Journalists are a reluctant bunch when it comes to reflecting on their craft. They prefer to talk of being hacks, who do nothing more complicated than simply report the news. They are just the men or women at the back of the hall with the notebook.
Ask them about ethical issues and they will come up with a witticism suggesting that the smallest book in the world is the book of journalistic ethics. Such anti-intellectualism probably comes from a healthy, if in this instance misguided, suspicion of the professions and a fear of sounding pompous, especially as one of the journalist's functions is to prick pomposity.
With this in mind, a book written by journalists that purports to tell readers what motivates journalists, must be welcomed. Secrets of the Press: Journalists on Journalism, has 27 of some of Britain's best-known journalists on the record about how they work, and why. Some of the pieces are very good, some are very funny and others are of that remember-the-good-old-days-of-Fleet-Street genre.
Some pieces get to the heart of the matter. Henry Porter in "Editors and Egomaniacs", for instance, writes of the editor as: "Cut off from normal life by the rigours of the job and surrounded by people who almost never tell him the truth, he is liable to form some very strange ideas about his own abilities and importance. In some ways he is only a little more in touch with the world than an abbot in a monastery."
Lynn Barber, on interviewing, gives advice to beginners: "Look, all you have to do is be punctual, be polite, and ask questions. You don't have to express agreement or disagreement; you don't have to forge a friendship; you only have to ask questions, and that way you don't commit yourself to anything. And, by the way, don't let them tell you anything off the record, because it will make your life difficult when you come to write the piece."
But while Andrew Brown, in "Newspapers and the Internet", is optimistic that the newspaper will survive into the digital age, many of the pieces are quite pessimistic. Newspapers have changed since the move to Wapping 10 years ago. They are now run by accountants with little understanding of the living, breathing, organic nature of a newspaper. They call newspapers "products" and don't understand journalists. Few of the journalists who are now complaining were saying this when Rubert Murdoch brought his newspapers to Wapping. One who did was Paul Foot. In "The Slow Death of Investigative Journalism" he writes of a gloomy trend towards the centralisation of commercial power and editorial control, of editors whose necks suffer cricks from constantly glancing upwards to where the proprietors reside. Much investigative journalism died because investigative journalism thrives where there is a spirit of independence. He also bemoans opinions being "flaunted in space that should be taken up with reports and facts".
This is an enjoyable, if uneven, collection. It does tell us something about modern newspapers and the contributions are well written and mostly thoughtful. But before we all get carried away with our own importance, Ann Leslie recalls Nicholas Tomalin's famous comment on what makes a good journalist: "A plausible manner, rat-like cunning and a little literary ability". But she also reflects on the journalist's role: "Historians of the future may decide that the `first rough draft of history' was not `right'; but it remains one of their sources. After all, it was, however fallibly, written by someone who was there." Maybe not something to get too pompous about, but more important than mere hackery.
Michael Foley is a journalist and a senior lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology