Walther compares writing samples by Runciman and Riley-Smith. He notes that Runciman is an easier and more entertaining read, but less accurate than Riley-Smith

Walther compares writing samples by Runciman and Riley-Smith. He notes that Runciman is an easier and more entertaining read, but less accurate than Riley-Smith. I agree. But then Walther steps away with the implicit conclusion that entertaining writing and accurate writing are mutually exclusive. He then goes on to blame inaccuracy in our cultural understanding of history on audiences that want to be entertained rather than educated accurately. This is a self-serving conclusion. Entertaining writing and accurate writing are not mutually exclusive. In fact, to some extent, writing is not accurate if it is not entertaining. If your writing fails to connect with your audience, they lose interest, and you fail to communicate the facts. Walther blames this vaguely on a decline of literary culture--which is to say that he implicitly blames the failure of history communication on readers. Nothing could be further from the case. People read more now than ever, but they don't read pretentious web magazines and they don't read people who use words like "casuistry" and "imbroglio". The failure to communicate is not caused by readers, it's caused writers like Walther who refuse to use their audience's language, instead expecting the audience to learn the writers' language. I don't know anything about Compact Mag--maybe Walther is writing for his audience there. But that just begs the question, why did Walther choose to write for that audience? Walther complains that history isn't reaching the general public, but his writing is clearly not written for the general public. Walther, you're part of the problem. If you want people to read what you write, write for people. EDIT: I've noted elsewhere on HN that some ideas are inherently complex, and therefore require more work from readers to understand, no matter how much work the writer does to make the idea clear. That's not what's going on in this article. The following sentence: > His career—as far as I am aware, he has no plans to publish a book on Nazi Germany—suggests that we are no longer faced with a gap between specialist knowledge and what remains of the reading public, to be spanned by belletristic popularizers; but one between historians who write without any hope of reception, much less wealth or literary fame, and a very different, more or less post-literate audience who would prefer that whatever historical edification they might receive come via podcast or even tweet. ...could have been: > Cooper's popularity suggests that the problem of communicating history to the public is no longer collecting specialist knowledge into big-picture descriptions. Now, historians interested in accuracy are failing to reach audiences that consume history in modern forms like podcasts or tweets. This isn't communicating a less complex idea, it's just removing the pointless babbling to sound smarter.