When Tracie Troha started work at the Daily Press, I thought I would give her some advice about covering Hesperia. I let her know who the players were, how they related to each other (officially and otherwise), gave her a bunch of important phone numbers and took her around to meet some folks. I also gave her some advice about the various government meetings in the city:
News happens places other than just at meetings, but it also happens at meetings. Sometimes, the biggest news stories aren’t on the agenda, and you won’t know about them unless you attend even a meeting where “nothing is going to happen.”
Well, unfortunately, she actually listened to me, and is kicking butt up and down Main Street. So she does stories like this one in today’s Daily Press, meaning I have to figure out a second day approach to the same news for next Tuesday’s edition of the the Hesperia Star.
How dare this new reporter actually make me work harder, smarter and better?
Years ago, at the News Messenger, this list was something that was faxed from newsroom to newsroom. It was offline for a bunch of years, but it looks like, earlier this year, someone found an old fax and put it online. The list is now traveling around journalism Web sites and mutating as it goes. I’ve seen versions that now reference Google, for instance, which didn’t exist the last time I saw this list.
Here’s a copy of the list that’s closest to the one I remember. Snagged from here, who snagged it from somewhere else, and so on, and so on. This one’s longer than I remember, and “tits out to here” certainly wasn’t in the old list. Still, it’s funny. Use of these terms in past, present or future editions of the Hesperia Star do not necessarily line up to the humorous definitions listed below:
Feisty: Short, old female
Flamboyant: Homosexual
Controversial: He did something bad but we’re not sure what
Scandal-plagued: Guilty
Informed source: Reads the newspaper
Confirmed bachelor: see “Flamboyant”
War-torn: We can’t find it on a map
Venerable: Should be dead but isn’t (eg: Strom Thurmond)
Knowledgable observer: The reporter
Knowledgable observers: The reporter and the person at the next desk
Self-styled: Phony
Guru: see “Self-styled”
Screen Legend: Reporter is too young to remember his movies
Teen idol: Reporter is too old to have heard of him
According to published reports: We got scooped
Embattled: He should quit
All American: White kid caught in criminal act
Troubled youth: He lit something on fire
Scrappy: a runt
Beloved: Someone who’s been around so long no one can stand them any more (eg: Bob Hope)
(The original ended here, as I recall.)
Hero firefighter: He put out a fire
Hero cop: He got killed
Honor student: Dead kid registered for classes somewhere
Recently: We lost the press release
First in the modern history of: no Nexis entries
Never: no clips
Source who spoke on condition of anonymity: flack
Prestigious: has indoor plumbing
Exclusive neighborhood/school/club: the reporter can’t get in
Mean streets: slums
Street-wise: Hasn’t been hit by a bus so far
Allegedly: He did it but we can’t prove it
Shocking revelation: leaked on a slow news day
Gang: a group of white kids
Wolf pack: a group of black kids
Highly placed source: one who would talk
Supermodel: her picture was printed somewhere
Beautiful: a woman who’s been savagely murdered
Blond: see “beautiful”
Reportedly: we stole this bit of information
Intensely private: Not promoting anything right now
Rarely interviewed: Promoting something right now
High-brow: boring
Family Values: right wing idiot
Progressive: left wing idiot
Couldn’t be reached for comment: the reporter didn’t call until after 5 p.m.
Legendary: about to die
Unclear, uncertain, unknown at press time: no one will tell us
Plucky: someone who is very, very young, very, very old, or very, very short who is ambulatory
Temblor: Reporter has a thesaurus
Brutally raped: raped
Savagely murdered: murdered
Celebrity: He has a publicist
Superstar: He has a publicist and an agent
Tony neighborhood: has no McDonald’s
Modest, well-kept home: at least the cockroaches are dead
Exclusive: No one else returned the flack’s calls
Investigating: waiting for someone to drop a dime
Gentleman bandit: he wore shoes instead of sneakers
Police task force: cops who were working on no-publicity cases yesterday
Elite: see prestigious
Conflagration: what was a fire in the first paragraph, a blaze in the second and an inferno in the third
Outspoken: Rude man
Strident: Rude woman
Effervescent: She won’t shut up
Shapely: face like a mud fence
Full-figured: tits out to here
Statuesque: Tits out even further
Zaftig: fat
Diminutive: under 5 feet tall
Petite: emaciated
Sexy: better looking than reporter’s mate
Dogged by character issue: He screwed a floozy
Political Action Committee contribution: bribe
Moderate: fence straddler
Long-time companion: they had sex
Socialite: woman without job who lives between 57th and 86th street, west of Lex. and east of Fifth
Heiress: see above, but able to hire a pricy divorce lawyer
Good Samaritan: Too stupid to run away
Innocent by-stander: Too slow to run away
Tearful: Could have been crying
Choked up: Definitely could have been crying
Weeping: Tear spotted in one eye
Entrepreneur: Hasn’t made it yet, but we’re doing a nice story about him
Mogul: Has made it, and we’re doing a hatchet job
Mega-mogul: Has made it, and is in process of losing it
Activist: Will talk to press
Stunned: couldn’t give a decent quote
Dapper: Hasn’t bought new clothes in 20 years
Hot button issue: only editors care about it
Towing industry expose: editor got a parking ticket
“with wire services”: no original reporting whatsoever – we just changed the lede
Someone needs to explain this to me:
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker.” That legalese means that, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others.
Recent low-profile court decisions document that Congress effectively has barred defamation in cyberspace.
Say what?
If I write a malicious and untrue statement about someone and post it to Wikipedia and in a newspaper’s classified ads, only the newspaper would get in trouble. How does that make sense? Moreover, if it’s going to remain the law of the land, couldn’t libellous publications simply move fully online, post a disclaimer that they don’t guarantee the 100 percent accuracy of their articles and be able to defame freely from then on?
This seems wacky and short-sighted at best.
Earlier this afternoon, I was at the Hesperia Chamber of Commerce, having been invited to monitor the counting of ballots for the three open board of director seats. (Sorry, I can’t announce who won until Tuesday’s story, since even the three winners won’t know until sometime on Monday.) This is, I suppose, an unintended side effect of building a certain degree of credibility in the community.
I’m also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
It feels strange to agree with a Slashdot article, but it’s finally happened:
A truly Web-hip newspaper would not only allow but encourage reader comments on all of its stories, not just on a blog or two. With thousands of readers as fact-checkers, mistakes would rarely go uncorrected for long, and if there was any perceived bias in a controversial article, reader comments would make sure the other side got heard. Even better, a reader who witnessed an event the paper covered would be able to add his or her account of it to the reporter’s, which would give other readers a richer and deeper view of it.
The Herald, Herald-Tribune, and many other (if not most) local newspapers seem to think that they are still their readers’ primary source of national and international news, just as they were 20 years ago. So that’s what fills their front pages most of the time, with local and regional news stuck in a “B” or “C” section.
Welcome to the Internet age, local newspaper (and TV) people. I can and do get my national and international news from the New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, CNN, and other online media that cover faraway events better and faster than you ever will. I turn to you for local news. You tell me more about last week’s home invasion robbery on 11th Street East than they ever will.
It’s time for local newspapers to become truly local; to feature local news on the front pages of both their Web sites and print editions, with only a few out-of-the-area stories up front, augmented by an above-the-fold story list that tells readers where to find national and international news on their inside pages.
Some newspapers (and newspaper chains) will probably not survive the shift from news-as-monologue to news-as-dialog. Most will, although those that wait too long to adjust will have much of their audience, influence, and ad revenue taken away by more agile competitors.
The smartest newspapers will follow my survival recipe or come up with their own way to become an integral part of their community instead of a building full of people who have been sprinkled with Secret Journalism Powder that makes them better and smarter than their readers. These newspapers will not only survive, but prosper. They may even become the prime outlets for bloggers in their communities, which will increase their readership and ad revenue. Extreme ____-wing bloggers won’t want their words associated with the hated Mainstream Media, but most others will be happy to have a widely-read, influential outlet for their work.
Eventually, I expect print newspapers to become “snapshots” of their Web editions taken at 1 a.m. or another arbitrary time, poured into page templates and massaged a little by layout people, then sent to the printing presses, a pattern that has potential for significant production cost reductions if handled adroitly. From that point on, their paper editions will be distributed the same way newspapers are now.
Senior citizens and others who can’t afford (or don’t want) computers are and will continue to be a viable market. So will commuters who use public transportation. Then there are those — a substantial part of the population — who simply prefer reading words and looking at pictures on paper to seeing them on a screen. They will still want physical newspapers, even if they are not as up-to-date or as complete as what they’d get on the Web.
Except for the Florida business, a lot of this sounds eerily like things I’ve been ranting about for a while, either at poor Peter or online.
The good news is that it was my publisher who e-mailed me this article. That speaks well of the online destiny of the Daily Press family of papers.
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