LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter XI

       Conclusion

       Table of Contents

      It is not part of my scheme to deal with newspaper offices, and so disturb the illusions of the aspirant concerning the "glamour" of those places. To those who are outside them and would fain be inside, a newspaper office is a retreat where, amid cigarette smoke and the rumour of continual event, clever people write what they like when they like, while others, only one degree less gifted, correct, by means of cabalistic signs, proofs, with the rapidity of lightning and the omniscience of gods, exchanging at intervals brilliant repartee with the beings who write. Round these are supposed to hover boys, compositors, porters, famous contributors and timid aspirants, and in the underground distance is the roar and vibration of vast steam machines which disgorge papers more quickly than one can count.

      The reality is perhaps different from this picture--how different the aspirant will realise when she has at last obtained a position in an office. Having obtained such a position, she may congratulate herself that the most trying part of the apprenticeship is over. Henceforward she will be among those who can put her in the right way. She will no longer need the assistance of a handbook; it is only the unattached beginner, working (so pathetically) without guidance and in the dark, who needs that.

      One thing, however, may be said about the newspaper office. It is as strictly a place of business as a draper's shop or a bank. Many women-journalists fail to recognise this fact. They do not see that in an office the relations of people must be first and foremost official; that social considerations, and even considerations of animal comfort, must be put aside in order that Business may have a clear road.

      I have met in newspaper offices the sprightly woman who martyrises herself because she must work in a room with other women whose dullness and primness jar on her vivacities; the woman who is aggrieved because winter is warmed for her by a gas stove instead of an open fire; the woman who feels insulted because male associates do not accord her the elaborate ritual of deference to which she has been accustomed in drawing-rooms; the woman who arrives late because she is tired, and blandly offers to "make up the time at night;" the woman who says, "I forgot to do so and so, I'm so sorry," and stands like a spoiled child smilingly expectant of forgiveness; and other women of a similar kind.

      A vast number of women engaged in journalism, I verily believe, secretly regard it as a delightful game. The tremendous seriousness of it they completely miss. On no other assumption can the attitude of many women-journalists towards their work be explained. Therefore, my final words to the outside contributor, as I leave her on the threshold of an office, are these: Journalism is not a game, and in journalism there are no excuses.