Across the pond

I omitted to mention in my blog this morning on Jim Naughtie’s eloquent curtain raiser from Washington on the Inauguaration, that Naughtie has told me several times how much he owes his understanding of US politics and US journalism to the Laurence Stern Fellowship hosted by City University, London. Naughtie was the second winner (in 1981) of this fellowship which sends a young British journalist to work at the Washington Post for three months each summer.

Another grateful fellow (1992) is Jonathan Freedland, a columnist on The Guardian, who wrote that newspaper’s splash this morning, ‘Magical spell that will open new American era’. It is the kind of headline that makes professional journalists despair of The Guardian; it would be a rotten headline even on the features pages.

But, presumably, that headline was written by a sub-editor.

By contrast, Freedland’s opening sentences, though too lyrical to please hard-nosed news journalists, that conveys the meaning of what is after all the most important transfer of power, for the US and the planet, so far this century.

Today a magic spell will be performed. A man who 12 weeks ago was a mere political candidate will be transformed with the incantation of a few words, before a vast crowd and a television audience in the hundreds of millions if not billions, into the head of state, even the embodiment, of the most powerful nation on earth.

It is an act of political alchemy that happens every time a new president is inaugurated, but rarely has the moment been as anticipated as this one. Washington DC, usually a city of strait-laced, sober-suited types has acquired the atmosphere of a child’s bedroom in the first hours of Christmas morning. There are snow flurries outside, tacky decorations everywhere – and the resolve to wake up early, so as not to miss a moment of the great day.

This is the link to the full story on The Guardian website.

But the most appreciative of Stern fellows is Lionel Barber (1985), today the editor of the Financial Times. The first time he applied he was turned down by the then editor of the Post, Ben Bradlee, who was sceptical that someone, who had no experience other than financial writing, could survive on the national desk in Washington, dealing with the messy and complex world of US politics and writing about it in language that readers of the Post, many of whom skip the business pages, would warm to.

Undaunted he applied again and won and made such an impression during his three months there, he won a US posting shortly after his return and went on to be a highly successful North American editor.

Interested readers and potential applicants can read the history of the Stern fellowship and details of its winners by following this link to another page on my blog.

This year’s winner will have a wonderful opportunity to witness one of the most critical years in the history of the planet. So this article must rate as special pleading, because I have helped to select the fellows since the beginning in 1980. Nevertheless I challenge any journalist to make a case suggesting that it is not a wonderful opportunity.

Young British journalists get your applications in. You have nothing to lose but the company of your wife, children and friends for three or four months.

(Applications to a.r.mckane at city.ac.uk.)