Lyons Calls for Revision of Standards in Newswriting

Journalism is hobbled by its own conventions," Louis Lyons, curator of Nieman Fellowships, said last night in Boston Public Library before an audience of over 100.

Modern newspaper practises of trying to get everything into the first sentence and of listing fasts without attempting to explain their significance diminish the informativeness of newspapers and often mislead the reader, Lyons asserted.

Time Magazine is a denial of the stock retort of editors that you can't give the information behind the bare facts within limited space, Lyons said.

If Time's style were stripped of its opinionated words, he continued, it would be much more valuable to newspaper readers than present journalistic methods.

Need Informed Reporters

The trend away from superficiality would require reporters to be better informed than many of them are now, Lyons said. It would also rule out of journalism many young men who get newspaper jobs merely "to learn about life from the inside," he stated.

"Actually," Lyons said, "you can learn more about life by sitting in a court room one whole day than by reporting trials for years just to telephone the facts to the editor by 11:50."

Lyous noted that "the telephone is the vein of modern journalism."