Hundreds of journalists the world over have a little voice in the back of their heads. It could be described as their conscience of grammar, of spelling and perfect English. The phrases they hear are beautifully enunciated, with rounded vowels grazed by the rasp of a million cigarettes and a whiplash of outrage. The literary advice is ingrained like a subliminal mantra, having been learnt at the shoulder of journalism guru June Margaret Litman (nee Allen).
Litman, believed to be New Zealand's first woman news editor on a daily newspaper, worked for the Taranaki Herald from 1942 to her retirement in 1986. She died on 9 April 1991, aged 65. The woman of words began as a cadet reporter and, apart from an 18-month overseas trip in 1949-1950, she worked continuously for the New Plymouth-based afternoon newspaper. From reporting, she moved on to sub-editing, becoming the chief sub-editor in 1960. In 1976, she took over as news editor.
Litman was a tyrannical force in her drive for perfection. Jim Tucker was one who survived her wrath and now recognises it as wisdom. Litman's word was final. "We never doubted her for a moment because of this wonderful anecdote told by others in the office" Tucker says. "The Times of London used to offer £5 to anyone who could find a literal [mistake] in their newspaper. June found one and she wrote away and got the £5."
When she retired, Litman began spotting errors in magazines like North & South and More. "She would sub-edit the whole thing with a red pen and send it back to the publishers. They tended to be very red documents by the time she'd finished" Tucker says.
Taranaki Herald reporters suffered far worse punishment. "In my first week I was made to ring back a man five times with the things I had forgotten to ask" says Tucker, who worked at the afternoon paper from August 1965 to April 1976. "I handed my final version in and went into the men's loos and cried. I was 17 and nobody had spoken to me like that before."
Tucker thought he'd finally made good with Litman when he returned with a great story from an Inglewood County Council meeting. "I got my first front page lead, which said that the swimming pools of Taranaki were a suspected source of leptospirosis. June was quite pleased with me. You never actually got praise, just 'Not a bad story, Tucker'."
The next day, it became clear the story was woefully incorrect. "I then, by some process, became invisible. June Litman did not see me for the next two months. I just didn't exist." Litman felt the Herald's credibility and her own had suffered because of the young reporter's giant clanger. Eventually, Tucker slipped back into Litman's line of vision, but he hadn't let go of the snub. "I actually hated her for that." In revenge, he invited everyone in the office to his 21st except Litman. "I'm quite ashamed that that happened. I found out later she was very wounded by that."
In 1986, Tucker atoned himself by helping to organise a huge reunion for his former nemesis. With the help of good mate and ex-colleague Lance Girling-Butcher, Tucker put together a ‘This is your life, June Litman’. Journalists from her past came to pay their respects.
Looking back, Tucker feels a great warmth for Litman. "It's the true meaning of the love-hate relationship. We loved her afterwards. You could forgive her for anything because of her passion for journalism. But until you knew how much June cared, she was very frightening." Especially, if you were a young reporter. "We were terrified of her – literally."
These rookies would hand in their copy and watch from a distance as her nicotine-stained hand descended on their stories. "You held your breath, and then there would be 'For Christ's sake Tucker, what is this?' You would creep over to the desk and this woman who was 4 foot 10 [inches] would become a 7-foot giant who growled at you, held the copy up high and proceeded to tear the story into confetti and sprinkle it over you. It was very brutal. We were told that if you could survive the first six months of June and she was still speaking to you, you were going to be a journalist" Tucker says.
Rob Mitchell didn't expect to survive. As a cadet, he worked in the Hāwera and Stratford offices of the Taranaki Herald. "Most of my June Litman memories are down the end of a phone, which is probably a good thing because it slightly diminished her powers of intimidation. I guess, like many young reporters, she helped me re-evaluate my career," Mitchell says. "On more than one occasion I had a message to ring June Litman about some clarification."
He would make the dreaded call, only to hear Litman's voice deepen and become mischievous: "Rob, have you ever thought of doing something else?" Mitchell remembers being constantly on tenterhooks. "I spent a reasonable amount of my time there thinking I was going to be fired." But he wasn't.
Despite the fact he didn't agree with her style of teaching, Mitchell did respond to her caustic lessons. "You learnt to make sure you didn't get her phone calls by doing the job properly." And the biggest admission: "I'm sure that some standards have slipped since the likes of June Litman left the industry."
Litman's close friend Peg Bithell agrees with that. The retired journalist who worked alongside Litman as a reporter, then as features sub-editor, cringes at some of the mistakes she spies in newspapers and hears on the radio.
The other day she heard an on-air news report about how sewerage was seeping from pipes. "June would have had apoplexy if she had heard it." Her interviewer chimes in: "Sewage comes out of the sewerage." Bithell grins. "That was one of June's!"
She also remembers her colleague's astute mind. "She had a tremendous intellect. She didn't suffer fools gladly, that's one thing I felt about her."
On the job, Litman pushed the limits. "It didn't matter how close to the deadline, if she didn't like a story she would rip it in half and say 'Go do it again'. "It didn't matter how close to putting the paper to bed, if it was a story she really needed she would wait right through to the end, but she would be a very cross lady. Afterwards, she would talk to that person and make them feel quite a lot better. They were mortified when it happened to them. She never did it to me, but I was of that (same) age group" Bithell says.
Out of work, Litman was a different person, who delighted in people's love stories and enjoyed holding court. "People gravitated to her at home and there were little parties and big parties." Bithell remembers seeing pillars of the community sitting on Litman's lounge floor in deep discussion with her. Undoubtedly, she would have had a cigarette in her hand or wedged in the corner of her mouth, Bithell says.
Lance Girling-Butcher, who began his career at the Taranaki Herald, well remembers Litman's smoking habit. "My mental picture of June is her sitting as she sat, with her arms out on either side and these stubby fingers on this pen that was ripping copy to shreds, a fag hanging out of her mouth with smoke curling up to this yellow stain that had formed on the ceiling above her head because she chain smoked" he says. “It was the standard joke that the office cadet was forever having to go out and buy cartons, not just packets, for June."
Girling-Butcher was one of those cadets back in the 1960s, when it was the job of new recruits to get copies of the Taranaki Herald as they came fresh off the press.
Amidst the roar of machinery, the whir of rolling newsprint and the chemical scent of fresh ink, Girling-Butcher got his introduction to Litman. "I saw this little figure, looking a little bit like a pirate with a fag hanging out of its mouth, arms akimbo, legs apart, standing up on the area above the press crew, abusing them for being late starting. She was a bit of an actress really, old June, because underneath that was a heart of gold, but it took me a long time to find that out." That happened in his second stint, when he returned to the Taranaki Herald as deputy chief reporter.
"We quickly established a rather uneasy relationship because my spelling was one of her betes noire [dislikes] because she disapproved of the way I spelt certain words and June had no compunction in letting you know this" he says. "She was absolutely punctilious about style and about getting people's names right and a whole raft of different things. Clem Cave, the news editor was a bit the same. Clem and June were an unholy alliance."
Litman, who was married to a German political intellectual called Paul Litman, began her days at an ungodly hour. "The Daily News subs in those days were a pretty volatile bunch and they used to play cards and drink to all hours" Girling-Butcher says. "Frequently, they would still be here when June would arrive at 4.30 in the morning."
By the time the sub-editors and reporters began to arrive from 6.30am onwards, Litman would have worked her way through all the copy from the teleprinters, processed stories The Daily News hadn't used and those it had. "June would've clipped every Daily News story and there would be an instruction on the top of it, which you dared not break, with suggestions of who you should call for a follow-up, what your follow-up angle ought to be and cryptic brief notes in her very characteristic pen or hand" Girling-Butcher says.
"It was a wonderful way of learning as well, because you discovered there were new angles and you discovered how inaccurate we can sometimes be as an occupation and how much you could use that to your advantage as well when you were following up stories."
After Litman retired she joined well-known sports writer Garth Gilmour to head the INL in-house training scheme. Together they schooled fresh intakes of cadets and helped induct new sub-editors in the art of writing headlines, rewriting stories and slashing copy.
Three years following her retirement, the Taranaki Herald closed. Girling-Butcher, who became editor following the death of George Koea, was at the helm when the final issue was delivered on 29 April 1989. "I felt like I let June down" he sighs.
Litman died three years later. The June Litman Memorial Scholarship was then set up to help a top Taranaki student train in journalism.
Girling-Butcher thinks that is an appropriate tribute to a woman who regarded herself as a trainer, not just a sub-editor. "There was some purpose behind the screaming and yelling and while it wouldn't work in today's PC world … it did have a dramatic effect. A lot of people will tell you that they remember things because they were indelibly stamped in their memory by this shrieking, screaming, jumping up and down, tearing copy and all these other bloody things that used to go on."
And, like hundreds of journalists the world over, Girling-Butcher is also haunted by the words of Litman. "Under way is two words, I will never forget that. Even now when you are writing things you hear that little voice in the back of your head ..."
Puke Ariki Heritage Collection: Taranaki Herald
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