PATRICK BULGER: Spare a thought for the warriors of words

Northern Ireland football wastrel George Best apparently said: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” Not entirely original, but nonetheless an apt aphorism to explain why a person who should have lots now has nothing. What can you do but laugh? Or cry?

To go from many zeroes on your bank statement to just one (the ultimate round number) is a painful experience I would want but a few of my associates to endure. Yet, that is exactly what is happening to many who work, or worked, in the sunset industry called print journalism.

So, while so many of us are lapping up instant, biased and tendentious “news” on YouTube, there’s hardly a moment to spare a thought for the old warriors of the Helvetica font. These were the sub-editors, often grubby and always obnoxious, who de-purpled the prose of cub reporters and grandstanding editors alike. None got a free pass.

While there were always sentences that needed to be redrafted (or at least adequately ventilated) for clarity, clauses that reeked of insubordination, participles that dangled with dangerous ambiguity and tenses that put your teeth on edge, a sub-editor who always seemed to be laughing at you under his breath was there to fix it. To spur your blushes.

They took it seriously, too. One sub-editor I knew stopped speaking to a colleague for years because the ignorant bugger didn’t know the meaning of “defenestrate”. Bit harsh, thought even I, who’s prone to dramatic and self-defeating gestures of the meaningless kind. But the week before, the offending colleague had not known the difference between a gourmet and a gourmand.

With the gentrification of journalism and the steady demise of print, the sub-editors who once took a red marker to sincere and well-meant sentences with such glee and malice have become a thing of the past. Spell checks and AI have made them redundant.

Recently, I received an exceedingly well worded and punctiliously punctuated appeal for funds from one such dinosaur of print who has fallen on hard times. Claimed to have no money, even for food. Desperate for work. Anything. OK, not that desperate that he’d resort to real work, but still happy enough to abase himself as a sub-editor. Humble, but brave enough to query, when the Editor-in-Chief writes, “with tears in my ears”, does he mean cheers or eyes? Courageous, I’m sure, because no part-timer wants to be branded a smart-ass: you’d need the security of full-time employment status to tell a senior suit that enervate doesn’t mean to reinvigorate, for example.

There’s very little dash to be had, and for old guys whose only skill is a passable knowledge of concordance, times are tough indeed

Sitting with a WhatsApp message from the former colleague asking for financial assistance (change that to help), I realised just how far the “old days” had receded into the past. When I was in my sub-prime, in the days when newspapers were so big and bulky you could wallpaper a shack from just one Sunday Times, old newspaper salts easily found what we in the trade call “dash” work.

So named because underpaid hacks ran from one newspaper office to another for an extra shift, “dash” was easy income for “subs”, which is what sub-editors were called. Mostly hated, subs were the obvious target for the newspaper poster punting a story about our bathtub-ready navy, and which read: “SUB STILL USELESS AFTER 10 YEARS”. Snigger.

But those days are gone. There’s very little dash to be had, and for old guys whose only skill is a passable knowledge of concordance, times are tough indeed. Where’s all their money, you wonder. With no property, tiny pensions, no dash shifts, no medical aid and no dispensable income, their outlook is bleak. While linguistically they were superb, arithmetically they were non-optimal.

It’s a pity, of course, that so many old guys, many of whom never dreamed they would live past 60, are in such dire straights, when they are still needed.

In the old days, a mendicant pedant was always assured of work. Many years ago, for example, during an entirely unplanned sojourn in Brazil, I visited the offices of an English-language newspaper in Rio de Janeiro, hoping to meet someone who spoke English. The editor looked me up and down and then asked: “Can you sub?” When I said I could (even though I couldn’t tell the pluperfect from the merely passable), he asked: “Can you start now?” And I was led upstairs to a desk near a UPI ticker and told to produce the sports page, which I did for a few months.

I never thought I’d live long enough that I, of all people, would be asked to help an old soldier pursued by the modern drone of destitution. It was a pleasure, and if I hadn’t blocked his number I’d probably do it again.