Personal reportage and the drinking journalist: a timeless conundrum

As readers of this modest column will know, I am no stranger to the holding cells.

Not through malicious criminal activity, you understand, simply due to the vagaries of human existence, the state of dagga legislation and sometimes the logistical unpleasantries of divorce and separation.

I can confirm that the holding cells are not a nice place to spend an evening or a weekend. However, they do give rise to some useful insights.

They also tend to teach one a certain sheepish humility, and imbue you with a determination to do better at life.

So I was interested to see a fellow writer emerging from a night or two in temporary custody. Charged with writerly motivation, he wrote a piece about the misunderstandings and injustices that had seen him arrested and incarcerated.

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There was something about a night at a restaurant, a significant bill, a shortage of cash and an arrest by police with some very tight handcuffs.

The piece made for interesting reading, and even stirred some outrage in me, with its accounts of injustice, unfair detention and cash that went missing.

Coming from a seasoned writer and journalist, though, the piece fell into the category of personal journalism. When you write about yourself in a news environment, you are stepping out of character, as it were. Breaching the third wall.

This can certainly have value, particularly where one is intimately involved in a story, and your involvement becomes relevant to the narrative.

Getting arrested on a boozy night out does not quite fall into this category.

It falls, unfortunately, into the category of leveraging your journalistic network to vent your feelings of shock and righteous indignation after getting arrested while drunk, perhaps when you don’t yet have the story straight in your own mind.

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The writer in question, highly respected investigative journalist Jacques Pauw, later published a clarification piece that partially retracted of some of the first story’s implications.

It was all a bit embarrassing, as these things tend to be. There have subsequently been ventings on the topic by other writers about white male entitlement and privilege among journalists. There is certainly an element of that, but it seemed to boil down to people who have never been to jail being outraged at someone who had never been to jail being outraged at going to jail. There may well be a crime involved too, who knows.

As a former reporter for The Herald in Port Elizabeth, I have another reference: the Saturday morning moerings!

These were news stories we were sometimes called upon to cover if we were on Saturday shift. Invariably they involved a man who had been punched in the face by a bouncer while out on the jol the night before. Usually, he would wake up, still drunk, with a massive black eye and come to the newspaper with a scoop about the previous night’s unjust assault.

“I did nothing,” says punched man, 24.

This would be the headline, above a heavy-lidded snap of the guy with his shiner.

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When we contacted the venue we would find out that the man had in fact been squeezing people’s bums and vomiting in potplants before causing a fight with a bouncer and collecting his black eye.

Before embarking on the story, we were always at pains to ask the complainant whether he really wanted to make a story of this. Would he not rather come back on Monday, once the dust has settled and we have all the facts?

Sheepish humility has its role in life. It’s the flipside of righteous indignation.

When considering whether to engage in personal reportage – particularly if booze is involved – it is similarly often wise to “wait until Monday, when we know more”.

I am of course unable to follow my own advice because I spent 10 years working as a professional alcoholic and drunken stunt man for FHM magazine. My literary output was mostly about streaking, lighting my farts, and trying to drink non-stop for 14 hours (achieved). So my ship of journalistic integrity has largely sailed.

Some people’s ships remain firmly at harbour though. A navy of talented investigative reporting ability ready to be deployed for the betterment of society.

Long may they serve us.

Like the Monday moerings, embarrassing boozy incidents tend to fade from memory. We dust ourselves off and return to service, armed with a slightly sharpened sense of our own occasional silliness.

And that is a useful awareness to have.

Hagen Engler.

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