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Authors: Nora Ephron
Tags: #Biographical, #Essays, #Nonfiction, #Retail
June, 1977
I started to write this column about the new special sections in the
New York Times
. I had a nice lead for it, and I had a funny story to tell, and I had a few points to make about the Cuisinarting of America. I went over to the
Times
and had an amazing interview with a
Times
business executive who talked about something called psychographics. “One of the biggest psychographics,” he said, “is self-improvement and self. Self is very strong.” I also had a problem with the piece. About a year ago, I wrote something about the influence of city magazines on journalism, about the you-are-what-you-buy syndrome, and I didn’t want to repeat myself. Oh, well. It really doesn’t matter, because I decided not to write that column after all.
When I started writing a media column a couple of years ago, my primary interest was not to become a media critic—and I hope I have managed to succeed at not becoming one—but simply to find some subject to write about in order to get back into the front of
Esquire
magazine. I like being in the front of this magazine. It’s nice up here. The subject of media was suggested over a lunch, and it seemed like a good idea. I could write
about newspapers and magazines and television, and occasionally go out and do some reporting, and it might work. The reporting was the easy part. Journalists are wonderful sources. They are wonderful sources on the record, and they are even more wonderful sources off the record.
Those of us who work in this profession are very lucky, and we know it. I have known it ever since the day in 1963 when I walked into the
New York Post
city room to start work as a reporter: This is what I have always wanted, and here I am, and it’s wonderful. I think this all the time. I am giddy about working in this profession. Every so often I hear someone complaining about how movies like
The Front Page
have tended to romanticize journalism, and I don’t understand what they’re talking about. I grew up under the influence of a remake of
The Front Page—His Girl Friday
, in which Rosalind Russell played the Hildy Johnson part. I grew up wanting to be Hildy Johnson, and as it turns out, Hildy Johnson is someone worth wanting to grow up to be.
In recent years, however, there have been some changes. One of them has to do with celebrity. Journalists are now celebrities. Part of this has been caused by the ability and willingness of journalists to promote themselves. Part of this has been caused by television: the television reporter is often more famous than anyone he interviews. And part of this has been caused by the fact that the celebrity pool has expanded in order to provide names to fill the increasing number of column inches currently devoted to gossip; this is my own pet theory, and I use it to explain all sorts of things, one of whom is Halston.
The point, though, is that the extent to which a column
like this contributes to this makes me extremely uncomfortable; what’s more, this development of celebrity has been reinforced by a parallel change in journalism, a swing from highly impersonal “objective” reporting to highly personal “subjective” reporting. Last week, while preparing for the column on the
New York Times
I decided not to write, I reread the last few months of the “Weekend,” “Living” and “Home” sections of the
Times
, and I began to overdose on the first person singular pronoun. I am tired of the first person singular pronoun. I am tired of reading about how this journalist serves her guests dinner on the bed and about how that journalist has a Shetland pony with a nervous tic. I am also tired of my own first person singular pronoun. “Self is very strong,” said the
Times
business executive. Yes indeed. I figure if I stop writing a column for a while, it will reduce the number of first person singular pronouns in circulation by only a hair; still, it seems like the noblest thing I can think of to do this week.
David Eisenhower once said something that made me realize that he could not possibly be as silly as he seems. “Journalists,” he said, “aren’t nearly as interesting as they think they are.” Actually, he’s not quite right. Journalists
are
interesting. They just aren’t as interesting as the things they cover. It is possible to lose sight of this.
I would like not to.
July, 1977
There is really no way for me to thank the many friends and colleagues who have helped me in the course of over two years of writing about the media. But there are a few friends who were consistently there: Barbara and Richard Cohen, Helen Dudar, Delia Ephron, Marty Nolan, Liz Smith, and, at
Esquire
, Geoffrey Norman, Don Erickson, Lee Eisenberg, Pat Thorpe, and Michaela Williams. To my agent Lynn Nesbit and my editor Bob Gottlieb, my gratitude and love.