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4 December 2024

How to spot an excellent editor

As with a good coach in sports, a measure of benign ambiguity will always be in the mix.

By Ed Smith

Thirteen years ago, Jason Cowley – then the new-ish editor of this magazine, now standing down after 16 years at the helm – asked me for a coffee. At the time, I’d written more for the Spectator. How about a column in the New Statesman? A proper journalist, at that moment, would have had a pitch ready for exactly how they would approach things – subjects, opinions, terrain, grooves on the track.

Instead, we mostly talked about what I didn’t want to do. Not this, not that; not too much sport, but not none; something different, without knowing quite what. It’s not always clear what’s the hinterland and what’s the primary focus; perhaps it shouldn’t be. Jason took out an elegant New Statesman postcard and wrote “Left Field” in black fountain pen across the top. Yes, something like that.

Like a coach in sport, it’s hard to pin down what an editor does, let alone how they do it. A good coach has a positive effect; that’s about all we know for sure. But people who are good at helping us to do things better often guard their methods – especially from themselves. Like any form of creativity, drawing out potential in others needs to be protected from prying over-analysis.

So what follows – my individual take on writing for Jason – is both unusually personal and also impertinent. Because I might easily be mistaken. But that’s all part of it. Because, even though it’s hard to define a good editor (or coach), a measure of benign ambiguity is always in the mix.

Just as the concept of “de-risking” gets ever more fashionable, the more obvious it becomes that taking risks is the essential precondition for anything worth doing. Everyone wants to write – or play sport – for a decision-maker who is sticking their neck out. Caution and courage are both contagious: which do you want to encourage?

The way to embolden people to take risks is to take a risk yourself. Not only at the outset by taking a chance on them, but as a continual creative process. The most reciprocal form of risk is trust, expressed beautifully in not wasting people’s time. Editors support and nurture creativity by protecting writers from having to spell out precisely what they are going to argue before they write it. Second time round is always flatter and sadder. Which is why being forced to pitch anything too hard kills it before it’s born. Our best ideas emerge if not quite by accident then certainly via obliquity.

Just because lots of people are writing about something doesn’t mean you should. “The peg for the piece is…” I once said about a topical subject, to which Jason replied, “I hate peg journalism.” That’s what I’d always wanted to hear but no one had ever said to me before. Another time, I predicted a longer piece would be 2,000 words. “It will come out at the length it’s meant to be,” came the reply. Don’t write too much for the moment, don’t write to a formula. We find ourselves, as often as not, by not losing ourselves.

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Political and ideological labels aren’t useful because they are mostly devoid of meaning. A couple of times, in the early days, I had a go at defining “what” I was. Jason was discouraging of the idea. “Right”, “left”, even “centrist” – starting there and trying to discover anything useful is the wrong way around. Perhaps the most significant constituency – the one you’re hoping to write for – hasn’t made up its mind yet, either.

Writing isn’t easy to coax or teach, but it can be usefully nudged when it goes off track. Here sport and writing are similar. The best cricket coach I knew unlocked good form by having a more imaginative comprehension of the player I could be at my best. And when I was out of form (which happened often), he could shift me towards that version of myself. As a consequence, I found him maddeningly demanding, even when he was absent and coaching elsewhere. As with great teachers, he set the bar very high – in sight, but just out of reach. You could outdo yourself even while falling short.

But the crucial and surprising point is that the coach never spelled it out, not too literally. He left you with the impression of the player you could be. But becoming it required imagination and realisation on your part, too. At a deeper level, you had to become your own coach – and have the conversation with yourself – to get the full benefit of his coaching.

In exactly the same way, Jason – as only the most articulate people can – knows how to exploit open-endedness and turn it into a creative critique. If you think you can use words to powerful effect, perhaps the next level of impact is not quite using words.

I took a break from the New Statesman to become selector for the England cricket team. Selecting a team of cricketers has some similarities with assembling a team of writers: who’s next to who, how their voices interact and correspond, a sensibility rather than an ideology, differing styles within shared principles.

There is a difference, of course. Among writers, apartness is the norm rather than the exception, so the team is lightly held together. But we outsiders also need a place to call home – more than our individualism likes to admit. And those of us who have enjoyed the privilege of being ourselves in our work owe a huge debt to the people and places that provided the context and the opportunity, to be creatively associated but never bound.  

[See also: South Korea defies return to martial law]

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