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RHETORIC, POLITICS AND SOCIETY
A Gossip Politic
Edited by
Andrea McDonnell
Adam Silver
Rhetoric, Politics and Society
Series Editors
Alan Finlayson, University of East Anglia, Norfolk, UK
James Martin, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK
Kendall R. Phillips, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA
Rhetoric lies at the intersection of a variety of disciplinary approaches
and methods, drawing upon the study of language, history, culture and
philosophy to understand the persuasive aspects of communication in all
its modes: spoken, written, argued, depicted and performed. This series
presents the best international research in rhetoric that develops and
exemplifies the multifaceted and cross-disciplinary exploration of prac-
tices of persuasion and communication. It seeks to publish texts that
openly explore and expand rhetorical knowledge and enquiry, be it in
the form of historical scholarship, theoretical analysis or contemporary
cultural and political critique. The editors welcome proposals for mono-
graphs that explore contemporary rhetorical forms, rhetorical theories and
thinkers, and rhetorical themes inside and across disciplinary boundaries.
For informal enquiries, questions, as well as submitting proposals, please
contact the editors: Alan Finlayson: a.finlayson@uea.ac.uk James Martin:
j.martin@gold.ac.uk Kendall Phillips: kphillip@syr.edu
Andrea McDonnell · Adam Silver
Editors
A Gossip Politic
Editors
Andrea McDonnell Adam Silver
Communication Political Science and International
Providence College Relations
Providence, RI, USA Emmanuel College
Boston, MA, USA
ISSN 2947-5147 ISSN 2947-5155 (electronic)

Rhetoric, Politics and Society
ISBN 978-3-031-15118-7 ISBN 978-3-031-15119-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15119-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Acknowledgments
We are especially thankful for the efforts of the contributors, whose schol-
arship has brought this topic to life with rigor and spirit, and whose good
humor throughout the editorial process has made work on this project a
pleasure and a privilege.
We are grateful for the support from members of the editorial team
at Palgrave, especially Shreenidhi Natarajan, who helped see the book
through to completion.
We also wish to thank Zachary Lebreiro and Madison Suitor for their
diligence and assistance throughout the research process.
Special thanks to the Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Seminar Group,
whose innovative interdisciplinary spirit has fostered a number of the
projects contained in this volume, and to the Political Science depart-
ments at Providence College and Emmanuel College for their ongoing
support of our scholarly endeavors.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Andrea McDonnell and Adam Silver
Part I Gossip and the Press

2 The Omigod no! Notes on News Talk 11
Paddy Scannell
3 Talk as News on Television 27
Michael Higgins
4 The Celebrity Interview: Gossip, Empathy and News
in Oprah Winfrey’s CBS Interview with Meghan
Markle 43
Jin Shen and Martin Montgomery
Part II Gossip and the President

5 Hedda Hopper Meets JFK: Hollywood Gossip,
Right-Wing Politics, and the Kennedys 67
Jennifer Frost
6 “Enquiring Minds Want to Know”: President Bill
Clinton and the Blurring of News and Gossip 83
Jennifer Hopper
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 A Trickle-Down Effect of Foreign Policy on Domestic

Narratives: Populism and Trump’s Espousal
of Conspiracy and Gossip to “Make America Great
Again” 99
Prashant Rastogi
Part III Gossip and the Public

8 Media Framing of the Christine Blasey Ford
Testimony: The Influence of Gossip on Sexual
Violence Discourses 117
Madison A. Pollino
9 The Marriages of Celebrity Politicians: A Social
Semiotic Approach to How Commenters Affiliate
Around YouTube Gossip Videos 133
Olivia Inwood and Michele Zappavigna
10 Gossip on the Hill: Bonding, Bitching, and Politicians’
Home Style on Twitter 155
Index 177
Notes on Contributors
Frost Jennifer teaches US history at the University of Auckland, New

Zealand, and is the author of Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip
and American Conservatism.
Higgins Michael is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Media and
Communication at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. His research
focuses on the manner in which media and culture influences the polit-
ical realm. Recently, this has concentrated on the rise of aggressiveness
and conflict in media, including his book Belligerent Broadcasting (with
Angela Smith, 2017). Michael’s other books include Media and Their
Publics (2008), The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Culture
(2010) and The Language of Journalism (with Angela Smith, 2nd ed,
2020).
Hopper Jennifer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southern
Connecticut State University where she regularly teaches courses in
American Government, the US Presidency, Congress and the Legislative
Process, and Media & Politics. She is the author of Presidential Framing
in the 21st Century News Media: The Politics of the Affordable Care Act
(Routledge, 2017). Her scholarship has also appeared in White House
Studies, Social Science History, and the International Journal of Commu-
nication. Her research interests focus on political communication, the
presidency, and the US news media, particularly as they relate to health
care politics and policy.
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Inwood Olivia is a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of the Arts and Media
at the University of New South Wales. Her current research uses methods
in Systemic Functional Linguistics to explore issues of mis/disinformation
and deceptive communication on YouTube. In 2018, she graduated with
First Class Honours in Media, Culture, and Technology, writing her thesis
on blockchain technology start-ups from a social semiotic perspective. She
has research articles written with Associate Professor Michele Zappavigna
recently published in Discourse & Communication and Social Semiotics.
McDonnell Andrea is Associate Professor of Communication and
Director of the Communication Minor at Providence College, USA,
where her research examines the relationship between celebrity culture
and media audiences. She is the author of Reading Celebrity Gossip Maga-
zines (2014), and co-author, with Susan Douglas, of Celebrity: A history
of fame (2019). Her research has appeared in Psychology of Popular Media
Culture and Critical Studies in Media Communication and has been
featured in the New York Times, E! News, NPR, Buzzfeed, and the BBC.
Montgomery Martin is Emeritus Professor of Literary Linguistics at
the University of Macau, China, and Visiting Professor of Media and
Communication at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. He has
written widely on language and the media—especially on aspects of broad-
cast talk. His latest book is Language, Media, and Culture: The Key
Concepts, published by Routledge.
Pollino Madison A. is a Doctoral Student in Media and Communica-
tion at Bowling Green State University. Her research uses critical, queer,
and feminist frameworks to examine the role of culture in contempo-
rary discourses regarding gendered violence. She is interested in how
hegemonic representations of gender, race, and class influence societal
perceptions of gendered violence as well as one’s decision to disclose
their experiences in interpersonal relationships. She has published work
in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Education,
Feminist Media Studies, and Qualitative Inquiry.
Rastogi Prashant is a Doctoral Candidate at O.P. Jindal Global Univer-
sity, India, and a Geopolitical Risk Analyst for WoRisGo. His research
lies at the intersection of International Relations and Peace and Conflict
Studies with research areas including Conflict Resolution, Populism,
Rebel Communication, Terrorism, Public Diplomacy, and Foreign Policy.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
He also works extensively on Geopolitics, Business Continuity Plans, and

Information Warfare.
Scannell Paddy is Professor Emeritus in the University of Michigan’s
Department of Communication. He is a founding editor of Media,
Culture, and Society and author of numerous books including Media and
Communication, Television and the Meaning of Live, Why do People Sing?,
and Love and Communication.
Shen Jin received her Ph.D. degree in English linguistics in 2018 from
the University of Macau where she worked as a research assistant under
Prof. Martin Montgomery’s supervision. Her doctoral research examines
the use of interactional devices in The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her research
interests focus on discourse interactional sociolinguistics, conversation
analysis, and media discourse.
Silver Adam is Associate Professor of Political Science at Emmanuel
College, USA, where his research focuses on the American Political Party
Development, specifically the relationship between political elites and
the electorate on the crafting of campaign strategy. He is the author
of Partisanship and Polarization: American Party Platforms, 1840–1896
(forthcoming) and co-editor of Agitation with a Smile: Howard Zinn’s
Legacies and the Future of Activism (2014). His research has appeared
in American Nineteenth Century History and Social Science History, and
he has contributed to the Washington Post.
Zappavigna Michele is Associate Professor in the School of Arts and
Media at the University of New South Wales. Her major research interest
is in exploring ambient affiliation in the discourse of social media using
social semiotic, multimodal, and corpus-based methods. She is a co-editor
of the journal Visual Communication. Key books include Searchable Talk:
Hashtags and Social Medi Metadiscourse (2018) and Discourse of Twitter
and Social Media (2012). Recent co-authored books include Researching
the Language of Social Media (2014; 2022) and Modelling Paralanguage
Using Systemic Functional Semiotics (2021).
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 Screen grab from the interview 1 50

Fig. 9.1 Dialogic affiliation system (Adapted
from Zappavigna, 2018) 141
Illustration 3.1 Higgins illustration 32

Illustration 3.2 Higgins illustration 32
xiii
List of Tables
Table 9.1 Nicki Swift video dataset 137

Table 9.2 Sub-systems of attitude 140
Table 9.3 Questions asked in Nicki Swift comment threads 142
Table 10.1 Top 3 most followed democrats and republicans
on Twitter 162
Table 10.2 Tweets by account and member, February 14-March
20, 2022 164
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The renowned columnist Liz Smith is often quoted as remarking, “Gossip

is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress. (Cheng & Barnes,
2017).” If we take a juicy tidbit and peel back the glitzy, the kitchy,
and the bitchy, what remains? In a twenty-first century era of constantly
breaking news, rumors, innuendos, and tweets are significant in their
own right; they both respond to and drive the mainstream news cycle.
From human interest stories to palace intrigue to punditry, political talk
often shares many of the same features of interpersonal gossip: It revels
in speculation, casts a moral judgment, influences opinion, and serves as
a form of entertainment (Jones, 1980). The late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, thanks in part to the rise of cable news, national
A. McDonnell (B)
Communication, Providence College, Providence, RI, USA
e-mail: Amcdonn3@providence.edu
A. Silver (B)
Political Science and International Relations, Emmanuel College, Boston, MA,
USA
e-mail: silvera@emmanuel.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
A. McDonnell and A. Silver (eds.), A Gossip Politic,
Rhetoric, Politics and Society,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15119-4_1
2 A. MCDONNELL AND A. SILVER
news magazines, and growth of celebrity media, ushered in a period of

increased tabloidization, a shift away from the “objective,” “hard” jour-
nalistic values of post-World War II era and toward a discourse centered
on gossip, infotainment, and human interest (Franklin, 1997). But in
truth, debates about the relationship between news and gossip have
existed for as long as there have been publications to cover either. The
penny papers of the nineteenth century emphasized the lurid and scan-
dalous (MacGill Hughes, 1940, 11; Schudson, 1981); their low cost and
accessible content also allowed them to serve as an entry point into poli-
tics for the previously excluded working class (MacGill Hughes, 1940,
pp. 7).
By the 1930s, gossip columnists like Walter Winchell and Hedda
Hopper were famous and influential journalists who blended news and
entertainment reporting and toed the line between the worlds of high
society, celebrity, and politics. Winchell was known for his dramatic,
signature style of reporting, beginning with a “flash” bit—something
scandalous or crime-driven—and then moving into a blend of gossip
and hard news reporting (Gabler, 1994, pp. 215). This was especially
compelling on radio, where his staccato delivery created an imme-
diate sense of urgency and interest. At the height of his career, fifty
million Americans (out of a total population of seventy-five million)
either listened to Winchell’s weekly radio broadcast or read his daily
column, and he has been credited with transforming journalism into a
form of entertainment (Gabler, 1994). Of course, Winchell later went
on to align himself with Joseph McCarthy and to use his influence in
an effort to undermine his rivals; his political machinations ultimately
soured his career. Similarly, Hedda Hopper rose to prominence with
her column “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood,” published in the Los Angeles
Times (Frost, 2011). She reported largely on movie stars, but politicians
were not immune to her exposés; in 1939, her reporting on the divorce
of President Roosevelt’s son, Jimmy, made national news (Fine Collins,
1997). Hopper was also a vocal Republican and conservative, speaking
at rallies and conventions, and later running (unsuccessfully) on Repub-
lican ticket for a county political seat (Fine Collins, 1997). She would
later become a prominent force behind the creation of the Hollywood
Blacklist, which accused members of the entertainment industry of being
Communists.
These interconnections between politics and entertainment are long-
standing. But they have become ever more enmeshed in the twenty-first
1 INTRODUCTION 3
century, as the countless media platforms that have sprung up to host

and disseminate information have become available to users immediately
and at relatively low cost. The Internet has created space for amateur and
citizen journalism, and a platform for anyone to speak their mind and
share information at any time across globally connected networks. This
has made news more accessible than ever, but it has also created a complex
information ecosystem in which reliable reporting exists alongside spec-
ulation, conspiracy theory, and clickbait. In the political realm, sites like
The Drudge Report and Infowars rely on traditional tabloid techniques,
breathlessly reporting on tidbits that may or may not be true while also
fueling political debate and discussion. And gossip sites of the early 2000s,
such as The Dirty, Perez Hilton, and Gawker, foreshadowed the ceaseless
churn of celebrity and pop culture gossip that now runs through sites like
TikTok and Twitter while presenting themselves as news sources. That
the boundary between gossip and political news has become so trans-
parent is a fact reflected in the public’s self-reported lack of confidence in
reliable reporting; only 6 in 10 adults say they have “at least some trust”
in national news organizations and only 27% say the same about news
they read on social media (Pew, 2021).
Not all gossip is celebrity driven, but the powerful and well-known
have long served as recognizable and therefore convenient figures about
whom the public shares a gossip repertoire. When it comes to medi-
ated talk, both news and gossip rely upon a known cast of characters
about whom information sharing can take place. The society pages of
the nineteenth century provided precisely this type of content, reporting
on the social galas and goings on of the rich (stories that were often
written by, about, and read by, women). More recently, the Internet,
paparazzi, tabloid, and social media industry explosion of the early 2000s
has produced an ever-increasing pool of famous figures about whom the
public could learn, speculate, and envy. It has also transformed public
figures from the realm of politics into celebrities in their own rights, as
they regularly appear in magazines, on television, and in venues tradi-
tionally reserved for stars of the entertainment industry (Wheeler, 2013).
Celebrity gossip had long been considered “trash” media—unimportant,
and certainly not newsworthy, except in the softest of news frames. Yet
as celebrities infiltrate facets of the public sphere that have tradition-
ally been considered newsworthy—humanitarian efforts, crime, and even
foreign affairs—and as stars of film, television, and music delve into poli-
tics, tabloid gossip has become synonymous with news. The line between
politician and celebrity, news and gossip, has dissolved.
Gossip and Politics

Etymologically, the English word gossip can be traced to the Old English
godsib, which referred to a person, such as a godparent, who was an insider
(but not a relative) within a family group (Tebbutt, 1995). Such a person
would be privy to the personal details of family life, therefore possessing
secret knowledge of personal goings on. Over time, the term evolved
to connote friendship, companionship, and talk—particularly malicious
and scandalous talk—most often engaged by women or feminized actors
(McDonnell, 2014). Gossip is also fundamentally a part of women’s oral
culture. As Deborah Jones writes, it is a mode of connectivity, of bonding
and relationship building, a means of information sharing, and a vehicle
for expressing dissatisfaction and resistance (Jones, 1980).
Women’s interests, and talk about those interests, have historically been
excluded from the public sphere. The term gossip works not only to char-
acterize women’s talk but also to trivialize and dismiss it, to mark it as
personal, emotional, and therefore unimportant. The marginalization of
women’s talk and the relegation of women’s interests to the personal
sphere have been a key point of contention in women’s movements. Jones
writes that gossip can be understood as “women speaking in their roles
as women” and that bitching, which she defines as a form of gossip, is an
important mode of dissent (1980, pp. 194). Feminists of the second wave
fostered solidarity through conversation, including consciousness-raising
groups, contending that “the personal is political.” And more recently,
the #MeToo movement has centered women’s talk as a way of reclaiming
personal narratives and pushing back against the notion that women’s
accounts are merely anecdotal and better kept private. So while it may
be easy to dismiss gossip as trivial or apolitical, to do so is to ignore the
myriad ways in which the feminization of certain kinds of speech and
subject matter has long been used as a tactic meant to suppress those
at the margins. This does not only affect those who identify as women.
Media framing of actors as effeminate can serve to stigmatize, other, and
delegitimize their claims, as was the case for narratives circulating around
gay men during the HIV/AIDS crisis (Lichetenstein, 1996).
1 INTRODUCTION 5
The way in which women’s talk has been sequestered from “serious
news” can be seen plainly in the mainstream press. The “women’s pages”
and gossip pages have been historically relegated to their own section
of the newspaper, while TV talk shows (aired during daytime hours and
targeted to stay-at-home moms) are considered fluffy and apolitical, even
when they take up issues such as domestic violence, race relations, drug
addiction, and gun control. Yet the celebritization of news media that
began in the 1980s and intensified throughout the early 2000s pushed
mainstream news outlets to cover stories that would have previously
been relegated to the E! network and People magazine. What cable news
station could possibly decline to cover the OJ Simpson trial, or Bill Clin-
ton’s affair with an intern, or the death of stars Michael Jackson, Kobe
Bryant, and Prince without suffering devastating ratings losses? Newspa-
pers—the long-established bastion of reliable reporting—were certainly
not immune, suffering massive circulation declines over the past two
decades despite efforts to keep apace (Pew, 2020). Still, while “hard”
news purveyors increasingly adopted “soft” news stylings and topics,
content traditionally aimed at women—even when it overtly takes up
political topics or breaks critical stories with its reporting—retains its
reputation as trivial and unserious.
No single figure epitomized this dissolution more clearly than Donald
Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump used multiple platforms,
including cable news, social media (most notably Twitter), and his rela-
tionship with David Pecker, CEO of American Media and publisher
whose holdings have included tabloid titles from the National Enquirer,
to the Sun, to Us Weekly, to craft a representational style as an individual
who was “an outside,” external to the political system in Washington
D.C. After leaving office and having been banned from Twitter, Trump
has continued to cultivate his political celebrity on his own social media
platform, Truth Social.
Tabloid gossip elevated Trump’s public persona as a real estate devel-
oper, fueled his reality television career, and helped launch Trump onto
the political stage. His White House transformed presidential messaging
into a barrage of insinuations, innuendos, and personal affronts. But while
gossip was a defining feature of his presidency, it is not new to politics
nor unique to Trump. A Gossip Politic seeks to make explicit the histor-
ical, technological, and cultural links between American politics, news
media, and gossip as a mode of communication. The analysis yields a
new archetype of the gossip politic in which the lines between politician
and celebrity are completely and irrevocably broken. The celebrity politi-
cian advances their own brand without a regard for, or even intention of,
advancing public policies. The only goal is to employ gossip to further
their fame and influence.
While Trump may be the most prominent purveyor of a gossip politic,
members of Congress and news media also embody this approach as they
seek to develop a national brand that extends beyond the geographic
boundaries of their district or occupation. Legislators like Representative
Ocasio-Cortez utilize social media to develop a more intimate connec-
tion with voters by providing personal commentary on happenings in
Washington D.C., policy, and popular culture. At the same time news
pundits, like Tucker Carlson, utilize their station to elevate their status in
the national conversation about future elective office (Smith, 2022). The
advent of this gossip politic archetype raises questions about the nature
of representation and democratic responsiveness.
An Overview
In the collection of essays that follows, an esteemed cohort of inter-
disciplinary scholars from the fields of Political Science, Media Studies,
Linguistics, and Sociology explore the ways gossip has shaped our under-
standing of news, impacted democracy, and contributed to the contempo-
rary partisan political landscape in the United States. The book is divided
into three sections.
The first section, Gossip and the Press, considers the links between
news reporting and gossip, past and present. Paddy Scannell’s opening
chapter explores the relationship between human interest stories, talk
and gender, and the ways in which news makes life “tellable.” Michael
Higgins expands on the topic of mediated talk, tracing the ways in which
talk is performed, and made authoritative, on broadcast news television.
Jin Shen and Martin Montgomery provide an in-depth case study of the
ways talk is “done” on television, through a discourse analysis of Oprah
Winfrey’s 2021 interview with Megan Markle.
Section two, Gossip and the Presidency, examines three historic snap-
shots of the influence of gossip on American Presidents. Jennifer Frost
shows how gossip reporter Hedda Hopper’s ideology shaped her coverage
of the Kennedy administration, and how that reporting impacted the
Kennedy family and the politics of the 1960s. Jennifer Hopper takes up
the entertainment news of the late 1990s in her chapter on Bill Clinton’s
1 INTRODUCTION 7
affair with Monica Lewinsky, and the ways the media ecosystem both
influenced, and was shaped by, that scandal. Donald Trump’s history as a
creature of the gossip press, and his strategic use of gossip techniques in
service of a populist platform, is the focus of Prashant Rastogi’s chapter
on the recent Presidency.
The final section, Gossip and the Public, explores the function and
effects of a gossip politic in contemporary American culture with an
eye toward the implications for public discourse, civic engagement,
and democratic outcomes. Madison Pollino analyzes media framing of
Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony to show how gossip-style reporting
about sexual assault allegations influenced public sentiment toward then-
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Olivia Inwood and Michael
Zappavigna turn to the comments section of the Nicki Swift YouTube
channel to show how gossip reinforces social bonds while also poten-
tially contributing to the spread of online conspiracy theories. Finally,
the editors close the collection with a chapter that examines politicians’
use of Twitter as a discursive space, and the way in which personal talk
on social media relates to the connection between elected officials and
constituents as the former seeks to develop a representative style that
cultivates a personal brand and a connection with followers.
References
Cheng, C., & Barnes, M. (2017, November 11). Liz Smith, New York’s grand
dame of dish, dies at 94. The Hollywood Reporter.
Fine Collins, A. (1997, April 1). The powerful rivalry of Hedda Hopper and
Louella Parsons. Vanity Fair.
Franklin, B. (1995). Newszak and news media. Arnold.
Frost, J. (2011). Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity gossip and American
conservatism. NYU Press.
Gabler, N. (1994). Winchell: Gossip, power, and the culture of celebrity. Vintage
Books.
Jones, D. (1980). Gossip: Notes on women’s oral culture. Women’s Studies
International Quarterly, 3, 193–198.
Lichetenstein, B. (1996). Creating icons of AIDS: The media and popular
culture. In P. Davis (Ed.), Intimate details and vital statistics: AIDS, sexuality,
and the social order in New Zealand. Auckland University Press. Auckland,
NZ.
MacGill Hughes, H. (1940). News and the human interest story. University of
Chicago Press.
McDonnell. A. (2014). Reading celebrity gossip magazines. Polity.

Pew Research (2020, June 29). Newspapers fact sheet. Pewresearch.org.
Pew Research (2021, August 30). Partisan divide in media trust widen, driven
by a decline among Republicans. Pewresearch.org.
Schudson, M. (1981). Discovering the news: A social history of American
newspapers. Basic Books.
Smith, D. (2022, July 17). ‘He could be a good president’: is Tucker Carlson
the next Donald Trump? The Guardian.
Tebbutt, M. (1995). Women’s talk?: A social history of gossip in working-class
neighborhoods, 1880–1960. Ashfield Publishing Co.
Wheeler, M. (2013). Celebrity politics. Polity.
PART I
Gossip and the Press

CHAPTER 2
The Omigod no! Notes on News Talk
Paddy Scannell
News and the Human-Interest Story

I have long thought that our (academic) notion of news is wrong or, more
exactly, misconceived. I simply don’t see that news is some new thing, an
invention of modernity, the profession of journalism, somehow tied into
democracy and telling truth to power. I have always thought of it as a
shared resource and part of everyday life for the members of any human
community. In other words, it is a communally co-produced thing. It is
not media dependent. The still prevailing view of news is that it is medi-
acentric. News got going with newspapers, and then became global, via
today’s new media—radio and television in the last century; the internet
and subsidiaries in this. All abide by the old print definitions of news as
what you get in newspapers as supplied by journalists. At the core of this
were a small number of bedrock assumptions. News was a serious matter,
as it underpinned democratic values. It was hard as opposed to soft. It
was overwhelmingly gendered in favour of men, who were dominant in
P. Scannell (B)
Department of Communication, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
e-mail: scannep@umich.edu

Switzerland AG 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15119-4_2
12 P. SCANNELL
the media and academia. Its focus was information, not entertainment.
Citizens in democracies needed to be informed, not entertained.
This chapter is written as an alternative to the view of news that
predominates in journalism studies. It does not deny the role of news
as having a central role in informing the public as part of the demo-
cratic process. But that is not all it is. A non-mediacentric view of news
would see it very differently, as the pearl of price in ordinary daily life.
I wish to put forward an account of news that thinks of it as central to
everyday life in two ways. News is always political, a power struggle for
social dominance. There are those that are newsworthy (who make the
news as they struggle for power) and those that are not. A fundamental
theme in what follows is that news is good to talk about. News and news
talk go together as we shall see in this brief survey of the data corpus that
provides the evidence for a view of news that is both serious and popular
at the same time.
This chapter is, in part, a very belated homage to the late Helen
MacGill Hughes who, as a graduate student in the Chicago sociology
department in the 1930s, wrote her thesis on news and the human-
interest story. She argued that news then was transmogrifying, slowly at
first, to become part of the entertainment, or culture industries (Scan-
nell, 2020). And this she understood as a widening and deepening of the
democratic function of popular culture; a culture that addressed every-
body—the poor, and uneducated, and women—subsumed under the
general title of ‘the human-interest story.’ Human-interest stories focused
on what was sensational (murder especially), but also what was personal—
true stories with their roots in ordinary daily life (the subject of radio ‘soap
operas’). In her account ‘the popular press enlivened everything ’. As it
grew, it led the demos [MacGill’s name for the hugely expanded reader-
ship of the daily press], through the human interest in a personal story,
towards an acquaintanceship with a wider world beyond the immediate
concerns of day-to-day life. The effect of this was, she argued, impon-
derable. Journalists, she felt, ignored this historical process, and social
philosophers saw it as beneath them.
I believe she was right to emphasise the significance of the human-
interest story, but it is very hard to find evidence of a non-mediatic view
of news. Erving Goffman, more than any other sociologist, pioneered
the study of everyday life. One technique he used with pungent effect in
his writing was to see no intrinsic difference between fact and fiction.
Both are historical phenomena of equal value to the sociologist. He
2 THE OMIGOD NO! NOTES ON NEWS TALK 13
would take some fictional instance to support his sociological argument as

having equal weight with any factual example. News, whether in factual or
fictional narratives, serves equally well as a resolution to the fundamental
problem of finding something ‘worth’ talking about, in order to main-
tain the smooth functioning of everyday social existence. I follow him in
this, taking the novels of the English author E. F. Benson as my empirical
source.
I was inspired initially by the research of Dorothy Hobson who, in
her pioneering work on the popular culture of television, made a little
study of women (mainly working-class British housewives) listening to
the radio and watching television (Hobson, 1980). As far as her female
interviewees were concerned (and Hobson was a pioneer of born-again
ethnographic studies of television) news was something they preferred
to avoid. It was (a) depressing, and (b) boring but (c) important. They
accepted of course, the news values of central media. They were accepted
as true and valid accounts of the real (male) world. But it was not really
interesting. Women preferred comedy, entertainment, drama serials (soap
operas), and quiz shows. They rejected the things men liked (or said they
liked)—e.g. ‘boring’ documentaries, sport, and especially news which, at
the time of Hobson’s study, was synonymous with war (Vietnam) for her
interviewees (Hobson, 1980). The news they wanted should be fun. It
should be entertaining.
Later work confirmed this ‘moral hierarchy’ of television viewing: there
were ‘important’ male things and unimportant female things. Male pref-
erences were serious, female tastes were frivolous. This moral hierarchy
of viewing was explored in an ethnographic study of Finnish men and
women watching television undertaken, a decade after Hobson, by Perrti
Alasuutari (1992). His research confirmed the division of likes and dislikes
between women and men that Hobson discovered. Gendered tastes were
polarised between the things that you made excuses for watching (or
not), and the things that needed no excuse. A male interviewee declared
‘I’m ashamed to admit it but I have watched Dallas,’ perhaps the most
successful American entertainment TV show of all time. It ran for most of
the 1980s and in over 150 countries worldwide. It was universally popular
(except in Japan) and is probably the most studied of all classic TV shows,
partly because of its then novel huge global impact and appeal. The
moral law of classic broadcast television, as discovered by Alasuutari, runs
like this: good things on television need no justification (because they’re
good for you); bad things do because they’re not good for you. The
14 P. SCANNELL
moral norms of broadcast television were gendered. News was good. Soap
operas were bad. Male taste was moral, female taste was immoral. Taste
and television were both gendered in taken-for-granted ways. Dallas was
almost universally regarded as rubbish. It was ‘stupid,’ it wasn’t ‘good’
for you, but it was compulsively watchable—like so much of television.
And it was good to talk about, particularly among female viewers who
made up at least 70% of the audience.
‘Did you see JJ’s wardrobe malfunction at last night’s Super Bowl?’ is
cited in the online Urban Dictionary (founded 1999) as a classic water-
cooler moment, which it defines as ‘a significant moment in television
history that is discussed the next day in the workplace.’ Water-cooler TV
appears to be an aspect of late twentieth-century American network tele-
vision, which Amanda Lotz explains as the product of imposed network
norms and mass viewing. With little programme choice, and everyone
watching the same thing, television programmes provided shared content
for discussion by all and sundry (Lotz, 2007, 32). Perhaps the most
outstanding water-cooler event of the American network TV era was,
appropriately enough, the ‘Who shot JR?’ moment. It came at the end
of the 1980–1981 season of Dallas when the carefully crafted cliffhanger
final episode climaxed with the shooting of JR by person(s) unknown.
The slaying of J. R. Ewing (but was he really dead?)—the smiling villain
of the show and, by common consent, ‘the nastiest man on television’—
furnished enough conversation about who might have dunnit (since
everyone in the show, except his mother, had reason enough to want
him dead) to leave viewers on tenterhooks for the first episode of the
next season when all would be revealed. 90 million Americans, or 76%
of the total available audience, and 360 million viewers around the world
watched the episode. It achieved the highest TV rating in US history
of any show to date. The JR and JJ (Janet Jackson) moments (one
fictional, the other factual) are both embedded in global popular memory
as outstanding newsworthy TV events. Both were good to talk about,
the primary characteristic of newsworthiness. Both were fine examples of
‘human interest’ stories which, in the classic news optic, were neither news
nor newsworthy. The human-interest story is ‘soft’ news, and it became
customary, in 1960s Britain, to include a bit of soft news towards the end
of the thirty-minute ‘hard’ TV news-programme. Commercial TV, not
the BBC, led the way in this effort to liven things up a bit. Hard and soft
are, of course, both normative and gendered, as Valerie Hobson found.
The Mapp and Lucia Novels

I came across, by accident really, a body of early twentieth-century English
texts in which news was the central fact and driver of the narratives. The
corpus was a finite set of six novels, written between 1920 and 1939
by the English author, E. F. (Fred) Benson. They have something of
a cult status in England. They have a devoted gay following and have
been adapted more than once for television. Their television treatment
presented them as high camp whimsy. And of course, I read them all in
the first place, eagerly, for fun. They can be read separately as stand-alone
texts, but they feed into each other, as a continuing saga between Emeline
Lucas and Elizabeth Mapp, as they battle for social supremacy in the
fictional worlds of Riseholme and Tilling. Like Goffman, I took the whole
corpus as valuable sociological data, an historical source of information.
At one level news-as-human interest, as the trigger of daily conversation
in the narratives, points to the subfield of the psychology of gossip. And
while news of what Lucia (Emeline Lucas) and Elizabeth Mapp are up to
endlessly supplies a topic for talk-as-gossip between friends and acquain-
tances, it is more than just ‘small talk.’ My aim is to show some of the
basic features of the zero-sum character of social life as game theory—the
subject of Eric Berne’s most successful book (Games People Play), who
shared the same interest in it as Erving Goffman.
The stories are all focused on the social lives of a small group of
people in the two fictional locations: Riseholme (pronounced Rizzum),
and Tilling, the fictional name for Rye, the seaside town in Sussex where
Benson lived for many years. Each place has what Raymond Williams
calls ‘a knowable community’—a small group of people mainly, but not
exclusively, female who all know and talk with each other. No one works.
Some, like Lucia, are rolling in money. Others, like Mapp, have limited
means. Each village is, in effect, a gossip community dominated by a
single powerful female. Emeline Lucas (universally known as Lucia) is the
queen of Riseholme society. Elizabeth Mapp is the doyenne of Tilling.
In the fourth novel, Mapp and Lucia, Lucia leaves Riseholme to live in
Tilling where she comes up against the formidable Mapp. The battles
between Mapp and Lucia for social pre-eminence in Tilling make up the
thrilling substance of the last three novels in the series.
Here are the novels in the order they were published:
Queen Lucia (QL): 1920. Setting: Riseholme. Lucia only.

16 P. SCANNELL
Miss Mapp (MM): 1922 Setting: Tilling (Riseholme mentioned). Mapp

only.
Lucia in London (LL): 1927. Settings: Riseholme and London. Lucia only.
Mapp and Lucia (ML): 1931. Settings: Riseholme and Tilling. Brings
Mapp and Lucia together.
Lucia’s Progress (LP): 1935. Setting: Tilling. Mapp and Lucia.
Trouble for Lucia (TL): 1939. Setting: Tilling. Mapp and Lucia.
[All subsequent quotations are from two omnibus editions, published by

Penguin. Lucia Rising contains the first three, while Lucia Victrix contains
the last three novels. Direct quotes are from individual novels as indicated.]
It is a remarkable feature of the whole corpus that the unfolding narra-

tive, spread over six separate novels, is wholly about women (written by
a man) and their social rather than domestic lives. There are men too in
the stories but, with the exception of Georgie Pillson (who is by common
female consent an honorary woman), they are dull souls and largely inci-
dental. Lucia is married to a rich banker when we meet her in the first
novel, but has conveniently died by the start of the pivotal fourth. Mapp
is unmarried when we first meet her (in the second novel), but marries
Major Benjy (Indian Army, Retired) at the end of Mapp and Lucia, as a
way of salvaging her lost precedence in Tilling society since Lucia’s arrival.
There are no children or young people. The characters are all middle-aged
(late thirties to fifties across the series) and upper-middle class. The novels
are richly funny and endlessly readable for their sheer entertainment value,
and I am a devoted fan. But they can be read sociologically, with the spirit
of Erving Goffman in mind. News is the lubricant of social life, the begin-
ning of all conversation in both Riseholme and Tilling, and a main driver
of events. ‘‘Any news?’ was the general gambit of conversation in Rise-
holme,’ Benson tells us. ‘It could not have been bettered, for there was
always news’ (LL: 501).
Finding Something to Talk

About (Newsworthiness)
Here are some opening gambits of conversation in Riseholme and Tilling
when people meet each other:
• And though her voice was low and unsteady, she did say, as they sat
down, ‘Any news?’ (LL: 602)
• ‘Any news, Georgie? What did you do with yourself yesterday? (LL:
609)
• ‘But Riseholme, dear Riseholme will soon put me all right again.’
she said. ‘Such a joy to be here! Any news, Daisy?’ (LL: 658)
• ‘Good evening, Diva dear,’ she said. ‘I just looked in. Any news?’
(ML: 208)
• ‘Such a lovely morning, isn’t it, dear Diva, for January,’ she said. ‘Si
doux. Any news?’ (LP: 315)
All conversation begins with a news request as a preliminary endeavour

to find something to talk about, a conversational bone to chew over.
The data are presented following (loosely) the empirical social-science
methods of Conversational Analysis, and Paul Grice’s philosophical work
on the logic of conversation (Sacks, [1970] 1992; Grice, 1991) in order
to show that news is a pervasive feature of the novels, underpinning their
sociological significance. At the beginning of Lucia in London there is
intense speculation in Riseholme over the thrilling news that Pepino’s
aunt (Pepino, when alive, is Lucia’s largely invisible husband) has died
and he has inherited her estate and house in London. The burning ques-
tion is, of course, what are they worth? There is much speculation on
this between Lucia’s two friends and neighbours, Daisy Quantock and
Georgie Pillson. Later that day, after Georgie has dined with Lucia, Daisy
and Georgie confer once more:
‘Well?’, she said.

‘In Brompton Square’, said Georgie. ‘And three thousand a year’.1
‘No!’ said Daisy. [LL: 511]
The first chapter ends with this tantalising bit of news. Daisy does
not need to demand news of what Georgie and Lucia talked about over
dinner, and Georgie understands immediately the (Gricean) force of her
‘Well?’. And in case readers miss (or do not properly hear) what is implied
1 The reader of course is required to decode, based on the assumption that she/he will
understand, the immense significance of this information. So it is worth noting that what
Georgie so succinctly describes amounts to an immense fortune: three thousand a year
in 1920 translates into an annual income from stocks and shares in today’s money of at
least £300,000.00 a year. And a house today in Brompton Square—one of the smartest
parts of the smartest part of London then and now—is today worth millions.
18 P. SCANNELL
in Daisy’s ‘No!’, the author provides an immediate explanation at the start

of the next chapter.
This simple word ‘No’ connoted a great deal in the Riseholme vernacular.
It was used of course, as a mere negative, without emphasis, and if you
wanted to give weight to your negative you added ‘Certainly not’. But
when you used the word ‘No’ with emphasis, as Daisy had used it to
Georgie, it was not a negative at all, and its signification briefly put was ‘I
never heard anything so marvellous, and it thrills me through and through.
Please go on at once, and tell me a great deal more, and then let us talk
it all over’. [LL: 512]
Here is an example, from Riseholme, of the two ‘No’s.
‘Any more news?’ asked Mrs Antrobus.

‘Yes,’ said Georgie, ‘Olga Bracely is coming down tomorrow –‘
‘No!’ said all the ladies together.
‘And her husband?’ asked Piggy.
‘No,’ said Georgie without emphasis. ‘At least she didn’t say so…. (LL:
520)
Note that the female (the great Australian opera star, Olga Bracely)
is a figure of intense interest and a great conversational object for Rise-
holmites while her husband is of no interest whatever, and so it is more
generally throughout the corpus. The Riseholme and Tilling vernacular,
as Benson makes clear, is not some personal, interpersonal thing; it is a
sociolect, a way of life, a collective manner of conversation. To know how
to talk and what to talk about is to ‘belong,’ to be a ratified member of
collective, communal, social life in both villages:
• ‘No! Is she really? asked Lucia, with all the old Riseholme vivacity.
• ‘No!’ said Mrs Boucher in the Riseholme voice. (LL: 591).
• ‘No!’ said Tony in the Riseholme manner. (LL: 638)
• Surely some sign of their presence would have manifested itself either
to Riseholme’s collective eye, or to Riseholme’s ear. (LL: 581)
News is the obscure object of desire, eagerly sought by the collective

eye of the members of the life-worlds of Riseholme and Tilling, and just
as eagerly received by their collective ear.
Having News to Tell

To have news is to be in possession of a pearl of price, especially if it
has rarity value (no-one else knows). In which case such trove must be
broadcast at once:
• Daisy bowled out of the dining-room and came with such speed
down the steps that she nearly fell into the circular [vegetable-
garden] bed where the broccoli had been.
‘At half-past one or two,’ said she, bursting with the news. (LL:
635)
• Piggy came whizzing up with the news, while Goosie shouted it
into her mother’s ear-trumpet. Before Piggy could come out with it,
Goosie’s announcement was audible everywhere.
‘A cab from the station has arrived at The Hurst [Lucia’s home],
Mamma,’ she yelled, ‘with the cook and the housemaid and a
quantity of baggage.’
‘O Mrs Boucher, have you heard the news?’ panted Piggy. (LL:
636–7)
• Diva trundled swiftly towards her with Paddy, her great bouncing
Irish terrier, bursting with news, but Elizabeth got the first word.
(LP: 320)
What is it, to be bursting with news? What is the compulsion to tell?

Its importance is not determined by the news itself, which is mainly about
the comings and goings of Lucia and Mapp. There is no objective correl-
ative between the value of news and the irresistible desire to share it with
others. Here is Miss Mapp in conversation with Georgie Pilling who unin-
tentionally discloses a valuable nugget of news. He and Lucia are leaving
Tilling to return home to Riseholme. Mapp fishes for more information:
‘No chance then of your coming back?’ she asked.

‘In August, I hope, said he, ‘for I’ve taken Mallards Cottage for two
months.’
‘Oh, Mr Pillson, that is good news!’ cried Miss Mapp. ‘Lovely! All August
and September. Fancy!’
‘I’ve got to be away for a week in August,’ said Georgie, ‘as we’ve got an
Elizabethan fete at Riseholme. I’m Francis Drake.’
That was trove for Miss Mapp and must be published at once. She
prepared to flit off.
20 P. SCANNELL
She walked up the street again, bursting with her budget of news. Only
the Wyses could possibly know that Georgie had taken Mallards Cottage [it
belongs to their daughter], and nobody that he was going to impersonate
Francis Drake… There was the Padre talking to Major Benjy, no doubt on
his way to the steam-tram, and there were Diva and Irene a little farther
on.
‘Good morning, Padre: good morning, Major Benjy,’ said she.
‘Good morrow, Mistress Mapp’, said the Padre. ‘An’ hoo’s the time o’ day
wi’ ye? ‘Tis said you’ve a fair tenant for yon Mallards [Mapp’s home].’
Miss Mapp fired off her news in a broadside.
‘Indeed I have, Padre,’ she said. ‘And there’s Mallards Cottage, too, about
which you won’t have heard. Mr Pillson has taken that, though he won’t
be here all the time as he’s playing Francis Drake in a fete at Riseholme
for a week.’ (ML: 56).
General conversation and speculation follow these exciting revelations.

It is not simply that news is a trove that oils the wheels of life and keeps it
running smoothly from day to day. It is also a source of power. To know
something that others don’t but long to know is to have them at your
mercy. Mapp is an expert player of the deeply irritating game of teasing,
of withholding some desirable nugget of news from those who long for
it:
‘Well, Mapp, what luck?’ asked Irene.

Miss Mapp waited till Diva had shot in.
I think I shall tease you both,’ she said playfully with her widest smile.
‘Oh, hurry up,’ said Irene. ‘I know perfectly well from your face that
you’ve let it. Otherwise it would be all screwed up.’ […].
‘Patience, a little patience, dear,’ said Miss Mapp soothingly. If you
know I’ve let it, why wait?’
‘Because I should like a cocktail,’ said Irene. ‘If you’ll just send for
one, you can go on teasing.’
‘Well, I’ve let it for August and September,’ said Miss Mapp,
preferring to abandon her teasing than give Irene a cocktail. (ML: 36.
Emphases added.)
News, Politics, and Power

Mapp is the Machiavelli of news manipulation and management. She has
other ways of ‘playing’ with news to her own advantage and the discom-
fort of others. One is the annoying habit of trumping someone else’s news
(usually Diva, her gossip companion):
• ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard, Elizabeth,’ she [Diva] said in a great

hurry, ‘that Mr Pillson [Georgie] has taken Mallards Cottage. Miss
Mapp smiled pityingly. ‘Quite correct, dear Diva,’ she said. ‘Mr
Pillson told me himself hours ago.’ (ML: 57)
• ‘I know I’m very early, Elizabeth,’ she [Diva] said. ‘but I felt I must
tell you what has happened without losing a moment. I was going
up Curlew Street just now, and what do you think! Guess!’
Elizabeth gave a half yawn and dexterously transformed it into an indulgent

little laugh.
‘I suppose you mean that the new tenant is settling into Suntrap,’ she
said.
Diva’s face fell: all the joy of the herald of great news died out of it.
(MM475)
It is not just the deflation of the other person’s news (bad enough in
itself) that is so annoying, but the even more irritating habit of appearing
to know more in advance about the matter than the bearer of news about
it. I particularly like the notion of the angelic joy of being the herald of
news which is, I think, underpinned by the pleasurably reassuring sense of
the worthwhileness of what it is that one has to say. For the compulsion
to share news (‘But I felt I must tell you what happened’ as Diva puts
it) is surely justified by the moral claim upon the attention of another as
validated by the intrinsic interest (or newsworthiness) of what one has to
say. Finding meaningful things to talk about is no small matter. Small talk
(aka news) is the underpinning of social life.
An even more annoying trick of Elizabeth’s is deliberately ignoring
what is obviously newsworthy:
Her attention was diverted by seeing Diva pop out of the hairdresser’s
establishment in that scarlet beret and frock which made her look so like
a round pillar-box. She had taken the plunge at last after tortures of inde-
cision and had had her hair cropped quite close. The right and scathing
thing to do, thought Elizabeth, was to seem not to notice any change in
her appearance.
‘Such a lovely morning, isn’t it, dear Diva, for January,’ she said. ‘Si doux.
Any news?’
Diva felt there was enough news on her own head to satisfy anybody for
one morning, and she wheeled so that Elizabeth should get a back view
22 P. SCANNELL
of it, where the change was most remarkable. ‘I’ve heard none,’ she said.
(LP: 315)
[later that day]
‘I’ve had my hair cut short this morning,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you notice it?’
‘Yes, dear, to be quite frank, since we are such old friends, I did,’ said
Elizabeth. ‘But I thought it far kinder to say nothing about it. Far!’
Ho!’ said Diva, turning as red as her beret, and she trundled down the
hill.’ (LP: 317)
The smallest changes in everyday life are noticeable, remarkable events

that stand out against the backdrop of the ever-same about which there
is nothing to be said. Diva is quite entitled to assume that her drastic hair
cut is a newsworthy phenomenon. It is eminently noticeable and therefore
talkable-about, a natural conversational topic, a social gift.2 A moment
later Lucia joins them both and immediately does the right thing:
[Her] eye fell on Diva’s cropped head.

‘Dear Diva. I like it immensely!’ she said. ‘Ten years younger’.’
Elizabeth remained profoundly unconscious. (LP: 316)
The proper response is not to comment critically on Diva’s new

hairstyle, still less to say nothing, but to do an appreciation, as Lucia
does. What is quite uncalled for is one’s honest opinion. Lucia is telling
a white lie, and Mapp the truth (it probably is kinder to say nothing).
Who, in the circumstances, is behaving well and who is behaving badly?
Is this what morality is—a social convention, a white lie?
In usual daily life nothing ever happen. News is a solution to
the existential ‘nothing’ at its heart. ‘What did you do, dear, at
home/school/work today?’ To which of course there is only one answer,
‘Nothing’. News is, in the first place, a human-interest story, because
human beings make their lives interesting and in so doing find them to be
interesting to themselves and others—and this in some public, commu-
nicable, shareable, and tellable sense. It is part of the stuff of meaningful
2 The Eton crop was a fashionable hairstyle at the time, particularly for the younger,
London, female smart set. Diva is older and provincial, so perhaps Mapp is right that it
is kinder to say nothing.
existence, for it consists of the work of making it so. Its joys lie ulti-
mately in the ways that it affirms this for social members of any society,
for participants in any conversation.
It is for reasons like these that news appears as the solution to social
encounters in everyday life. But it is more than ‘merely’ this. I have tried
to show the politics of news and news talk as central to the zero-sum
power game between Mapp and Lucia which mobilises the narrative in
the whole corpus of novels. Those who lack news are eager to get it from
those who have it. The bearers of news may torment those who desire it,
by holding back a little, by teasing them. On the other hand, the teller of
news had better be sure that her news is fresh and new: if not what they
tell will be received with scorn by those who are already in the know. The
subtleties of the socio-culture of gossip, with news as its living heartbeat,
are wonderfully explored in Benson’s novels. In rare fashion, they explore
the play of the serious human power game of news in mundane contexts,
with wit and humour. My account is only a taster. To do full justice to
the significance of news across all the novels would require attention to
news spin and fake news as practised by both newsworthy women, Mapp
and Lucia. But this is beyond the scope of this chapter.
News and Media

News has, over the last few hundred years, been largely expropriated
by the gradual, inexorable, historical processes—human and technolog-
ical—of print, newspapers, media, journalists, and academics. But in a
much longer time span—historically, anthropologically—news remains
today very much like the accounts I extracted from the Benson corpus
of novels. It only appears to have been overtaken by modern media. The
new media of the period intruded upon the life-worlds of Riseholme and
Tilling, but only occasionally. Everyone looked at newspapers now and
then, and listened to the radio and that very new thing, the BBC. Very
few homes had a telephone a century ago—it was mainly a masculine
tool of politics, business, and the military—but all the main characters in
Benson’s novels had one. It was as necessary a resource for the novels’
gossip culture as the smart phonephone, tablet and laptop are for today’s
TV and movie fictions. News is immediate and local. London is, fiction-
ally as in real life, a metropolitan backdrop to the news events in Benton’s
social world. Lucia takes up residence in Aunty’s house in Brompton
24 P. SCANNELL
Square, near Harrods, for a while. But she returns home to Riseholme
in the end. ‘London has no true life of its own’ in her opinion (QL. 11).
This chapter has drawn attention to the significance of news as the
god of small things: an endlessly renewable source of conversation
in the bounded nutshell of ordinary daily existence. The water-cooler
phenomenon of news as human interest was not the effect of early
twentieth-century newspapers, nor of late twenty-first-century television
compounded by Twitter. The things that get talked about by everyone
now (a wardrobe malfunction, what Donald Trump just said or did)
are no different from what concerned Benson’s fictional characters—
Lucia’s inheritance, Diva’s new hairstyle. News, human interest, gossip,
and conversation; the stuff of sociology and literature, of talk and texting,
of television especially, and social media old and new. This was what Helen
MacGill foresaw in the transformation of (masculine) hard news into a
(feminine) human-interest story.
Benton’s fictional life-worlds are based on real places: Riseholme on
Broadstairs in the Cotswolds, while Tilling maps closely, still, onto the
Sussex coastal town of Rye. Benson lived there for over twenty years
and eventually became its mayor. And Lucia, in the penultimate narrative,
becomes the Mayor of Tilling, with Elizabeth Mapp as her mayoress. But
the fictional worlds are foregrounded, with the real world as backdrop, as
London is in the third novel in the saga. Today metropolitan global issues
belong to the mediated global world of mainstream news—to CNN and
the BBC; to journalists, pundits, and professors; to newspapers, radio,
and the internet, the world over. They don’t matter that much if you live
in Tilling or Tallahassee and you’re not a professor, and you don’t much
care about democracy and politics (although you know you should). What
matters is what’s going on, who’s doing what, who knows, and who
doesn’t. This immediate, situated world news, whether fact or fiction,
is seriously different from what is put out by journalists who service the
media centres. LOL cats, ‘Charlie bit my finger’ and, (we can imagine)
a selfie of Diva’s new haircut—these are the kinds of thing that enter-
tain and engross people, whether real or imagined, all over the world.
Perhaps all this is obvious. But I hope it makes more vividly clear what is
at stake in the two worlds of today, centre, and margins; the metropolitan
media centres, and, far from them, places like Riseholme and Tilling. Two
kinds of news sustain them, and yet news above all is News of the World,
depending on who you are and which world you live in.
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Scannell, P. (2020). Media and communication. Sage.
CHAPTER 3
Talk as News on Television
Michael Higgins
Introduction
Gossip has long enjoyed a dynamic presence in public discourse. In an
essay on the use of public space in Calcutta, Kitirj (1997) describes
how the indulgence of vulgarity and petty disobedience—expressed in
loud, irreverent chatter—gains momentary control of public life from the
governing institutions and political elites. In media too, Feeley (2012)
shows how celebrity rumour and indiscreet talk have accelerated novel
configurations of news, purposively aligning existent professional prac-
tices with the norms of everyday popular engagement. Across various
settings, gossip provides an ostensible means of freeing talk from the
normative constraints of formal judgement and public decorousness. As
we will see in this chapter, while subject to limits, the norms of ordi-
nary talk complete with and gradually integrate into public discourse:
M. Higgins (B)
Department of Journalism, Media, and Communication, University of
Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
e-mail: Michael.higgins@strath.ac.uk

Switzerland AG 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15119-4_3
28 M. HIGGINS
emerging, variously, as the illustrative personal anecdote from the politi-

cian, or, pertinent to what we have to say, the informal chatter between
news presenters.
Literary references to gossip itself already hint at its utility in news: its
unabashed triviality as “common chat” (Dryden, 1687: 123) and “prat-
tling” (Hearn 1886: 212); the parochialism it displays in fixating on the
affairs of “neighbours” (Martineau, 1833: 6) over than the elevated delib-
erations of civic life. Even if the subject matter is weightier, this chapter
hopes to show that news shares many of the imperatives of gossip—the
instincts to confide, conspire and empathise within a social environment—
while also adapting gossip’s interactional imperatives. We will explore
the ways in which news discourse exploits the benefits of gossip, situ-
ating elements of popular talk alongside and in a dynamic with discourses
of truth, authority and professional sincerity. To do this, we will apply
multimodal critical discourse analysis to stretches of news talk (Smith &
Higgins, 2020), exploring forms of address and performance, along with
the interplay between institutional expression and popular language.
Much that have to say will centre on what Goffman (1981) refers to
as “forms of talk”; that is, how the management of language, tone and
orientation contributes to news as a discursive activity. On the face of it,
professional news demands descriptive clarity and the precise recital of
information, in a manner that conforms to legal constraints and profes-
sional standards of impartiality. This seems to be the opposite of what
Goffman (1981: 171) calls “fresh talk”, “formulated by the animator
from moment to moment” and foregrounding intuition and spontaneity.
Yet, the production of unscripted talk plays a surprising role in producing
the sense of conviviality appropriate to broadcast talk in general (Scan-
nell, 1991) and place us more at ease with the news within the terms of
our social universe. For example, even the most hostile news interview,
committed to the formal language of economic policy and accountability,
will routinely be concluded by genial and overtly unscripted thanks to the
bruised interviewee and watching viewers. Similarly, and as noted above,
unceremonious language dominates the shifts between items and presen-
ters, ameliorating the weight and consequence of the content with the
personality and mutual care of the messengers.
However, even though news is routinely mediated by the production
of talk, surprisingly little analysis compares across the various mobili-
sations of talk in a developing broadcast news environment. Here we
outline a few of the ways in which talk is organised and represented
3 TALK AS NEWS ON TELEVISION 29
in news discourse. The overall intention is to offer a more nuanced

understanding of the dynamics between convention and innovation in
reproducing authority, as well as the role that talk has in constructing
different iterations of truth. The chapter challenges the everyday assump-
tion that news is departing its original register of didactic information
provision, to settle on an opposing style exclusively concerned with one-
to-one engagement and mutual participation. In terms of how talk may be
shaping news, we will increasingly see that adaptability and shared compe-
tence in different types of talk is generating a hybrid news-talk experience,
where talk is used tactically to present various forms of standing.
The chapter divides into two main sections: (1) talk as the voice of
authority in news, and; (2) using public talk. The first section looks at
the performance of talk in the production of power, ordinarily invested
in formalised traditions of institutional authority and scriptedness in the
production of expert commentary, all aligned with the institutions of
government and media and the expectations of a normative public sphere.
The second section looks at how “authentic” public talk is co-opted into
news, constructing an association between the lifeworld and the subjective
iterations of spontaneous truth and emotional integrity, and will discuss
the implications of a sustained association between private talk and news’s
claimed pursuit of candour and openness. Goffman’s (1981) “participant
frameworks” will help conceptualise various ways of performing talk and
the discursive relationships these invoke, including setting popular against
formal talk. As a whole, the chapter offers a broad understanding of the
dynamic tension between the priorities of news and the imperatives of
talk, and the role these play in any shifts towards popularisation and
increased emotionality we may associate with news.
Talk as the Voice of Authority in News

A variety of professional titles are given to those media performers—often
trained journalists—fronting the news broadcast. Tolson (2006) writes of
“presenters”, with other coinages such as “newscaster” coming to and
from prominence. The early description “newsreader” shows a contin-
uing resonance in the relationship between news, talk and authority,
finding daily expression in the standard UK BBC Radio 4 introduction
“the news today is read by…”. Indeed, in a way that echoes with “pre-
senter’s” agency in time, place and context, the very composition of
“news-reader” foregrounds the sanctity of the settled words at a given
30 M. HIGGINS
moment. As McLuhan (1964: 88) observes, even as media technology

embraces and drives the immediacy and texture of interaction, “our
Western values [are] built on the written”. Far from diminishing, we see
this prevalence continue in media settings from employment contracts
to the dominance of Twitter as an archive of sentiment and outrage
(Higgins & Smith, 2014). Perhaps less obviously, this inviolability of the
written word is also inscribed within the particular “participation frame-
work” (in Goffman’s 1981 terms) the newsreader occupies: that is, the
role they inhabit in a given interaction. The ideal of the newsreader rests
upon the delivery of pre-inscribed words as a professionalised enactment
of recitation, foregoing the lures of interpretation or invention. While
they can routinely switch to interview mode, introducer or even engage
in studio banter, submitting to the participant frame appropriate to news-
reading maximises directness and clarity and acts to minimises the “noise”
of opinion and diversion.
However, the efforts undertaken to minimise any noise have been
considerable. Even in the early decades of public service radio, those deliv-
ering the BBC news would be required to wear formal attire and maintain
a tone that conceals their own attitude towards the information they are
tasked with imparting. The design is to reproduce recognisable codes of
authority, albeit with notes of reassurance that this is exercised on our
behalf and directed to our benefit. There are clear parallels here with what
Nimmo and Combs (1992: 25) describe as the “priestly caste” in political
punditry in US journalism. They talk of a cadre of well-connected journal-
ists, representing a social, cultural and education type that “rub elbows,
speak to, with, and of established elites”. In his account of the “tribunes
of the people”, Clayman (2002) identifies such characters amongst elite
interviewers, albeit presented as champions of the popular interest. Of
course, and in a way that we will return to below, even as they speak from
the establishment, the attentive newsreader is obliged to interpret, miti-
gate, explain and at times cushion these weighty discourses; tempering
authority with sensitivity. This attitude is apparent in early citations of the
newsreader, such as the 1926 Daily Herald reassurance that “Instead of
receiving a shock at a national calamity, the news reader breaks it to you
in a calm and quiet voice”.
In discussing the variety of descriptions for the personnel fronting the
news broadcast, we hinted that a number of the representative and perfor-
mative expectations have adapted considerably. The following illustration
and extract show how the many of the conventions of the newsreader
sustain, alongside accommodations of other forms of news talk we discuss

later in the chapter. The extract is from the main story of UK public
service broadcaster Channel 4’s flagship evening news, broadcast on 22
December 2021. With Europe Correspondent Matt Frei taking the role
of reader, the item concerns the spread of a new variant of the COVID-19
virus:
There are a number of important visual elements to the framing of
the presenter and how we are invited to interpret their talk as news.
The first, which we can see from the two illustrations, is the conspicu-
ously professional setting from which the talk is delivered. The studio and
broadcast centre within which it is situated are emphasised in the compo-
sition of the shot, with lighting and internal architecture emphasised in
the opening frame (Illustration 1) and angled to remain in view through
the reading of the story (Illustration 2). In Montgomery’s (2007: 77)
words, “care is taken to articulate and embody visually and verbally the
primary space of the studio as the site of enunciation”. Secondly, while
possession of a business suit scarcely betokens membership of the estab-
lishment elite, presenter Frei’s attire nonetheless situates the presenter and
their words within the semiotic lexicon of the “priestly caste” (Nimmo &
Combs, 1992). As Owyong (2009: 204) argues of the tightly tailored,
dark-coloured “power suit” and its “epitomic” necktie, these project a
willingness to inhabit the known conventions of power and depend-
ability, with its access to and understanding of the elevated discussions
and comings and goings of government and cultural authorities.
Every bit as telling is the pile of typed papers that the presenter carries
in their hands, and is seen to be checking in the opening studio shot
(illustration 1). The widespread adoption of autocue technology from
the 1960s onwards enables presenters to maintain “eye contact” with the
camera while remaining faithful to the news script (Montgomery, 2007:
74). However, as well as providing a backup measure in case of autocue
failure, the retention of the papers on-screen foregrounds the commu-
nicative activity as one of recital, rather than a stretch of unscripted talk
or even gossip. Indeed, we can see in the few moments between illustra-
tion 1 and illustration 2 how the script anchors the preparedness of the
words:
Extract 1
32 M. HIGGINS
Illustration 3.1 Higgins illustration
Illustration 3.2 Higgins illustration

1 Good evening (.) Omicron is spreading like wildfire with more than a hundred
2 thousand cases in one day (.) a new record for a variant as infectious as measles (.) but
3 also a glimmer of good news tonight as two studies show that Omicron is slightly less
4 likely to land you in hospital (.) than Delta (..) with city centres empty by fear and not
5 by decree (.) is greater society now paying the price for the unvaccinated (..) in Wales
6 they go even further (.) you can still go to the pub (.) though in groups of six people (.)
7 and they must be socially distanced (..) the booster programme marches on and now
8 vulnerable kids between five and seven will finally be able to get their jabs
A shift in look from the hand-held script to a prolonged stretch of

direct gaze is signalled by a ritual greeting towards camera (in this case
“good evening”, line 1). This occasions an important reorientation of
the presenter’s “mode of address” (Corner, 1995) from a concentration
on their papers (seen in illustration 1), to the enactment of what Horton
and Wohl (1956) refer to as a “para-social interactional” relationship with
the viewing audience (illustration 2). Even then, the very presence of the
script, allied with the visual framing of the delivery, betrays the construct-
edness of this engagement: “the scripted delivery (even if the script is
invisible) and the conditions of mediation ultimately preclude any form
of actual reciprocity” (Montgomery, 2007: 74). In terms of the contribu-
tion of both elements, there is a parallel reassurance of scriptedness and
interpersonal attention.
As we turn to the words themselves, we see that the language too
shows a compromise between conventional and conversational news
forms. First in terms of what we might have expected of a scripted news
text, we can see the benefits of record manifest in the easy recall of the
latest pandemic statistics and parameters: “more than a hundred thou-
sand cases in one day” (lines 1–2), “groups of six people” (line 6) and
“between five and seven” (lines 7 and 8). Second, and in keeping with
the emphasis on the studio space, there is also the “deictic zero point” of
enunciation reflecting the United Kingdom’s discursive centre (England),
which is then directed outward to one of the other UK nations (Higgins,
2004). In this case, the account moves from the unmarked English inte-
rior of “city centres” (line 4) out to “In Wales they go even further” (line
5), discursively occupying a shared space with the perceived majority of
viewers.
However, for all the qualities that disqualify this news extract as recip-
rocal chatter, the extract reveals to us a considerable range of chat-like
characteristics. Firstly, there are several markers of what Fairclough (1995)
refers to as the “conversationalisation” of news, through the use of
informal and colloquial phrasings. Included in this is the idiomatic simile
34 M. HIGGINS
“spreading like wildfire” (line 1) to express the degree of contagion, and

the use of “land you in hospital” (lines 3 and 4) in alluding to the conse-
quences. There are also colloquially expressed assumptions around shared
cultural practice in “you can still go the pub” (lines 5 and 6) which
then immediately reverts to the formalised policy register of third person
in “and they must be socially distanced” (lines 6–7). The extract also
displays a technique of rhetorical opposition, in “empty by fear and not
by decree” (line 4), more commonly associated with spoken discourse, as
well as the pretence of para-social responsiveness with the rhetorical ques-
tion “is greater society now paying the price for the unvaccinated?” (lines
4–5).
A further aspect of reciprocal talk that even this brief extract fore-
grounds is the emotionality of the story. Wahl-Jorgensen (2019) argues
that emotionality is an increasingly important currency for aligning and
connecting news with its audiences, and that sensitivity to emotive latency
has infiltrated the core practices of news production (Wahl-Jorgensen,
2020). In this extract there is, first, the orientation of “a glimmer of good
news tonight” with the direct address of “you” (lines 2 and 3), projecting
an ostensible offer of individual comfort to the viewer. Secondly, and
more subtly, the text inhabits and expresses an assumed exasperation
and unease on the part of the viewer by emphasising the amplifying
adverb “finally” in “now vulnerable kids between five and nine will finally
be able to get their jabs” (lines 7 and 8). Richards (2007) criticises
such associations between emotionality and the management of audi-
ence fear, suggesting the news’s exercise of interpretative authority over
the story and its legitimate response outweighs any submission to the
natural empathies of mutually productive human interaction. In these
regards, the style used calls upon many of the communicative strategies
Tolson (2006: 69) identifies in the dynamic of the multi-presenter studio
context: the linguistic expression of approachable informality, allied with
a recognisably emotive performance on the part of the presenters.
Using Public Talk

A number of scholars have pointed to an appreciable shift in the use and
treatment of public voices in media (Higgins, 2008; Turner, 2010). In a
study conducted almost two decades ago, Brookes et al (2004) outlined
a number of ways in which various iterations of public opinion were
incorporated into news texts, ranging from the use of vox pops (brief
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"Where's your bread, Fwank?"
"I'm not hungry yet. When we get out we'll buy some more."
"When s'all we get out?"
"When they open the door."
After some time, Fred got so hungry, and said so with such increasing
emphasis, that at last Frank was driven to call out; but no one heard him.
The vans were again on a siding waiting for a train to take them to their
destination further south. The greater part of the train had gone on to
London.
Hungry and frightened, the forlorn pair sat side by side, tightly clasped in
each other's arms. They fell asleep at last, and when they awoke the train
was moving.
"Oh, Fwank, they're wunning away with us!"
"But I suppose they are going to Liverpool," answered Frank; "and won't
that be nice?"
"Yes, but I'm so hungry!"
"So am I," admitted poor Frank; "but, then, fancy if we find we're safe in
Liverpool!"
As he spoke the train slackened its pace, and finally stopped.
Presently a man opened the door of the van, and pulled out the big box
thrust in at Rugeley. He went off with it without seeing the boys, who
were behind the door. Poor little souls! They rejoiced at this escape, yet
surely it would have been well had they been discovered and sent back to
Rugeley. The man left the door open, and Frank peeped out. There were
several men about, but they were all busy, and the boys got out of the
van unperceived.
They looked very unlike poor Janet's neatly dressed and spotlessly clean
little boys. Frank had got dusty in his prison closet; they had both trudged
the dusty road for hours, and had finally slept in a railway van on a sack
of wool. Of each and all these adventures they bore visible traces; their
natty little sailor suits were all awry, their curly hair full of bits of wool.
They really looked like what they wished to pass for—two little beggars.
As they looked about, hoping to see some one who would tell them where
they were, though they felt sure they were in Liverpool, the station-
master spied them.
"Off the platform, you little ragamuffins," he shouted. "We've had quite
enough of pickpockets here already."
Utterly unused to unkindness, except from grandma, Frank restrained his

brother, who would have fled, and, taking his hand, walked up to the
station-master, and said—
"Please, sir, is not this Liverpool?"
The man stared. All he saw, however, was a dirty little pair of children,
who plainly had no right to be on his platform. The baby beauty of dark-
eyed Fred, the sweet confiding smile of poor pale Frank had no effect
whatever on him.
"Liverpool! Is the boy an idiot? Get out of this at once, or I'll take a stick
to you."
As he spoke, a whistle sounded, and, behold! The train was moving on.
Frank felt as if his last friend was deserting him. A moment more, and he
was driven off the platform, Fred clinging to him in great terror, and the
station-master rattling a thick stick against the iron railings that separated
the railway from the road.
"Oh, Fwank, what shall we do now?"
"Don't cry, Fred. I'll take care of you, and God loves us just the same as if
we were at home with muddie. But I wish I had not left my bag in the
van."
A little way from the station they came to a shop, where they bought
some bread; a drinking-fountain in the street gave them a drink of water.
They consulted each other on the propriety of washing, but Frank thought
that people might object. Then a woman came along the pathway, and
Frank ventured to address her—
"Please, ma'am, isn't this Liverpool?"
"Liverpool! Did you ever hear the like? Why, child, Liverpool's a long way
off. I never saw it in my life. Why do you ask?"
"Because we are going there, ma'am."
"What! You two babies? Who are you going with?"

"No one, ma'am. We must walk."
"Nonsense, child—walk indeed!"
"Oh, we can walk very well," Frank said, adding with a sigh, "We're
beggars, you know."
The woman was kind-hearted, but stupid, and, moreover, in a hurry. She
looked round for a policeman, intending to call his attention to the
children; but there was no policeman to be seen, so she compromised the
matter with her conscience by saying—
"I don't know any way of getting to Liverpool except by train, and that
costs a lot of money. Go home now, like good children. Here's a penny for
you, and I'm in a great hurry."
"Thank you, ma'am," Frank said gratefully. And then, as she sped away,
he turned to Fred, saying, "By train—that's what she said. Then, Fred, as
long as we keep near the train we're on the right road to Liverpool."
Fred, refreshed by sound sleep and a big hunch of bread, set forth gaily,
skipping along beside the weary, gentle-looking elder brother, for whom,
alas! Sleep had brought little refreshment, and who had stinted his
breakfast that he might have bread in his pocket for Fred. Thus they left
the town, the name of which they never knew, but I think it must have
been Cirencester.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BABES IN THE WOOD.
EVERY ONE knows the lines in "The Babes in the Wood"—

"These pretty Babes, hand-in-hand,
Went wandering up and down;"
* * * * *
"And when they saw the darksome night,

They sat them down and cried."
Yes, it came to that with Janet's little darlings. That they had taken a
southerly direction, following the railway away from, instead of towards,
Liverpool, or any other place they knew, really did not matter in the least.
Their enterprise was an impossible one in any case. They tried hard to
keep the railway in sight, but the roads did not lie near it, and in finding
easy places to creep through or over fences they wandered from it, and
finally failed to find it again. This was a great relief to Fred, but Frank felt
more lost than ever.
They bought bread as long as they had pence to pay for it, then they
begged in good earnest, getting sometimes a little food, sometimes a
penny, sometimes a hard word. They slept under a tree, or where they
could; that is, Fred slept, and Frank lay as quiet as he could, and kept
Fred warm, dozing at intervals and awaking in the grey dawn shivering
and hardly able to get up from the ground.
Then the weather changed: it blew and rained, and the nights were cold.
Except to give them a little charity, no one took any notice of them. They
looked much like any other little beggars, and if people thought about
them at all, they probably concluded that they belonged to some party,
and that their comrades were waiting just out of sight. It was a thinly
inhabited country district; they begged only at solitary houses, and there
were no policemen about, as would have been the case in any town.
There is a village in Gloucestershire which I shall call Edgestone, a large

village with numerous inhabitants, mostly poor, industrious people. It had
a clergyman, of course, and a doctor—and, I believe, a lawyer. Most of the
men were labourers employed on the large farms which surrounded the
village; their wives and children lived in more or less comfort, according
to the thrift or unthrift of their parents, in the rows of cottages which
formed the street. The church—a beautiful old building—stood in the
middle of the village. Beyond it there was a large green, on which the
children played and geese wandered about at pleasure; at the side
furthest from the church was the schoolhouse, and a few houses of the
better sort, with gardens; then the street again, but this part of it was
very short.
In these houses on the green, the doctor and the few gentry of the place
lived. The road to the village from the east lay through farms and
orchards, with here and there a cottage. As one came nearer Edgestone,
the cottages were more numerous, until at last you found yourself in the
street.
In one of the outlying cottages—a small white one, containing but two
rooms, but standing in a little garden always full of bright flowers, as
indeed were the two clean windows, and even the tiny back yard—in this
cottage lived a little old woman, whose name was Betty Giles. She had
been a servant in her youth; then she married, and brought up a
numerous family. Her husband was a good, steady man, and her married
life had been happy. Then her husband died, and she was left alone, for
her boys were married, and her girls either married or in service. Her
married children would gladly have given her a home, for she was one
who was sure of a welcome, owing to her kindly, pleasant ways and her
industry.
But Betty would not go to any one of them, nor to all of them in turn,
which was another plan proposed to her. She gave up her big cottage, and
took this tiny one, and there she contrived to support herself by various
small industries. She kept a small shop, selling bread of her own making,
always light and sweet, tea and sugar and biscuits, and several other
things. But her principal income was derived from her scrap of garden.
She grew patches of early annuals, which somehow always turned out
very fine, so that the ladies on the green would buy them eagerly instead
of trying to grow them for themselves. When these were cleared away,
she sowed autumn flowers. In boxes, cunningly hung from the wall at the
back of her cottage, and all round the very small yard, she grew cuttings
of geraniums, chrysanthemums, fuchsias, etc., the parent plants making a
gorgeous show in the front garden. Betty's husband had been a gardener,
and she understood and loved flowers. Whether she loved them because
she understood them, or understood because she loved, I really cannot
say.
Between her manifold employments and her many visits to and from her
sons and daughters, Betty lived a busy and a happy life. She was a little
woman, with a face like a pink-and-red apple—a rather withered apple, I
confess. Her face, her dress, her cap and apron, her house and her
furniture were always beautifully and spotlessly clean.
One evening in September—it was only September, but the weather had
broken, and it was very cold—Betty sat in her snug kitchen reading her
Bible; a very slow and solemn process was Betty's reading. Her lonely life
had given her a habit of talking to herself, for she had an active tongue
and no one else to talk to.
"That," said Betty, "is a tex' as sticks in the memory, so I'll stop here. Ah
me! It must be fine to be a scholar like some of my young folk—no
spelling out of words for them! 'Tis a blessing, for the like of me, that the
Bible is read out loud in church, for one does seem to take it in better
when one doesn't have to spell."
"Well, now, I think there's a touch of frost, though 'tis far too early for it,
if I may say so without offence, seeing that my opinion wasn't asked. I
think I'll cover the geranium slips; fine they look, and 'twould be a pity to
run risks. Such a lot, too; I shall have to buy some pots. That's just a
cross I have to bear—the way some folk forget to return my pots. Now,
there's Miss Lavinia has a heap of them in a corner—pots properly
belonging to me, and I'm afraid to ask for them, she's so quick to take
huff."
"Eh—what's that? Some one at the door! I must have left the gate open.
'Tis well if half a score of dogs don't—Oh, a child! Well, little chap, what
do you want? And who are you? For I don't know you, and I know every
boy in the village."
The child stood before her, she standing in the doorway with a lighted
candle in her hand. A pretty boy, but ragged and dirty. He had on a sailor
suit of dark blue, once very natty, and over his little jacket, he wore a
second, equally ragged, and far too large for him. His shoes were broken
and nearly soleless, his feet blistered and bleeding, his hair was matted
and twisted, but, when he raised appealing dark eyes to Betty's face, the
look went to her soft old heart.
"Come to Fwank; he's sick; he can't walk any more. I'm fwightened."
"'Come to Fwank'! Who's that, and where is he?"
"On the woad under the hedge. 'Tis cold, ma'am." Here his eyes lighted
on a flat cake of bread lying on the little deal table that served as a
counter, and he burst out crying. "I'm so hungwy. 'Dive' me some
'bwead'!"
Betty cut a good piece and gave it to him. Before he took a morsel, the
little hand was stretched out.
"Some for Fwank, though he says he's not hungwy. But we've had none—
oh, for ever so long."
"Show me where he is," said old Betty; and they set out together, the boy
devouring the bread. It was some way off: there was a high hedge
growing on a low bank. On the side path, with his head on the sloping
bank, lying on his back, with his arms stretched out and his white face
upturned towards the clear starry sky, lay Frank. Betty knelt beside him,
and touched him; she spoke to him, and at last raised him into a sitting
posture, leaning against her arm. But the child neither spoke nor moved,
not so much as to open his eyes.
"And no jacket at all! No wonder he's cold. I doubt he's colder than is
natural, though 'tis a cold night too."
She got up as she spoke, and lifted him in her old arms.
"Light as a feather, too. Skin and bone—not much of it either. Come, little
chap, trot on beside me. I must get this child warm—if I can."
Fred confidingly ran beside her, her walk keeping him running, and though
she saw that the child was weary and could scarcely do it, she did not
slacken her pace. Into the warm cottage, she carried the boy, laying him
on the floor before the fire, and putting a pillow under his head. She put
her hand on his heart—poor little loving, brave heart. She thought it
fluttered, but not more than that. She got some milk and warmed it,
giving a cupful to Fred. Then she tried patiently to make Frank swallow a
spoonful, but tried in vain. Fred, having finished his share, sat down
beside his brother.
"Fwank, isn't this nice and cosy? Put your arms wound me as you always
do."
Betty thought there was an effort to move, but even of that she was not
sure.
"Fwank never did so before. Always his arms wound me, and my head on
him—so."
And the little dark head was laid on the faithful breast which had been its
pillow so often, and the bright eyes closed. Fred was asleep.
Mrs. Giles, muttering to herself, "The pitifullest sight I ever saw," covered
them with her warm shawl, and poked up the fire—recklessly for one of
her frugal habits. Then she went out into the night again, going as fast as
her feet could carry her up the long straggling street, and across the
green. She was bound for the doctor's house, but outside the gate of the
little avenue she met the doctor himself, setting out to take a last look at
some patient.
"Dr. Wentworth, be that you? Oh, sir, I'm glad I've met you! Come to my
house; there's a boy there that I think is dying."
"Whose boy, Betty? Your grandson?"
"No; no one I know. There's two of them. I found them, or one of them
found me. I'll tell you by-and-by; just now I want my breath for walking.
Oh, doctor, 'tis the saddest sight!"
Little more passed as they hurried to the cottage. Betty pulled off the
shawl, and the doctor muttered, "Too late—for one of them."
Having asked Betty a question or two as to what she had already done, he
lifted Fred from his brother's side, and put him upon Betty's bed; he was
warm now, and sleeping soundly. Then he heated Betty's shawl and his
own coat, and wrapped the other boy up in them, and chafed the little
sore and battered feet.
"Betty, go to the Cygnet, and get me a little brandy. Say nothing of the
children; I don't want all the village here."
Betty hurried away, and was soon back again with the brandy. The doctor
wetted the white lips with it, and rubbed the temples. Then he again felt
for the beating of the heart, and while he was doing so the boy opened his
eyes, and, looking at the two faces bent over him, said faintly—
"Fred! Where is Fred?"
"Safe and warm in my bed, child," answered Betty.
"Ah!"—with a sigh of relief. "Safe and warm!"
"Drink this, my boy," said Dr. Wentworth. "You shall tell us all about it by-
and-by."
"Where's Fred?" Frank again asked, in a hurried tone.
Dr. Wentworth went and lifted the sleeping child gently, laying him beside
the other.
"See, here he is, safe and sound."

"He always sleeps here. Ah! I cannot move. Fred, I did save you. I have
taken care of you. I'm tired; but you're safe."
Fred sat up, half awake, and kissed him.
"Fred, tell muddie I took care of you." Then to the doctor, "Tell muddie I
took care of Fred."
Fred, frightened and sleepy, began to cry. When had he ever cried before
and Frank failed to comfort him? Betty took him up in her arms, and the
poor little thing was so worn out that he fell asleep again with the tears
on his cheeks.
"I can't take care of him any more," Frank said, after a vain effort to
swallow what Dr. Wentworth offered him. "But God will; muddie says so."
He stretched himself suddenly, gave a weak cry, and was gone.
"Oh, doctor, don't tell me he's dead, the pretty little darling! Wait till I put
this one back in bed."
This she did, and came softly back.
"Is he dead?"
"Ay, dead. Starved, I think. Look, the little one has on two jackets; he has
none. The comforter's tied round the young one, and it is plain that
whatever food they have had, the young one has had the lion's share, too
young to know that his brother was giving him his life. Well, Betty, you did
all you could. I'll go now and get help to carry the poor little fellow to the
Cygnet; there will have to be an inquest, and I suppose we shall find out
who they are, and how they were lost, for lost they were, I suspect. These
are no tramps to the manner born. This little fellow must go to the
poorhouse until his people turn up. I declare, Betty, I'd give many a fat
fee to have saved this boy."
"Indeed, then, doctor, if I was their mother, I'd wish them together again
in heaven sooner than have this baby in the poorhouse."
The doctor carried out his arrangements, and little Frank's frail and worn
body was laid on a bed in the clean little inn, while Fred lay warm and soft
in Betty's arms. So the little wanderers both slept sound, one of them to
wake no more to this world's "fitful fever."
Next day there was an inquest, and Fred was to have been questioned as
to the name borne by himself and his brother, and how they came to be
wandering about in this forlorn way. But Fred was in no condition to be
examined.
When he awoke, he began calling for "Fwank," and searching for him, with
tears and lamentations, looking everywhere for him, and calling
incessantly. Betty, at last, in despair, told him that Frank was dead. She
hardly expected the child to understand. But Frank's innocent talk about
his unforgotten little sister had made Fred familiar with the idea of death
to some extent, and, after a long stare of horror, the poor little fellow
began to scream, and nothing that Betty could say or do seemed to make
any difference. The doctor, busy about the inquest, was near at hand, and
after some vain attempts to quiet the child, he had to give him a sleeping
draught, which soon had the desired effect.
But when Fred woke again, he was very ill; he was quite delirious, and
talked fast and indistinctly about "muddie" and "Fwank" and "gwandma."
It was many a long day before he could be questioned, and when they
tried to do so, he seemed to have forgotten everything and every one.
Several attempts were made, more with a view to finding out who the
child was than with any reference to Frank's death. For by that time,
Frank's little grave was green; the doctor, feeling sure that some day the
children would be inquired about, had had him buried at his own expense
beside his own little son, his only child, who had died but a short time
previously. But no information could be got from poor Fred, whose little
white face, with the wistful dark eyes, looked full of intelligence, but
whose memory, for the present at least, seemed a blank. At last the
doctor forbade any further questioning of the child.
"I am sure," he said, "that as he regains his strength, his mind will
recover from the shock, but you may seriously injure him, if you do not
leave him in peace now."
Every effort was made, of course, to trace the children's wanderings, and
they were tracked back some stages in their journey. But then all trace
was lost. The distance the poor little things had come in the luggage van
was so great that the inquiries made were never heard of by any one who
knew them; nothing but their initials was marked on their clothing, and,
save the photograph of his father, Frank had had nothing in his pocket.
Even the photograph told nothing, for it had been originally a cabinet-size
portrait, and poor Janet had cut out the head to fit it into a little leather
case, so that the name and address of the photographer were wanting.
"Really," said Dr. Wentworth one day, when he had looked in to see Fred,
"really, Betty, if we send this child to the union, he'll probably grow up an
idiot."
"Send him to the union?" interrupted Betty. "Is it the child I've nursed
through that terrible fever, and that has slept in my old arms every night
since I got him? What do you take me for, doctor?"
"For a good old body with a hasty tongue, Betty. Just let me finish my
remarks, please. If he goes to the union, he'll end in being an idiot.
Therefore, it would be doubly cruel to send him there. Now, if you can
continue to keep him for a while, I'll help you. I feel sure the child will be
looked for, and whoever finds him will find only one where two were lost.
But we need not add to their grief."
"I don't need any help, doctor, so far. Only for clothes. I'll keep the child.
I've got to love him."
"Clothes? Yes; I'll speak to my wife. We'll clothe him, and pay for his
schooling, if he ever needs any. Meanwhile, do you get him to help you in
any little way he is able for, and keep him out in the fresh air. Never talk
to him of the night he came to you, and I really believe he'll be all right in
a while. I'm afraid he will hardly remember anything that will help to
identify him, because he's such a little creature. Poor little waif! He was in
luck when he chose your door to creep up to."
So little Fred's fate was arranged for him, for a time at least. Betty taught
him to weed in the garden, and to water her many precious pots and
boxes of slips and seedlings. She took him with her, when she carried
home flowers or plants to her customers, and though he seldom spoke,
and never unless asked a question, she soon found that he knew his way
as well as she did, and that he never made a mistake about a message.
So as time went on, he was provided with a little handcart, and became
her trusty little messenger. Other people employed him too, so that he
earned many a penny, and these he brought home faithfully to Betty.
He had been a very small child for his age, but now he began to grow,
and became a tall, slight boy, with, as Betty used to say, "as pretty a face
as any lady." Yet many a long day passed, before any one could find out
whether he remembered anything that had happened to him before he
became "Betty Giles's Fred," as the neighbours called him now.
CHAPTER IX.
IN THE NEW HOME.
LET us pay a flying visit to Kelmersdale to see how it fared with

"grandma." Mrs. Rayburn has not hitherto appeared in a very amiable
light in these pages, yet she was not an altogether bad woman. She had a
heart, though it was so overlaid with selfishness that she herself hardly
knew that it existed, and she had a conscience, though she made but little
use of it.
And now, as she sat alone in her snug room, and ate her comfortable
meals, she failed to get the slightest comfort or enjoyment out of any of
these things. The faces of the two boys—Frank's gentle smile, Fred's
saucy laugh—rose up before her, no matter what she was doing or where
she was.
She felt sure now that Janet would write or come to claim her children,
though she had so often declared that Janet had deliberately deserted
them, and would be heard of no more. Most people believed that the boys
had fallen into the Kelmer, and now lay in one of those deep holes, or
pools, into which those drowned in that river generally disappeared. But
Mrs. Rayburn did not believe this, though she tried to do so. Every horrid
story of the oppression of children by chimney-sweeps, travelling tinkers,
professional acrobats, and others, came into her head whenever she
thought of the two boys; she pictured them to herself as suffering and
starved and beaten, overworked and ill-used in every possible way. She
had always been fond of stories of horrors, and now she paid for her bad
taste, for they supplied her imagination with horrors enough to drive any
one mad. Those about her said that Mrs. Rayburn cared for those children
far more than any one could have expected, considering that their father
was only her stepson, and by no means a creditable one, by her own
showing.
So passed the autumn, a few weeks being fine, and then the weather
broke, and there were cold, damp days and rainy, windy nights.
On the very night on which little Fred found his way to Betty's cottage
with his pitiful cry for help—the very night when Frank's sweet soul
passed away—there came a letter for Mrs. Rayburn. Maria brought it to
her.
"A letter, ma'am; and I'm sure I hope it's good news, for I can't bear to
see how you fret for the poor little children."
Mrs. Rayburn looked at the writing.
"It's from no one I know," she said, laying it down beside her. She sat for
some time plunged in very gloomy thoughts. The Earl and a party of
friends were come to the Castle for some shooting, and they were just
then at dinner. A door was opened, and she heard the sound of voices and
laughter. She felt unreasonably angry that any one should laugh in the
very same place where the boys had played so often so short a time ago.
The boys, the poor little dead boys—for they were dead, and she was
tormenting herself foolishly imagining them in misery and suffering—they
were in heaven; and well was it for them, for it was clear that neither
Janet nor their father would ever be heard of in England again.
Now she felt able to read that letter, and she took it up. A strange hand,
shaky and uneven. She opened it, glanced at the signature, and, uttering
a low cry, fell back in her chair.
An hour later, when the guests left the dining-hall, and were heard
passing along the corridors to the smoking-room, the noise roused Mrs.
Rayburn, who was still sitting with the letter grasped in her hand, unread.
Now, making a great effort to compose herself, she began to read it.
"Old Man's Ferry Farm, Gattigo, British

Columbia.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,
"I hope you have not been frightened about me,

though I have been so long without writing. I could not
help it, for I have been very ill, and am still very weak, as
you may see from my writing. I was in great distress at
getting no letter from you, with news of my little darlings,
till I remembered that I may not have given you my
brother's address, for I was in such a hurry, and so
distracted at parting with the children. I am with Gilbert,
and Fred is here too, and we have some hope that we shall
soon be settled, either here to help Gilbert and his wife, or
in Gattigo in an hotel which Gilbert means to start, and we
are to manage. Whichever we have to do, we can have the
boys out now. I enclose a bank-bill for their expenses, and
if you could possibly be spared to take my two boys to
Liverpool, and put them on board the boat named in
Gilbert's part of this letter, it will be very kind of you.
Gilbert will send you every direction to save you trouble.
We wish them to come by this boat, because Gilbert knows
the captain, whose wife will be on board. Fred will meet
them on landing, and bring them on here. How I long for
them no words can tell, though I am sure you have made
them as happy as possible, and we shall never forget your
kindness to them and to us.
"Fred sends you his love. He is now quite well, and

only longing to be at work in some way. While on his way
to join my brother, he met an old acquaintance who had
set up in business in New Durham, and who cheated him,
poor fellow! out of all his money, and then ran away,
leaving him to be suspected of all sorts of dishonesty. And
he managed so that poor Fred could not prove his
innocence, nor could my brother, though he felt quite sure
of it. However, our troubles are over now, I hope, and a
new life about to begin. I only want my boys to make me
as happy as ever.
"Will you come out with the boys and share our work in
the hotel if we go there? Perhaps you would prefer to wait
until we know for certain we shall be there, or here on the
farm? Whichever it is, your assistance would be very
welcome. But perhaps you do not care to leave
Kelmersdale, where you are so comfortable, and we feel
unwilling to urge you until we are sure of our future
prospects. But when we know that we are going to do well,
you may be sure we shall want you to share our good
fortune.
"Kiss my boys for 'muddie,' and remember that,

though I cannot write as I feel, I am for ever grateful to
you for taking care of them. When I feel their arms round
my neck, I shall be too happy. Tell them that 'muddie' just
longs for them. I must leave room for Gilbert now.
"Your affectionate daughter,
"JANET RAYBURN."
When Maria came back a little later with Mrs. Rayburn's supper, she found
her lying back in her armchair insensible. The letter lay at her feet.
* * * * *
Fred Rayburn was just about to leave the Farm in order to meet the two
boys and bring them safe to their mother, when a letter to Janet from
Lord Beaucourt stopped him. Very kindly and gently did the Earl break the
dreadful news. He told the story very fully, and said that, although the
children had not been found in the river, there was no reasonable doubt
that they had fallen in, probably in trying to take a drink. He spoke of the
character of the Kelmer, from which the bodies of those who were
drowned in it were very seldom recovered. And he told of Mrs. Rayburn's
serious illness, which it was still feared would end fatally.
"Your letter and the bank-bills I now return to you were lying at her feet. I
am told that since her power of speech has returned to her, she talks of
having been harsh to the children; and I cannot say whether this is really
true, or only her fancy. Certainly she has never been the same since they
were lost."
He concluded with many expressions of sympathy, and a promise that

Mrs. Rayburn should be well cared for.
Poor Janet! That letter very nearly killed her. At her earnest request, Fred
went to England, to ascertain, as far as he could, the truth about Mrs.
Rayburn's treatment of the boys; and perhaps there was a wild hope that
he might discover that the children had not perished. He did his best, but
discovered nothing new about the children.
Mrs. Rayburn had left the Castle, and was in a hospital in London, as her
state of mind required careful watching; but she was better, and would,
they thought, recover. Fred felt convinced that she had not been kind to
the children, and did not feel very sorry when told that he could not see
her.
He returned to Canada after a while, bringing no hope, and but little

added information.
Poor Janet! Her sorrow was very sore, and it was not lessened by a
curious feeling of doubt that took possession of her. She could not believe
that her children were dead. If for a moment she felt sure, next moment a
doubt sprang up again. She told no one of this feeling, for she could give
no reason for it, and whether it added to her grief, or was a gleam of
comfort, she did not very well know. It added much to her suffering, for it
made her restless and full of longing to go home and search England for
her bonny boys. But, after a while, another little Lily came to comfort the
poor torn heart, and Janet's grief lost some of its bitterness.
But it had utterly changed her. Her bright colour was gone; her face was
still and grave. Her little daughter had the tenderest care, but the merry
playfellow with whom Frank and Fred had had many a game of romps,
little Lily never knew.
After a while the first manager of "Gray's Hotel" left his situation, and
Fred Rayburn was his successor. All feeling against him was quite
forgotten. Indeed, with sturdy Gilbert Gray to keep him steady, Fred was
a different man. He prospered exceedingly; all things went well with him.
And yet, he would have given all his wealth to see his gentle, sad-faced,
silent wife look like the pretty, happy Janet who had played with her boys
in the old sitting-room over the Gateway.
"Janet," he said one day, when something had made them talk of the lost
children, "I wonder how you can bear the sight of me. It was really my
fault. But for my folly and selfishness, you would never have had to leave
them."
"Dear heart, I loved you before God gave me them, and your grief for
them made me love you more. And, maybe, nothing but such a sorrow
would have made us one, as we are now."
"You mean, would have made me think? You are right there. I never really
saw that I had sinned till I felt that—that dreadful blow. There was mercy
in the chastisement for me, but for you, my poor Janet—"
"Hush! You and I are one," was her quiet answer. "I can never forget my
pretty Frank and Fred, but I am content, dear. You and I are one."
CHAPTER X.
FRANK'S MESSAGE TO "MUDDIE."
LITTLE Fred, all alone in the world, and thrown upon the mercy of perfect
strangers, was surely very fortunate in having crept up Betty's garden
walk, rather than to any other cottage in Edgestone. For I suspect that he
would have found his way to the poorhouse, and, in the state he was in at
the time, this would have had most disastrous effects.
Having been the youngest, and not quick at speaking, he spoke very
indistinctly long after he was voluble enough. His inability to pronounce
the letter "r" made his speech sound babyish. But in two years, he had
grown so much, and had so completely lost the baby face and the baby
ways of the little brother Frank had taken such care of, that Frank would
hardly have known him again. He looked as old for his six years now as he
had looked young for four. A silent, sad-looking boy, with a half-puzzled
expression in his fine dark eyes, which sometimes made people wonder if
he were "quite like other children." His step-grandmother would never
have recognized her merry, mischievous, laughing torment in this quiet,
tall boy, who seemed to care for nothing but being of use to Betty.
As I have said before, he proved a careful messenger, and earned many a

penny, and every penny was brought to Betty with some little pride. One
day she said to him—
"You earn so many pence, Fred, that I'm going to keep half to buy your
clothes. Think of that, now!"
Fred looked up at her earnestly.
"Don't you want them, Mrs. Betty?" Which was his chosen name for her.
"I don't want them all," she said, wondering what was coming, for he so
seldom spoke except to answer a question.
"Then, if you don't want them, may I keep half for Fwank?"
It was the first time he had named his brother since his own illness.
"Why, child," Betty said tenderly, "Frank wants neither pence nor aught
you could buy with them. He has all he wants. He's quite safe and happy."
"Yes, Fwank is dead," the boy said after a pause.
Betty was quite pleased to find that he remembered this.
"Yes, dear, he is. Dear little fellow, he is dead surely, so, you see, he is in
heaven now, and those who go there want nothing."
She talked to him for some time, and he seemed to listen, yet when she
ceased, he said again—
"Keep half the pence for Fwank. There's his message, you know."
This rather puzzled Betty, and Fred would say no more. So she told him
that she would lay by the pence carefully, and added—
"By-and-by, when you've saved enough, you shall buy a wooden cross to
put at the head of his grave."
"With the message," Fred put in.
"I don't know about a message, but that's all you can do for him, dear,
and it well becomes you to do it, for I think he gave his life for yours."
How much or how little of this Fred understood, she could not tell. He
often sat thinking, thinking, with a sad and puzzled look, but he did not
speak of Frank again. Only when he brought his earnings, carefully
divided into two equal portions, he would say—
"Half for Fwank, Mrs. Betty."
After a while he found out, from something the doctor said, that Frank lay
in the old churchyard just beside the grave of little Charlie Wentworth.
There was a pretty headstone to the little Wentworth's grave, and his poor
mother kept it beautiful, with flowers growing round it. Frank's grave was
just a plain green mound. But thenceforth, when Betty missed her charge,
she was pretty sure to find him sitting beside it. Being a wise old body,
she did not interfere, only, after a time, suggested to him to plant flowers
on it like those on the other. From that time Frank's resting-place was
kept in the most beautiful order. Betty could always spare a few plants for
this purpose, and Fred cut the grass with shears, and trimmed and tended
it, until it was a wonder for colour and smoothness.
After a time, the boy began to speak more frequently, and the doctor put
him to school, where he soon surprised the schoolmaster by his quickness
and ability. But he did not care to join the boys on the green, unless they
were playing cricket or football. In these, he soon excelled, but for a mere
game of romps he did not care at all.
Thus time went on until Fred Giles, as the neighbours called him, was a
fine handsome lad of thirteen, and the schoolmaster informed Dr.
Wentworth that it was a great pity he could have no further education.
"You see, doctor, the boys here generally leave school at about thirteen or
fourteen, which I suppose is about Fred's age now. And I am too tired in
the evening, with this big school on my hands, to give him private
lessons, which I would if I could. He's very clever; there's nothing he
could not learn. I suppose old Betty is making a gardener of him; the best
she can do, but 'tis a pity."
The doctor went home to his delicate wife, who, poor thing, could no
longer take care of her boy's grave, for she was a prisoner on her sofa,
and never likely to be better.
"Lucy, you know the boy whom Betty Giles took to care for, and whom we
have partly clothed?"
"Little Fred? Oh yes, I know him. A very fine boy, though indeed, I have
not seen him for a long time. I hope he is not ill?"
"Not he. But Dale, the schoolmaster, you know, was just speaking to me
about him. It seems he is very clever. You know that he has long kept his
little brother's grave in order, but I never told you that since you have
been laid by, he has done the same for our little grave. I used to go and
look, meaning to have it settled, and I wondered how your work lasted so
long, my poor girl, when one evening I found him hard at work. Well,
now, it seems to me a pity that a boy like this, evidently belonging to
respectable people, should be condemned to leave school at thirteen and
to earn his bread as a labourer. And if his people ever turn up, it would be
a terrible blow to them, don't you think so?"
"Yes, but really after all these years—nine years now—I hardly expect his
people to trace him. But if he is a fine, clever lad, one would give him a
chance for his own sake. What did you think of? You are well off, and we
have no—no one to come after us, Alick. We might well do this."
Dr. Wentworth's worn face brightened.
"I was half afraid you might dislike the idea of having a boy about the
house, dear."
"About the house," she said, with a start, "did you say? I did not
understand at first. But no, Alick, I do not object at all. It would be an
interest for you."
"My idea is to train him to help me in the dispensary; Mark Fletcher will
soon be leaving me. Then I can give him lessons myself, and, if he really
is clever, get Mr. Hewson to teach him, and so as time passes, we shall
see what he really is fit for, and how we like him. My dear, I know you
consent only for my sake, but I hope it may prove an interest for you too,
and brighten your life a bit. It seems to me that he is a boy one would get
fond of easily."
Mrs. Wentworth said nothing. She thought that plans for the future
mattered more to the doctor than to her.
Intent on his idea, Dr. Wentworth went to see Betty Giles the next day. He
found the old woman sitting in the sun at her front door, knitting a
stocking, and looking complacently at her crop of young annuals.
"Well, Betty, how goes the world with you?" he said.
"It goes," Betty said cheerily; "that's just it, doctor. It goes, and it goes,
and soon 'twill be gone, or I shall, which comes to the same thing as far
as I'm concerned."

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ISSN 2947-5147 ISSN 2947-5155 (electronic)

Cover credits: CSA Images/Vetta/Getty Images

Part I Gossip and the Press

Part II Gossip and the President

7 A Trickle-Down Effect of Foreign Policy on Domestic

Part III Gossip and the Public

Frost Jennifer teaches US history at the University of Auckland, New

He also works extensively on Geopolitics, Business Continuity Plans, and

Fig. 4.1 Screen grab from the interview 1 50

Illustration 3.1 Higgins illustration 32

Table 9.1 Nicki Swift video dataset 137

Andrea McDonnell and Adam Silver

The renowned columnist Liz Smith is often quoted as remarking, “Gossip

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

news magazines, and growth of celebrity media, ushered in a period of

century, as the countless media platforms that have sprung up to host

Gossip and Politics

McDonnell. A. (2014). Reading celebrity gossip magazines. Polity.

Gossip and the Press

The Omigod no! Notes on News Talk

News and the Human-Interest Story

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 11

would take some fictional instance to support his sociological argument as

The Mapp and Lucia Novels

Queen Lucia (QL): 1920. Setting: Riseholme. Lucia only.

Miss Mapp (MM): 1922 Setting: Tilling (Riseholme mentioned). Mapp

[All subsequent quotations are from two omnibus editions, published by

It is a remarkable feature of the whole corpus that the unfolding narra-

Finding Something to Talk

All conversation begins with a news request as a preliminary endeavour

‘Well?’, she said.

in Daisy’s ‘No!’, the author provides an immediate explanation at the start

Here is an example, from Riseholme, of the two ‘No’s.

‘Any more news?’ asked Mrs Antrobus.

News is the obscure object of desire, eagerly sought by the collective

Having News to Tell

What is it, to be bursting with news? What is the compulsion to tell?

‘No chance then of your coming back?’ she asked.

General conversation and speculation follow these exciting revelations.

‘Well, Mapp, what luck?’ asked Irene.

News, Politics, and Power

• ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard, Elizabeth,’ she [Diva] said in a great

Elizabeth gave a half yawn and dexterously transformed it into an indulgent

[later that day]

The smallest changes in everyday life are noticeable, remarkable events

[Her] eye fell on Diva’s cropped head.

The proper response is not to comment critically on Diva’s new

News and Media

Talk as News on Television

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

emerging, variously, as the illustrative personal anecdote from the politi-

in news discourse. The overall intention is to offer a more nuanced

Talk as the Voice of Authority in News

moment. As McLuhan (1964: 88) observes, even as media technology

sustain, alongside accommodations of other forms of news talk we discuss

Illustration 3.1 Higgins illustration