Peter Bruce talks about being a columnist in this latest edition of Podcasts From the Edge.
He approves of the notion that while columnists are nominally journalists, they are driven by their own opinions and a powerful drive to grab the attention of their audience.
Citing columnist Matthew Parris of The Times in London, he describes writing a column for a living as “striking poses which will only convince others if you yourself can temporarily inhabit the belief … [you] take a brief, elbow ambiguity aside, and go full pelt”. It also means trouble.
Bruce reads a letter about him in the Sunday Times from international relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor in which she suggests the editors remove him. She felt, after months of praise directed at her, that she was on the wrong end of a column he wrote a week earlier.
His response? “Well done, minister, fire the journalist. You’d be perfectly comfortable among your friends in Moscow and Tehran.”
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