This week, David Carr, The Times’s Media Equation columnist and a culture reporter, reviews “The Invention of News,” by Andrew Pettegree. I asked Carr and a few of his colleagues to recommend their favorite books about journalism.
本周，时报(The Times)媒体方程式(Media Equation)的专栏作家、文化记者大卫·卡尔(David Carr)给安德鲁·佩蒂格里(Andrew Pettegree)的《新闻的发明》(The Invention of News)写了一篇书评。我请卡尔和他的几个同事推荐自己最喜欢的关于新闻工作的图书。
The reporter Ravi Somaiya cited “Point of Departure,” a collection of mid-20th-century pieces by the British journalist James Cameron. Somaiya said: “His dispatches — from the Bikini Atoll nuclear experiments, and with Albert Schweitzer in what is now Gabon, among others — are vivid, moving and written in a prose so muscular you feel your heart rate rise sometimes. He showed me that you can be honest, accurate and fair and still tell people what you saw and how you felt.”
记者拉维·索梅亚(Ravi Somaiya)推荐的是《出发地》(Point of Departure)，它是20世纪中期英国记者詹姆斯·卡梅隆(James Cameron)的文选。索梅亚说：“他的新闻报道——比基尼环礁核试验，在加蓬采访阿尔贝特·施韦泽(Albert Schweitzer)等——生动感人，充满力量，你有时感觉自己的心跳速度都跟着加快了。他向我表明，你可以在诚实、准确、公正的同时，告诉人们你的所见所感。”
The media reporter Jonathan Mahler was pained “to have to eliminate so many worthy candidates — but if it has to be one, it has to be Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Scoop,’ which may be the funniest novel ever written. It’s a sendup of Fleet Street, circa 1938, involving a fictitious newspaper called The Beast, a fictitious civil war in a fictitious African country and the hapless foreign correspondent mistakenly sent there to cover it.”
媒体记者乔纳森·马勒(Jonathan Mahler)为“不得不排除那么多值得推荐的书”而感到痛苦，“但是如果只能选一本的话，我一定是选伊夫林·沃(Evelyn Waugh)的《独家新闻》(Scoop)，它可能是最有趣的小说。它讽刺的是1938年左右的“舰队街”（指英国报纸业——译注），涉及一个名叫《野兽》(The Beast)的虚构的报纸，在一个虚构的非洲国家发生的一场虚构的内战，以及一个被阴差阳错派往那里报道内战的倒霉的驻外记者。”
The media editor Peter Lattman also turned to fiction for his choice: “The Imperfectionists,” by Tom Rachman, about a “dying English-language newspaper in Rome. This debut novel from 2010 does a better job of capturing a newsroom and its characters than any nonfiction book I’ve read.”
媒体编辑彼得·拉特曼(Peter Lattman)选择的也是小说：汤姆·拉赫曼(Tom Rachman)的《不完美主义者》(The Imperfectionists)，它讲述的是“罗马的一个垂死的英文报纸。这本2010年出版的处女小说比我读过的任何非虚构图书都更好地刻画了一个新闻编辑部和其中的人物。”
The question took Carr back to a harrowing moment. “In the hours after the attacks of Sept. 11,” he said, “I was at the corner of Church and Chambers. Building 7 was on fire and then fell. A wall of debris and smoke came rushing up the street, and I dove under a car. I found myself looking into the eyes of a pigeon there and having an interspecies moment. ‘Are we O.K.? Is the world ending? Are we, um, birds of a feather?’ When the moment and wall of crud passed and I collected myself, I noticed a copy of Strunk and White’s ‘The Elements of Style,’ the ur-text of our profession, under the car. It was marked in ink as a Port Authority copy, and I knew it had blown out of their offices at the World Trade Center. I observe none of its edicts — I am a turgid, digressive writer — but love its aspiration and clarity. I put it under glass still containing the dust of that day along with a copy of something I wrote for New York magazine that was the only decent thing I wrote out of all that confusion and mayhem. I treasure its presence in my home even as I leave its advice under glass.”
这个问题让卡尔想起了一个痛心的时刻。“9·11袭击发生几个小时后，”他说，“我在教堂街和议事厅街的拐角处。7号楼着火后倒塌了。一大块碎片和烟尘冲到街上，我躲到一辆车下。车下有一只鸽子，我凝视着它的眼睛，这一刻我们有了跨越种族的交流。‘我们没事吧？世界要灭亡了吗？我们，呃，是一条战线上的吗？’那一时刻和那一阵烟灰过后，我定了定神，在车下发现一本斯特伦克(Strunk)和怀特(White)编写的《文体要素》(The Elements of Style)，它是我们这个职业的基础文本。书上有墨水标明是港务局的藏书，我知道它是被从世贸中心的港务局办公室炸飞出来的。我从没遵守过这本书的规则——我是个浮夸的、离经叛道的作家——但是它志向远大，条理清晰，这一点我很喜欢。我把它放在玻璃板下面，书上还留有当天的灰尘，和它放在一起的是我当时在困惑和混乱中为《纽约》(New York)杂志写的唯一一篇还可以的文章的副本。我珍惜它在我家中的存在，尽管我没有听从它的建议。”