I love electoral politics, especially the clangorous and noisy type in my adopted home of the United States; in my native India, and almost anywhere else that the electorate can freely express its preferences through the ballot box (or electronic voting machines). When I was a reporter for the New York Times and, later, a columnist for the erstwhile Newsweek International and a contributor to Forbes, I got occasional opportunities to follow candidates on the campaign trail.
That was more than three decades ago. I have pined for those days. They were devoid of mobile phones and email, and editors required you to file stories at the end of the day for publication in next morning's edition. I still recall how furiously reporters would bang out stories as the candidate's plane went from place to place. Though everybody had punishing deadlines, I still recall the camaraderie among journalistic competitors.
In that spirit, I wish that I could have attended the Republican Convention in Cleveland that formally nominated Donald J. Trump on Thursday to run for President of the United States against Hillary Clinton, the Democrat whose own convention will open in Philadelphia on Monday. Even more, I wish that I could have been a reporter or columnist at those conventions.
But time moves on. Thirty years is a very long time ago. The very nature of daily journalism has changed on account of technology. These days, anyone with a smart phone can file a story. I know several bloggers and tweeters who make a tidy living off their kind of journalism.
In my time, various layers of copy editors served as a filter. That offered protection against factual and grammatical errors. I still believe that all writers - and especially journalists - need good editors.
The wondrous Maxwell Perkins shaped the output of several outstanding writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Many literary critics have asserted that were it not for Perkins, these literary giants wouldn't have gained their stature; at the very least, their work would have read differently. In the legends of literature, it's said that when it came to writers like Wolfe, Perkins typically would throw away half of any novel submitted to him.
I'm not a novelist, but I have always acknowledged the important journalistic tutelage I received from editors at the New York Times, Newsweek International and Forbes. I valued their judgment about what worked and what didn't.
One of those editors was the late Alben Philips at the Times. His counsel is seared on my mind all these many years after he first enunciated it to me: "Always keep the reader in mind. Always make it easy for the reader to absorb what you write. Your mistakes will be remembered but not the good parts of your articles."
I confess to not being very familiar with editors at today's journalistic institutions, particularly the digital ones. But I follow their journalism regularly. And however protective and supportive I might want to be of my brethren, I would be less than honest if I didn't express dismay and astonishment at the errors that show up consistently.
I do understand that today's journalists need to file 24/7 on account of the velocity of global developments. Perhaps that may not allow sufficient time nor space for copy editors to scrutinize the humongous volume of material that pours into contemporary newsrooms.
But the mistakes that keep presenting themselves detract from one's enjoyment and assimilation of journalism.
That's why I laud editors and fact checkers at legacy publications such as The New Yorker. Even stories filed on tight deadlines for the fabled magazine's website are subject to the strictest editing. One of the magazine's editors told me, "There's no such thing as a 'good mistake.'"