest in literature. Today, it seems more like an ideological battleground than a search for truth. [1] I really recommend his magazine, Lapham's Quarterly and its podcast, The World in Time. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/world-in-time
裁掉文字编辑直接导致写作质量和清晰度下降。
近年来报纸一直在大量裁减文字编辑（copy editor）。写作质量和清晰度的下降是显而易见、可预见的结果。
michaelhoffman查看英文原文
Newspapers have been laying off copy editors right and left in recent years. A reduction in the quality and clarity of writing is an obvious and predictable outcome. https://j-source.ca/article/copy-editors-laid-off-more-than-other-newsroom-staffers-but-can-newspapers-credibility-afford-the-cut/ https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2017/by-dismantling-its-copy-desk-the-new-york-times-is-making-a-mistake-thats-been-made-before/
可读性工具（如 Hemingway）会误判文学写作，不能盲目依赖。
作者把全文扔进 Hemingway（一个识别糟糕或令人困惑写作的应用）。我很好奇，因为一个应用能可靠地区分好坏写作，在我看来难以置信。于是我贴了 Shirley Jackson《The Lottery》的段落——《The Lottery》被认为是短篇小说杰作，在美国高中广泛教授——几乎全被标红：糟糕的写作、「非常难读」。再贴 Isaac Asimov《The Last Question》的段落，另一篇风格迥异的著名英语短篇，全是红黄。深知它会怎么看 James Joyce，我跳过他去试 Roald Dahl 的《The Great Automatic Grammatizator》，全是红黄。最后贴入一本原版小熊维尼的大段内容，终于它基本满意了！但只有对话部分。每当作者胆敢写任何描写，全红。说真的，别用这个工具。（补充：该应用对海明威本人评价不错，因为它本就以让你写得像海明威为目标；若它主要用于商业写作，那么对文学写作反应差也说得通。）
aerovistae查看英文原文
> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, and is widely taught in American high schools.) The excerpts I pasted were almost universally painted red: bad writing, "very hard to read." Then I took excerpts of Isaac Asimov's The Last Question, another celebrated English-language short story in a very different writing style. Red and yellow all over. Knowing full well what it would think of James Joyce, I skipped over him to try Roald Dahl's The Great Automatic Grammatizator -- red and yellow all over. Lastly, for the sake of variety, I decided to try something simple and put in large swaths of one of the original Winnie the Pooh books. Finally, something it was mostly okay with! But only the dialogue. Anytime the author dared to write any description, red all over. Seriously, don't use this tool. Edited perspective from comment replies to mine: the app is largely okay with Hemingway, which makes sense as its main intent is to make your writing like Hemingway's. Also, if it is largely intended to be for business writing, then it makes sense that it would react poorly to literary writing. Both good points!
现代新闻写作假定读者已知背景，沦为给圈内人的「框架/倾向」而非信息。
「我认为一个问题在于，现代报纸迎合的受众被期望高度了解当天的文化和政治话题，或者至少假装如此。」说得太对了。这种写作风格的目的不是为你提供新事件的信息，而是为已经（尽管肤浅地）熟悉正在发生事件的人提供框架/倾向。某一刻我停止消费新闻好几年。当我多年暂停后尝试读 NYT 头版时，我什么都看不懂。所有标题和文章都在引用我「应该」熟悉的人和事。
gambler查看英文原文
>I think a problem is that modern newspapers cater to an audience that’s expected to be very plugged in to the cultural and political topic of the day, or at least fake it. Spot on. The point of this style of writing isn't to provide you with information about new events. The point is to provide framing/spin for people who are already familiar (albeit uperficially) with occurring events. At some point I stopped consuming news for several years. When I attempted to read NYT front page after that multi-year pause I couldn't understand a thing. All the titles and articles were referencing people and events I'm "supposed to" be familiar with.
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