Alan Rusbridger

I play the piano so I raced through this book at (for me) breakneck speed, because there was so much I could relate to that mirrors my own studies. For example, that it’s simply impossible to play challenging pieces with any sort of fluency without huge chunks of memorization. You simply have to look at your hands and not the score to have any hope of executing the tricky bits. Also, the endless decision/indecision about what is the best fingering. Then there is the fact that Alan, like myself, never learned scales properly as a kid, which is a real hindrance to technical progress.

On the other hand, I came away from the story as a whole with conflicted feelings. Yes, it is admirable to attempt to learn an extremely difficult and canonical piece (Chopin's Ballade #1, G Minor), but why set an arbitrary time deadline? This is music that demands time and attention to bring to performance level, particularly for an “amateur”. Would it have been all that bad to take an extra year or two, or five? Yes, he’s in his mid-fifties, at the time of writing, but come on. And it must be nice to own both a Steinway and a Fazioli, and have easy access to some of the finest pianists in the world so that he can pick their brains about the Ballade. Actually, these parts were pretty interesting. As is Alan’s chronicles of his day job - Editor in Chief of one of the UK’s premier newspapers, the Guardian. Suffice it to say he is extremely busy in his day job and doesn’t have a lot of time to spend practicing. All the more reason to take more time.

I definitely felt for him when he relates the story of his first attempt to perform the Ballade at “piano camp”, precisely one year after resolving to play it. It’s a disaster, and I couldn’t help thinking of all the easier (and perhaps no less beautiful) Chopin repertoire he could have learned and played very well at the camp, during that time period. He did get some great advice from the guest teacher however, which sets him on the path of his TRIUMPHANT performance of the Ballade for selected family and friends some four months later. Spoiler - he gets through it pretty well. So very good for him, and the inspiration he may be giving to anyone who really wants to go for something really, really hard, but I won't be doing what he did because:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFNl4roGlI
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The veteran Guardian news editor's thoughts on news media and how they work in a post-print world, in the form of a set of sixty or so short essays arranged, for no obvious reason, alphabetically from "ACCURACY" to "ZOOMERS". Most of it is aimed at helping either the reading public or would-be editors and journalists to make sense of what we see, but it's spiced up by the occasional bit of back-stabbing Fleet Street reminiscence.

There's a lot of quite sensible advice about making ourselves aware of the way what we read may have been shaped by the private interests of proprietors, the commercial interests of advertisers, and the career ambitions of the people who write it, as well as thoughts on how those considerations might be taken out of the loop. Needless to say, he approves of the Guardian's "moral-pressure-paywall" model, although he has his doubts about whether it will be a model that can last through the next big shifts in the industry, whatever they turn out to be. He's also surprisingly positive about the quite different ways other news organisations have found to finance their internet journalism — cross-subsidy, sponsored content, and even the MailOnline's highly profitable showbiz (non-)news factory ("Sidebar of Shame" as it's known in the industry). But on the whole this is stuff anyone interested enough in journalism to be reading this book will know about already.

One thing that did catch my attention was Rusbridger's focus on what turns out to be a surprisingly thin line between outstanding investigative reporting and relentless pushing of unsubstantiated claims. He cites quite a number of case studies of award-winning reporters who ended their careers in ignominy after doubt was cast on their uncanny ability to find stories where other journalists couldn't. The monster-ego always seems to be more vulnerable than the team of equals to self-delusion, fraud, or being seduced by evil dictators.

Interesting, but a bit patchy.… (more)

This is a powerful, important, and very well written book about newspapers, journalism, and the modern world. The deep dive chapter on the Edward Snowden story is important and compelling and I really enjoyed the early parts which tracked the history of The Guardian newspaper and Mr. Rusbridger's career. I feel like he tries to do a few too many things in the book and there is a long chapter about a couple of wealthy brothers who buy a rival paper that gets too deep for me. I understand the point though and it certainly is easy for me to contrast their horrible stewardship with the way Jeff Bezos has managed the Washington Post. I was intrigued to follow some of the libel cases he was involved in before Britain modified their laws somewhat and it is edifying to read about what life is like for an honest newspaper without the protection of our First Amendment. I think this is true of all times, but our current situation really cries out for great journalism.… (more)