Putting on the style

The
Scottish
Reviewers I
R D Kernohan is incandescent – in a manner of speaking

A journalists' pub, where puffs of indignant smoke were once commonplace. Photograph by Islay McLeod

'America's 44th president hopes to visit Scotland's largest city but may fly into Scotland's busiest airport.' I make up that intro for an imaginary story about Barack Obama visiting Glasgow but landing at Edinburgh.
     I wish journalists would avoid journalese and observe the rules that used to be laid down in good house-style books or off-line English dictionaries. Journalese has moved on from the days when 'the leather eluded the custodian'. One of its new styles is the one which (as in my intro) declines to name places and persons properly until well down the story. But its commonest form is the use of in-words and phrases when they are already on the way out or the degradation, through over-use, of good words like 'incandescent' which are only effective if kept good for rare occasions.
     I therefore decline to be incandescent about mere misspellings but I allow myself a puff of indignant smoke when they display uncertainty about the meaning of some words and differences between others. What worries me is that some misuses are so common and repeated as to imply (but not infer) that no-one is aware of them. Are there no style-books any more to warn of the traps set for the use of loath, loathe, licences and licensing, practice and practising?
     I assume that most newspapers I read no longer have proof-readers. They've been replaced by that false, even treacherous friend the spell-check. I write just after reading that chief constables and drugs advisers are discussing 'a heroine problem'. When you read your own paper proofs you are always liable to see what you meant to write. It's even worse if you just skim over the screen.
     But I sometimes wonder if editing is going the way of proof-reading. People of my age lap up obituaries, but can no-one impose order and even a bit of objectivity? I don't grudge the generous space given to jazz trumpeters, left-wing activists, and run-of-the-mill footballers, but I worry about too much gush and even the occasional bit of malice getting through. There is also much untidiness, especially when the obituary of someone really important (I am thinking of a centenarian Scottish rugby internationalist)  rehashes what has already appeared as a long news report and then turns up again in a terser version a day or two later in the sports section.
     A final grouse. Long ago in the Scottish Review (how splendid that it has survived long enough for me to use that phrase) I lamented the limited grasp among modern journalists of the military and ecclesiastical dialects of English. The military situation is as bad as ever. I saw the old 51st (Highland) Division described the other day as a 'regiment'; and in the papers that I read no-one bothered when reporting gallantry awards to translate the Ministry of Defence's numbers for Scottish battalions into the proud regimental names. However there are now very few errors in church matters. That is because very few church matters (other than controversies and scandals involving sex) are now reported.
     But I have more sympathy for younger journalists than these less than solemn meditations may suggest. Some are being overworked through newspaper expansion on to the internet. Some are being sacked. Some have been exposed to that occasional refuge of cowardly management, a reorganisation which involves people applying for jobs they are already doing and where their strengths and weaknesses are well known. And all must be confused by the paradox (the word is overworked but valid here) between anxiety about their industry's future and the certainty of further media expansion. It will be led by the internet and digital TV but will leave scope for what is best as well as what is most popular in print journalism.
     I don't suggest good journalism is defined by good spelling, good house-rules, and even the avoidance of journalese. But it does involve a sense of responsibility and a professional pride in which these have a part.