資深新聞記者推薦關於本行的好書

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.

本週，時報(The Times)媒體方程式(Media Equation)的專欄作家、文化記者大衛·卡爾(David Carr)給安德魯·佩蒂格里(Andrew Pettegree)的《新聞的發明》(The Invention of News)寫了一篇書評。我請卡爾和他的幾個同事推薦自己最喜歡的關於新聞工作的圖書。

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.”

記者拉維·索梅亞(Ravi Somaiya)推薦的是《出發地》(Point of Departure)，它是20世紀中期英國記者詹姆斯·卡梅隆(James Cameron)的文選。索梅亞說：“他的新聞報道——比基尼環礁核試驗，在加蓬採訪阿爾貝特·施韋澤(Albert Schweitzer)等——生動感人，充滿力量，你有時感覺自己的心跳速度都跟着加快了。他向我表明，你可以在誠實、準確、公正的同時，告訴人們你的所見所感。”

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.”

媒體記者喬納森·馬勒(Jonathan Mahler)爲“不得不排除那麼多值得推薦的書”而感到痛苦，“但是如果只能選一本的話，我一定是選伊夫林·沃(Evelyn Waugh)的《獨家新聞》(Scoop)，它可能是最有趣的小說。它諷刺的是1938年左右的“艦隊街”（指英國報紙業——譯註），涉及一個名叫《野獸》(The Beast)的虛構的報紙，在一個虛構的非洲國家發生的一場虛構的內戰，以及一個被陰差陽錯派往那裏報道內戰的倒黴的駐外記者。”

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.”

媒體編輯彼得·拉特曼(Peter Lattman)選擇的也是小說：湯姆·拉赫曼(Tom Rachman)的《不完美主義者》(The Imperfectionists)，它講述的是“羅馬的一個垂死的英文報紙。這本2010年出版的處女小說比我讀過的任何非虛構圖書都更好地刻畫了一個新聞編輯部和其中的人物。”

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.”

這個問題讓卡爾想起了一個痛心的時刻。“9·11襲擊發生幾個小時後，”他說，“我在教堂街和議事廳街的拐角處。7號樓着火後倒塌了。一大塊碎片和煙塵衝到街上，我躲到一輛車下。車下有一隻鴿子，我凝視着它的眼睛，這一刻我們有了跨越種族的交流。‘我們沒事吧？世界要滅亡了嗎？我們，呃，是一條戰線上的嗎？’那一時刻和那一陣菸灰過後，我定了定神，在車下發現一本斯特倫克(Strunk)和懷特(White)編寫的《文體要素》(The Elements of Style)，它是我們這個職業的基礎文本。書上有墨水標明是港務局的藏書，我知道它是被從世貿中心的港務局辦公室炸飛出來的。我從沒遵守過這本書的規則——我是個浮誇的、離經叛道的作家——但是它志向遠大，條理清晰，這一點我很喜歡。我把它放在玻璃板下面，書上還留有當天的灰塵，和它放在一起的是我當時在困惑和混亂中爲《紐約》(New York)雜誌寫的唯一一篇還可以的文章的副本。我珍惜它在我家中的存在，儘管我沒有聽從它的建議。”