american telegraph

I like the Telegraph's Toby Harnden, not least because he was generous enough to blurb my book, and more importantly because at his best he offers an independent-minded perspective on American politics that the UK press often miss. But Toby's very opinionated pieces - presented as news rather than comment by his employer - play an inside game that most British readers will be baffled by.

Today's column is a case in point: the first two paragraphs don't report on reality, but instead are all about what a straw man he calls the "Washington cognescenti" think about the McChrystal affair. They're full of implied inverted commas (Wonderful Week, Ultimate Cool Cat, etc) and strongly flavoured by sarcasm and contempt. Before he tells us what's really going on, Toby is very concerned to let us know how a certain conspiracy of dunces is reporting on it. Before telling us what's going on, he wants us to know - a little too much, perhaps - that he stands apart from his peers.

There are two potential problems with this approach. The first is that if you spend too much time kicking against (what you perceive to be) a distorted conventional wisdom, your views inevitably get distorted in the opposite direction. There are several points at which today's column parts company with reality but I'll pick a couple. Toby says that Obama won the Democratic nomination on the back of anti-war rhetoric. In fact, he employed anti-Iraq war rhetoric (and he was always pro-Afghanistan). This really isn't a fine distinction. Second, he argues that Obama's decision reveals him as weak and thin-skinned, and that the man he's picked to fill the slot is more popular than he is and therefore unsackable; not the action of someone either weak or thin-skinned, I wouldn't have thought.

The larger problem is that most British readers don't care about Toby's noble battle with elite Washington opinion, which is itself a Washington game, or at least an American one. Jargon like "Beltway groupthink" goes over the head of most Brits. What they'd prefer from their Sunday newspaper, I suspect, is clear-eyed, perceptive reporting on American politics and policy.

But here we come to an interesting question. Perhaps Toby and his employers don't have British readers in mind when they publish pieces like this. After all, a large proportion (50%?) of the Telegraph's online readership will be Americans. Toby's anti-Washington rhetoric may go over the head of Brits but it's perfectly formulated to generate hits from American conservatives (indeed he borrows his tone  - the heavy sarcasm, the knee-jerk derision of Obama's motives and personality, the anger at "elites" - from US conservative blogs and politicians). His comment sections are often dominated by enthusiastic Americans.

One of the strategies that British newspapers will increasingly employ, as digital become dominant over  print, is a more aggressive targeting of eyeballs (and thus advertising revenue) from abroad. British newspapers are becoming global brands, and their smartest writers are adapting their styles to reflect this.

Comments

[ejoch]

Harnden's assumptions about the reader's knowledge of Beltway games doesn't bother me; it's better than british writing on US politics that treats the reader like an idiot and explains who everyone is for 5 paragraphs. What bothers me about Harnden is the level of vitriol- it undermines all his writing. And I say that as someone who's inclined to agree with him on a lot of things. But if a writer loses all sense of detachment it's a bit hard to take seriously their analysis (in contrast to say, Peggy Noonan- she makes an effort to write in a detached manner. Not to mention is a far better writer)