By David Wiseman
November 1st 2008 @ 2:15am
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Don’t blame the athletes, ghostwriters just ‘make it up’
In a slow news week, one of the biggest stories has been Adam Gilchrist’s book, True Colours. Over the years, numerous sports stars have released books, and just as many haven’t written their own book, let alone read it. Did Gilly write the book himself? I don’t think that matters.
The issue isn’t whether Lote Tuqiri, Willie Mason or Ricky Ponting write their newspaper columns, but if readers actually believe they do.
If Prime Ministers and Presidents don’t write their own speeches, why should we expect more from our athletes?
The concept of the ghost-written column is as old as time itself and only serves two purposes: that the athlete receives some money for nothing, and that the newspaper establishes a relationship with that athlete so that if he or she is ever involved in some real news, the paper will have the inside running for the story.
The athlete isn’t going to say ‘no comment’ to someone who is lining his or her pocket.
It’s always funny when a ghosted column causes controversy. Does the athlete cop it on the chin or do they concede that they didn’t actually write the piece?
This is what happened when Harry Kewell sued Gary Lineker. Lineker spoke to a journalist who wrote the article for him and hadn’t even seen the article in question before it went to print.
Yet, he and the newspaper defended the article in court, at the end of which, the jury was unable to come up with a verdict.
Christy Walsh was the pioneer of ghost-writing and was actually the one who coined the term. He ghosted for baseball stars like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. When asked about the process of ghost writing, he said, ”a new ghost writer makes the mistake of thinking that he ought to write the way his celebrity talks. That is an error. He ought to write the way the public thinks his celebrity talks.”
In other words, make it up.
So next time you’re munching on your corn flakes and reading a piece written by your favorite athlete remember that just as you’re enjoying reading what they have to say, so too will they.
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Spiro said | November 1st 2008 @ 4:19pm | Report comment
Ian Chappell is one of the few stars who writes his own stuff. Richie Benaud and John Benaud, both journalists during their cricket careers, write their own stuff, and very good it is too. John Benaud’s book on cricket and selecting etc is a classic of analysis and insight.
As a long-time journalist it’s always irked me that stars get paid more for their columns which sometimes they have no imput into than the journalists actually writing it.
But some athletes attract an audience. Willy Mason’s ‘columns’ in the Sun-Herald apparently were the best-read stuff in the sports section.
Having said that, I’ve never read anything that was ghost-written that was even mildly interesting or insightful.
There should be some requirement under a Fair Trading regulation for ghost-written articles to have a note on the name of the real author or authors.
JonnyP said | November 1st 2008 @ 6:08pm | Report comment
Spiro- your revelations have surprised me. I always assumed that ghost writing meant that the ‘columnist’ dictated his views and the ‘proper’ journalist put it into a form fit for newspapers.I didn’t realise they sometimes didn’t have any input at all. I would have thought there’s a lot of scope for contraversial views and pot stirring to be written.However it does make sense by explaining Willy Mason’s excellent grammar and Campo not talking about himself in all his articles.
David Wiseman said | November 2nd 2008 @ 4:43pm | Report comment
Spiro - I simply assume that any currently competing athlete has their stuff ghost written. Even if it wasn’t it would be vetted by their agent and their respective sports body before it went to print. That was part of the kerfuffle with Andrew Symonds earlier in the year. CA told him what he couldn’t write about which didn’t go down well. But the whole thing is crazy - you put someone’s byline and head-shot next to an article and suddenly its sounds authoritative. People want to hear the voice of Willie and it works even though it clearly isn’t him.
JonnyP - It works something like this.
Let’s say its Willie Mason - the writer would ask Willie. “What should I write about this week - grapple tackles?”
“Sounds great,” answers Willie.
Discussion over.
Greg Russell said | November 3rd 2008 @ 9:48am | Report comment
Wasn’t there a period last year when Greg Growden was ghost-writing for John Connolly even though the two of them were feuding big-time over things Growden was writing about the Wallabies in his own articles?
In the scientific world (of which I am a member), a lot of ghost-writing takes place. It is because most scientific “papers” (as articles on research are called) are written by one person but nominally have several “co-authors”. These are people who are deemed to have contributed to the carrying out of the research in a substantial way. For example, Ph.D. students will normally do the experiments, with more or less guidance from a supervisor, who generally then writes up the work for publication.
The relevance of this is that over the last decade there have been a number of high-profile cases where high-flyers have been found to have been serial fabricators of scientific work. The co-authors of the publications have then pleaded innocence by saying that they had no idea of the fraud and that they could not be held responsible because it was not their part of the published work.
The result of this is that many scientific journals now make clear that ALL co-authors are responsible for EVERYTHING in a scientific publication, regardless of the fraction of the work in a paper which any particular co-author did. The reasonable principle behind this is that co-authorship of a paper gives one credit for everything in the paper, and therefore one also has to take (co-)responsibility for everything.
In Germany, who the most infamous and ignominious case of fraud took place, and many famous professors were embarrassed by co-authorship of papers with the fraudster, things have been taken a step further: job contracts for researchers now state they will be responsible for everything in a publication bearing their name, and that they will be made to account for any such publications that are fraudulent, even if the fraudulent work was carried out in a different laboratory.
And so to return to sport: my view is that a sports star should be fully accountable for any written article bearing his or her name. For example, it does not matter what Gilchrist actually said about Tendulkar, he has to accept responsibility for what has been published in his name about the great Indian batsman. If Gilchrist did not even read what his ghostwriter wrote, then - just like the esteemed German professors - he is doubly so an idiot.
JohnB said | November 3rd 2008 @ 10:30am | Report comment
I think Gilchrist was complaining more about what people who had read his book (to whatever extent) were saying he had said about Tendulkar, and disputiing that that was actually what he said in the book. I don’t think he was attempting to distance himself from his own book. Whether the interpretations others were making were fair ones is another matter - if not I think as an author you would be entitled to say that that isn’t what I said, what I meant or what I think. On the other hand an interpretation follows logically and naturally from something that is said in your book, it is a bit ordinary to try to say “oh I didn’t mean that”. I don’t know which side of the fence Gilchrist falls on by the way.