Writer couldn’t read his own book

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from Jan. 30, 2004. For those who don’t know, Jack was a frequent visitor to Eastern Europe and Asia. He spent various trips teaching journalists in those areas of the world where freedom of the press was a new, an often imperiled, proposition. He wrote a book to help the locals after he left.

It’s done.

Finally.

I hope.

Actually, it’s done for about the third time.

Last spring, sitting in a faux Irish pub in Almaty, Kazakhstan, my friend George Krimsky made three requests.

George, an old Associated Press foreign correspondent and one of the founders of the International Center for Journalists, these days carries the title of “senior print media coordinator for Central Asia.”

It sounds impressive, but it won’t buy you a cup of coffee.

George’s requests: First, that I’d consider returning to Central Asia in the fall to do a seminar in Tajikistan.

Second, that’d I’d try my hand at writing a newspaper management handbook for the region.

And third, that one of these days I’d consider applying for a Knight Fellowship to return to that part of the world for more than a couple of weeks.

Before our dinner orders had been taken, I’d agreed to the first. That’s what took me out of the country in late September.

By the time our food was served, I’d — with some hesitation — agreed to the second. And as we walked home through the dark and occasionally dangerous streets, I told him I’d think long and hard about the third. File it under, “we’ll see,” I told George.

But it was the second commitment which turned out to be a bigger challenge than I could imagine.

How does one start to write a training handbook for such different economic and political realities? George said he was looking for a version of my seminars put down on paper, but that description didn’t help much.

Finally, by mid-summer, with a book contract signed and a tentative deadline set, I sat down to write.

And I struggled mightily.

To try to help me out, George e-mailed me a copy of a reporting handbook he’d written. It was so basic it made “see Spot run” look like Shakespeare. But it gave me the starting point I needed.

I started with you, the reader. You’re this newspaper’s number one customer.

Without readers, we’re out of business. From there, I went on to write about newspaper’s other customers, advertisers, folks who use advertising to reach our audience of readers to promote their businesses.

Like George’s reporting handbook, it sounds a lot like “see Spot run” from an American standpoint. But it’s the essential building block of an independent, self-sustaining press. It also proved to be the starting point for the rest of the handbook’s contents.

When the end of October rolled around, I was pooped, but I had met the deadline. Folks in Washington read it and gave a thumb’s up. A check came in the mail. And all was well with the world.

Except that three weeks later, George e-mailed me that he thought the handbook needed to be re-written.

Sez who? I muttered to myself as I e-mailed back.

For a grumpy week or so, we traded zingers back and forth on the project, almost putting our friendship at risk. Though I could have told George the manuscript had been accepted and paid for, we decided to seek another opinion.

Unfortunately, the third party — Svetlana Kulikova, head of the journalism department at the American University of Central Asia — agreed with George. The thing needed a re-write, not so much for content as for “tone,” she said.

As George put it, I was coming across as “cranky and impatient” in the handbook. Imagine that, I grumbled, me “cranky and impatient.”

I knew I was in trouble when my daughters nodded in agreement. “That’s an accurate description sometimes, Dad,” said Emily when she was home for the holidays.

Out-numbered, I went back to the manuscript.

And, sure enough, they were right. Certain phrases were as jarring as an out-of-tune piano. Some were re-written. Some were jettisoned completely. A couple of sections were moved around, and a couple of examples were added.

But now, with the exception of a few minor tweaks here and there to help the translators, it’s done. If all goes, it will be published later this year in Russian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tajik.

Just my luck to finally get a book published and not be able to read a word of it.