The print media generally does a crappy job of proofreading nowadays, too. Well, in the past, quite often, too, but especially nowadays. Most newspapers would fail an advanced high school expository writing class.

Never mind the craptastic journalistic style that has such hokey lame-brained features as Yoda-style inverted prose, embarrassing awful hackneyed hooks, improperly formed quotations, and general awkwardness.

Frankly, I think one reason why amateur blogs are succeeding where traditional news media is blowing goats is simply because a lot of the bloggers can actually write a simple sentence, to say nothing of a straightforward paragraph.

Looks like the average greenlit Fark headline.

After being baked in an oven, Steven ate the pie.

LibertyHiller: RandomAxe: The print media generally does a crappy job of proofreading nowadays, too. Well, in the past, quite often, too, but especially nowadays. Most newspapers would fail an advanced high school expository writing class.

Never mind the craptastic journalistic style that has such hokey lame-brained features as Yoda-style inverted prose, embarrassing awful hackneyed hooks, improperly formed quotations, and general awkwardness.

Frankly, I think one reason why amateur blogs are succeeding where traditional news media is blowing goats is simply because a lot of the bloggers can actually write a simple sentence, to say nothing of a straightforward paragraph.

If only that were true. Most bloggers, especially the ones that are breaking news, are desperately in need of editors; both copy editing and line editing skills seem to be optional in the Brave New World.

It used to be that reporters did just that, and phoned in details to someone in the office who could actually write. But that went by the boards after the rise of television, which cut into newsroom budgets everywhere, and the emergence of New Journalism, when everyone with an English degree thought themselves the next Breslin or Wolfe despite all evidence to the contrary. When large chains passed out of family control and into the hands of professional managers, profits certainly went up, but instead of reinvesting in the core product, that money was squandered on one failed scheme after another. The result is that editorial staffs keep shrinking in order to keep profits up; quality be damned.

That craptastic style you can't stand is the result of all those years of letting students write what they feel, instead of enforcing notions of what constitutes a proper tone. That expository writing course doesn't exist in most high schools today, because it's not on The Test. Instead, the problem has been pushed up to colleges, where Bonehead English English Composition has become a real obstacle for our Adderalled and Ritalined youth.

I'll mention, more briefly than it deserves, the collapse of the entire advertising model. This has led to the last few years worth of newsroom layoffs (on the order of 100,000 jobs in the last three years), a general decline in quality, and the packing of wire service copy into pages that used to cover local news.

Then in this particular case, there's a big shout-out to Sam Zell, who bought up Tribune Company on a no-money-down deal and saddled it with an arseload of debt. The subsequent retrenchment has forced an entire generation of reporters, writers, and editors out the door; decimation is not strong enough a word for what's happened.

In my experience (20+ years in newspapers and magazines) good reporters are often terrible writers, and good writers aren't always interested in reporting. The job of copy editors and line editors was to fix up the prose of the first category, while section editors were busy encouraging the second group to get out from behind the keyboard and do some legwork. Today, copy goes from the reporter straight onto the Web, with minimal editing, because there just isn't enough time, or enough staff, to do a proper job of it.

This.

I attended a round table discussion between law enforcement public-information-officers and media representatives a while back. The purpose of the meeting was to have each side discuss with the other side what each could do to make the other side's job easier.

The ferocity and competitiveness of the media floored me. Each media outlet wants to be "the first" to get it online, and one media outlet is timed - in seconds - in how much it beats the other outlets to get the story on the web. Anything over 2 seconds (seriously) is unacceptable.

I suppose if you're rushing to get something published, quality takes a back seat.

Sometimes all one can do is sned away.

Actually, the "who's" is probably the only correct thing in that line.

LibertyHiller: That craptastic style you can't stand is the result of all those years of letting students write what they feel, instead of enforcing notions of what constitutes a proper tone.

I agreed with a lot of what you said, but the journalistic style I hate is emphatically NOT the result of or an example of 'expressive writing'. I agree that expressive writing is no replacement whatsoever for actual writing skills -- most blank verse sucks for the simple reason that it's too easy. There are no rules, and few people will edit their own work much unless there are external rules forcing them to do it.

Expressive writing tends to be bad for the same reason, on its own: 'anything goes' produces demolition derbies, not Ferraris and Porsches. Expressive writing is generally horrible additionally because its instruction usually replaces actual training rather than complementing it. And, in my experience, most teachers who teach expressive writing fail to teach it as naturalistic writing -- ie, speech-like -- which is a guaranteed recipe for failure.

I took journalism classes. They specifically tried to force us to write in the journalistic style I was complaining about: the god-awful hooks, the fragmentary sentences and paragraphs, the inverted prose, the unnecessary and stilted combination of short statements into tangled crap the average reader would never parse, etc. It's a long-established style of the business, prevalent at least since the 1960s.

I agree that editors used to do a far better job of keeping it under control, and I agree with most of your analysis of what's gone wrong with that system. I used to edit an academic journal (arguably a worse medium than journalism, I might add, in terms of the quality of writing), and even veteran authors were often astonished at how many changes I suggested to their pieces. Most were pleased (no, seriously), but I routinely heard that they were simply surprised that anyone cared enough about the prose to actually make stylistic changes.


I also agree with superdolfan1 about the speed-to-press issue. It's also patently retarded, as studies consistently show that web audiences DO want clarity and thorough reporting and respond to it much more strongly than they do to speed. Being the first to cover a story isn't anywhere near as important, from a business perspective, as reporting it properly.

I'd also like to add that I've read a lot of writing generated by law enforcement and military personnel, and it is usually mind-numbingly bad. But they're generally not writing for a public audience. What I think would be more important is language classes for attorneys and legislators, who seem to spend their energies mastering jargon instead of learning -- in arenas where precise language is of the utmost importance -- to actually say what they mean.


Modern advertising copy. Is even worse. With words. Split apart by random punctuation. As if by substandard orangutans.

Orangutans.

RandomAxe: LibertyHiller: That craptastic style you can't stand is the result of all those years of letting students write what they feel, instead of enforcing notions of what constitutes a proper tone.

I agreed with a lot of what you said, but the journalistic style I hate is emphatically NOT the result of or an example of 'expressive writing'. I agree that expressive writing is no replacement whatsoever for actual writing skills -- most blank verse sucks for the simple reason that it's too easy. There are no rules, and few people will edit their own work much unless there are external rules forcing them to do it.

Expressive writing tends to be bad for the same reason, on its own: 'anything goes' produces demolition derbies, not Ferraris and Porsches. Expressive writing is generally horrible additionally because its instruction usually replaces actual training rather than complementing it. And, in my experience, most teachers who teach expressive writing fail to teach it as naturalistic writing -- ie, speech-like -- which is a guaranteed recipe for failure.

I took journalism classes. They specifically tried to force us to write in the journalistic style I was complaining about: the god-awful hooks, the fragmentary sentences and paragraphs, the inverted prose, the unnecessary and stilted combination of short statements into tangled crap the average reader would never parse, etc. It's a long-established style of the business, prevalent at least since the 1960s.

I agree that editors used to do a far better job of keeping it under control, and I agree with most of your analysis of what's gone wrong with that system. I used to edit an academic journal (arguably a worse medium than journalism, I might add, in terms of the quality of writing), and even veteran authors were often astonished at how many changes I suggested to their pieces. Most were pleased (no, seriously), but I routinely heard that they were simply surprised that anyone cared enough about the prose to actually make stylistic changes.


I also agree with superdolfan1 about the speed-to-press issue. It's also patently retarded, as studies consistently show that web audiences DO want clarity and thorough reporting and respond to it much more strongly than they do to speed. Being the first to cover a story isn't anywhere near as important, from a business perspective, as reporting it properly.

I'd also like to add that I've read a lot of writing generated by law enforcement and military personnel, and it is usually mind-numbingly bad. But they're generally not writing for a public audience. What I think would be more important is language classes for attorneys and legislators, who seem to spend their energies mastering jargon instead of learning -- in arenas where precise language is of the utmost importance -- to actually say what they mean.


Modern advertising copy. Is even worse. With words. Split apart by random punctuation. As if by substandard orangutans.

Orangutans.

What he said.