Despite those cuts journalists can and should continue to apply simple editing standards to their writing to sculpt their best work. According to Ottaway, good grammar is the most obvious.
“We used to fear setting a bad example for school children or making a mockery of well-educated readers,” he said. “When you’re rushing to a deadline [mistakes] are not necessarily stupidity or carelessness.”
He also emphasized the importance of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, which discourages the use of adjectives, the passive voice and Latin-derived English words.
“You can still get fired from a newsroom for making repeated errors,” he said.
Objectivity is another important standard. From 1960 to 2000, most daily newspapers were in one-paper towns. According to Ottaway, that was good commercial incentive to report the news in a way that reflected the opinions of all its readers.
“The first cousin of objectivity is fairness,” Ottaway said. “Make the effort to seek out spokespeople for all sides of a story.”
Finally, Ottaway stressed the importance of brevity. “Surveys show that the average reader only spends 30 minutes reading a daily newspaper,” he said. “We try to emulate Hemingway, not Henry James.”
In his retirement, Ottaway has embarked on two unpaid pursuits. For “the fun of it,” the New Paltz resident learned ancient Greek and is translating the Odyssey. His second pursuit is editing manuscripts penned mainly by his friends and assisting them in the publishing process. In recent years, book publishers too have drastically cut down their editorial staffs, leaving authors with less guidance.
“My love of words, their sound and meaning, their origins is Greek and Latin, French and German, Anglo- and Saxon, fascinate me and keep me constantly interested in translating from ancient Greek and Latin to English or editing in English,” he said.
Reflecting on his role as an editor, Ottaway recalled a quote from Elizabeth Hardwick, one of the founding editors of the New York Review of Books. “She said, “Making a living is nothing. The great difficulty is making a point, making a difference with words,’” he said. “I’m trying to help my good writer friends make a difference with well-chosen, carefully edited words.”
Each of the works Ottaway has edited embodies a different theme. His first job was overseeing Elias Kulukundis’ The Amorgos Conspiracy, in which the author recounts rescuing his father-in-law from Greece. He worked with Christopher Santos, a New York City firefighter and 9/11 first responder who worked until Christmas to help recover bodies of victims (The published work was then distributed to every firehouse in New York City). Ottaway’s interest in Greek led him to editing general interest trade books on historical figures. He also worked with Romanian novelist Norman Manea and with Hemanta Mishra, the leading wildlife biologist in Nepal, among others.
Ottaway was asked a question about the recently announced sale of the Dow Jones dailies, including the Middletown paper, to Fortress Investment Group, an investment management company that manages $54.6 billion in funds, including a considerable holding in distressed properties. Ottaway, quoting a Fortress official as saying the company intended to squeeze greater profitability from the newspaper investment, was not hopeful.
Ottaway, the driving force behind SUNY New Paltz’s Ottaway Visiting Professorship in Journalism, whose most recent participants include NPR correspondent Deborah Amos and Andrew Lehren, an investigative reporter from The New York Times.
Ottaway’s presentation marked the seventh year of the Dennis O’Keefe memorial lecture series. O’Keefe, a long-term staff member of the Sojourner Truth Library, impacted the lives of New Paltz students, staff and community with his positive spirit. Previous lecturers included Gerald Benjamin, director of the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach and Reva Wolf, professor of art history at SUNY New Paltz, among others.
Despite his retirement, the 75-year-old Ottaway yearns to create more milestones as he and his wife Mary travel their golden years. “My motto, taken by Solon, is ‘I grow old always learning new things,’” he said.
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