When Nick met Harry

You can spend a lot of time thinking about the things you’ve lost – nostalgia is at its most potent when you see yourself at the centre of the action. The colours are at their most vivid, the sense of time past at its keenest and that sorrow that only comes from knowing it is a destination forever closed to you now is unmistakeable.

I often feel that way when I recall my first three years in journalism. It was, in all honesty, not the easiest time. A contemporary human resources manager would have been appalled at what my colleagues and I had to put up with – and what some dished out - but they would also probably struggle to understand how we processed it, learned from it and thrived. (To be fair, not everyone managed that equally and that tells you something about the corrosive nature of the workplace.)

Nonetheless, the memories still come in to view on a regular basis, mostly positive and often character-building. It happened again with the news of Harold Evans’ death. Evans was a doyen – in the true sense of the word – of journalism, the campaigning editor of The Sunday Times who was sacrificed on the altar of Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the title after a debilitating printers’ strike had eroded the paper’s bottom line.

My first exposure to Evans was a book in a series he wrote about a journalist’s skills, from reporting to sub-editing. My first editor had the set and would loan particular volumes out to young reporters with the intention of educating them in how to become a half-decent hack. I suspect it also salved his conscience about providing some ‘legitimate’ training for his junior staff. Nowadays, you’d go to university. I’d left uni six months earlier with a bachelor of arts in political science and history. I was a copyboy for four weeks and then a cadet. Journalism seemed sort of connected to what I studied but I knew very little about it, let alone how to do it.

The dust covers on Evans’ books were pretty shop soiled and the pages themselves showed the odd trace of sauce deposited from a cadet’s late night burger or dim sim. But the clarity of the explanation was a revolutionary insight for me, who associated good writing with truckloads of adjectives, meandering clauses and the passive voice. Even now, it feels like Evans explained what my job required with the kind of distinction afforded to the view from a clean window – I could survey a landscape with a new certainty of understanding. After that, my memory lets me down – I can’t recall if I worked my way through the series of books: I do know I seemed to have the sub-editing book for an inordinate amount of time, perhaps for the reason that my copy needed a fair deal of sub-editing. (I suspect not much has changed!) I grasped the book on reporting hungrily, but it was in more demand and there were others who were deemed to need it more urgently. That was not a reflection of my burgeoning skill – more a reflection of the horror some of my colleagues engendered in our chief of staff, who wondered how it was possible to turn up at a council meeting and not return without at least one story.

Some years later when I was reporting in England, I bought Evans’ book on his tenure at The Sunday Times, entitled Good Times, Bad Times and the whole Fleet St culture came in to rich life. It made sense to me even as I became part of the changing newspaper world – it was 1985 and Murdoch was about to establish Wapping, creating a modern print site that was built on ending many of the excessive and occasionally inventive practices of the print unions that hobbled many newspapers. My first day on the job – in a small newspaper outfit in the Home Counties – coincided with strike action and I had to cross a picket line, something I’d never done in Australia and never needed to do. I was a long way from Kansas. My predicament, of course, had anything to do with Evans, who was flying in a different direction, marrying Tina Brown, and creating a career in the US that was almost as stellar, if less impactful, than the one he left in the UK. Perhaps Evans’ most important contribution to modern journalism was that he never railed against what the job had become. He was judicious in his criticism and forthright in his support for the continued application of good journalism as a vital part of democracy. His message was simple – keep digging and keep asking the questions.

I would be one of thousands of journalists who read this books. It was my only association with him but it was enough to help me, to give a sense of what was possible – to write clearly but also to write with verve, intelligence and perhaps, if you were lucky, to help make a difference.

The Observer’s excellent editorial celebrated the man by reflecting on the boy, quoting his high school reference:

     “Harold Evans is a boy with very lively intelligence, possessing powers of original thought along with a very retentive memory. He is perhaps too impetuous at present, but will outgrow that. He has won his success, because he never spares himself, and seldom flags in his interest. We shall miss his integrity and willing service.”

Was there ever a better description of what it takes to be a journalist? Lively intelligence, retentive memory, never sparing of yourself, integrity and willing service? I hope I achieved some of those things. I certainly tried. Thanks Harry.