A target market of white soccer moms?

WSPA, which is a local TV news station about an hour north of where I grew up in Spartanburg, S.C., is apparently intent on making its reporters pitch all of their news stories and write all of their stories for a cardboard cutout of what appears to be an on-the-go middle class soccer mom with kids.

Here is the internal memo News Director Karen Kelly apparently sent to her staff (as posted by ftvlive.com):

Subject: MEET Michelle

Via ftvlive.com

Michelle is who you want watching your newscasts, your stories.

She will be in every editorial meeting with us and in the newsroom during the day. She will likely make occasional trips to Greenville and Anderson.

When you pitch, pitch to her. When you write, write to her.

This is who we need watching in February.

Women 25-54 is her demo.

She has children and she cares about:
Their Safety
Saving Money
Recalls that have impact on her family

Even if you think a story doesn’t directly impact Michelle find a way to write it to her.

Give her additional information that is relevant to her.

Post stories and send alerts on stories she cares about.

The problem, as I see it, is that the demographics in Spartanburg aren’t exactly whitewashed with soccer moms, which belies the notion that the WSPA newsroom should be writing exclusively for Michelle here. According to the most recent census estimates, the city of Spartanburg is 50.7 percent black (!) and 44.3 percent white, while Spartanburg County is 74.7 percent white and 20.9 percent black.

Media blogger Jim Romenesko wonders if this was a recommendation from a TV consultant. If so, that person should be fired. Or, this could just be the handywork of a newsroom “leader” who feels the need to justify her job, so she whittles away at some silly ideas to try to keep the product relevant. First, she might want to work on not scaring off her staff. But then again, for an enterprising young reporter being mandated to write for Michelle, rather than for the real people walking the fair streets of Spartanburg city and county, might be a pretty disturbing experience in and of itself.

‘More than’ a bit disappointing

So in the latest bastardization of the English language, AP Stylebook editors have now deemed that “over” is now an acceptable usage for “more than” when referring to numerical values.

Here’s AP’s explanation for the change:

We decided on the change because it has become common usage. We’re not dictating that people use ‘over’ – only that they may use it as well as “more than” to indicate greater numerical value.

This is now OK to the AP because “over” has apparently crept into “common usage” as a replacement for “more than.” The problem is that, as the AP well knows, “over,” like “around,” is a spacial term, not a way to estimate amounts.Amendments to the Stylebook such as this set a dangerous precedent for the English language. What if the unwitting public comes to no longer sees a distinction between “their,” “they’re” and “there.” What about “its” and “it’s?” Will AP eventually do away with these and other distinctions? Are we one day just going to let reporters use those words interchangeably just because the public can’t write their way out of a wet paper sack? Just because a word has become “common usage” in a certain context, are we just going to open the flood gates to the rabble’s terrible English? Apparently so, and so much for journalists as keepers of the language.

Punctilious punctuation 2

Example 1:

Credit: Peter Arkle/The New York Times

Several members of the 7th, including Abolt, said this story is not only important in American history, but also a story that must be passed on.

A comma is used to separate two independent clauses (clauses containing a subject and verb). The last part of the sentence would only be a complete sentence if it read: “history, but it also is a story that must be passed on.”

Example 2:

Meadows expressed his thanks to the hundreds of people involved in the project, and said a burden had been lifted off his shoulders as a result of the home, which has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a wrap-around deck.

For this to be a complete (in italics), the clause should have read “project, and he said a burden had been lifted …”

Example 3:

The CEO duties will be assumed by John R. Ingram, chairman of the division of Nashville-based conglomerate Ingram Industries Inc. that provides books, music and media content to more than 35,000 retailers, libraries, schools and distribution partners.

This is an example, along with the comma splice issue, that Yagoda mentioned specifically. Here, a comma is required after “Inc.” because a comma was used before “chairman.” An argument could be made that the word “that” continues the phrase through until the end of the sentence, but introducing Ingram as the chairman of Ingram Industries Inc. still requires a comma in the middle of the sentence to set off the attribution. Or, to avoid the problem altogether, the paragraph could read:

The CEO duties will be assumed by John R. Ingram, chairman of the division of Nashville-based conglomerate Ingram Industries Inc. The company provides books, music and media content to more than 35,000 retailers, libraries, schools and distribution partners.

Writers (and readers, I guess) apparently don’t have the attention span to follow the sentence throughout its entire construction, so they sometimes forget where previously placed commas occurred. This is easy to track in your head as you reread or edit a story, but problems such as this crop up time and time again. And for people who care about the language, it’s a distraction. As a colleague has often said, “Journalists are the keepers of the language.” That’s not to suggest that I won’t have typos myself, but the will for perfection is there. This is apparently not the case with many who haphazardly throw in or leave out commas seemingly at random.

By the way, I’m a big fan of banning commas before the word “because” in almost every case, except in cases where a comma could avoid confusion or misreading. Why is that? Nearly all sentences with “because” in the middle are essential clauses, thus taking no comma. Sentence that begin with “because” do take commas.

Call me a punctuation Nazi all you like.

Punctilious punctuation

I loved this piece from Ben Yagoda about common comma errors. I don’t know what they are doing in journalism school, but they sure aren’t teaching punctuation. Apparently, they aren’t teaching it in high school or college in general. I find comma errors in various online and print newspaper articles all the time. The epidemic is so widespread that I bet I can go read any random article from The Tennessean (Nashville’s finest) and quickly identify an error.

I will now go read a random story and report back shortly.

All you need to know about these: —,!,,(),;, and, or …

As I read a lot of news Web sites, blogs and magazines, it’s not hard to spot instances of bad grammar or punctuation, even in sources that should have a firm grasp of rudimentary punctuation rules, such as using a comma to join two independent clauses (A subject and verb on both sides of “and” or “but” consist of two sentences that could, in theory, standalone. Without a comma, such a conjoined sentence becomes a run-on sentence.)

But then again, I’m a bit of a prude when it comes to errors in printed type. Of course, saying that opens the way for someone to nitpick every sentence I’ve written sleepy and after midnight since 2008. I understand that we’re all human, but it really is distracting seeing stuff like “Jones said he lost his job, because he had a disagreement with his boss.” So, here are a few of the more common errors that I find in general writing and from sources which should know better. I should keep a running list — like this delightful site — but I’m afraid I would need a completely separate blog. If you’re curious, here are some basics.

  • Because — No comma before “because” ever. Ever. Ever. Why? Because it looks hideous and doesn’t make any sense. And because the writing gods say so.
  • And and or — Use a comma before “and” or “or” if two complete sentences appear on both sides of “and” or “or.” That means a subject and verb. Don’t use a comma if one clause is independent and the other is dependent (not a complete sentence on its own). This one is serious.
  • Their, they’re, there — “Their” is a pronoun. “They’re” is “they are.” Even more serious.
  • Its, it’s — “Its” is a pronoun. “It’s” is “it is.” Super-cereal serious.
  • Whose, who’s — “Whose” is an adjective or pronoun. “Who’s” is “who is.” Falls into the cereal category of serious.
  • Which, witch, bomb, baum, bow, beau, bough, bear, bare, hour, our, sell, sale, cent, scent, break, brake, seem, seam, etc. — Examples of English language debris.
  • ! — Use once or twice in your lifetime. That’s your limit.
  • , — Most misunderstood, misused, abused and mangled mark in the history of written language.
  • ; — Most useless mark in the history of written language and what smart people use when they want to feel smarter. Or, as Kurt Vonnegut said: “If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
  • — Denotes a sudden break in thought inside a sentence. I have this one — this is my favorite punctuation mark — down pat! I just reached my exclamation mark limit for the next 50 years.
  • () — Denotes extra information inside a sentence that could be excluded but is included anyway because the writer, in all his language prowess (See Faulkner and Milton, the latter of whom often included entire paragraphs of parenthetical text inside a single sentence. Now that’s talent! … [Lifetime exclamation quota met.]), seeks to make his text as belabored, chunky and hard to muddle through as possible.

There’s more, of course — for the record, starting a sentence with “there” or “its” is lazy writing — but I wore myself out on that last bullet point, thus the lazy writing. For your amusement, here’s one case of many in which an ill-placed apostrophe can be weep-inducing … or funny. Take your pick.

That Fried Oreo Is Deep and It Owns Something

Credit: Apostrophe Catastrophes

A year-plus in the books

Welp, folks, I just renewed the registration on this domain for another year. I had a free credit somehow or another, so it didn’t cost anything, and as an added bonus, you get to see me babble for another year! I know you couldn’t be happier.

I was watching a Christopher Hitchens interview today from 2002 (I know, I apologize. I keep harping on this crass Englishman, but I’m fascinated with the guy.) Anyway, he was saying that at some point in his life, he came to realize that he was a born writer and that he really couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That the career of writing was really decided for him, not by him. And that struck me as something I could relate to.

To present a brief sketch of my background, I began college at Lander University in South Carolina with no clue at all what I wanted to do. At first, I believe I was a music major, when I realized that if I continued on down this path, I would grow up penniless. So, I moved to a more lucrative endeavor: computer programming. I could handle Pascal, the language, not his wager, fairly well. I performed decently in the introductory Pascal class, as I remember. But as I transferred to Clemson University, I came in contact with this fast-speaking, fast-moving, coffee-overdosed programming professor blathering something about the Java language (who obviously took the title of the language too seriously), objects and functions and infinite loops, and it was all quite frustrating. Today, I understand some of JavaScript, a Web programming language, but at the time, my anti-math mind was not grasping this fellow’s speedily-rehearsed lectures at all. So computer programming was out.

English was the last gasp. I did not know what I would do with an English major, even after graduating college. I just took the wise words of a professor of mine. He told me to just study what you enjoy. And I did enjoy that, at least. I was inspired by John Milton, Shelley, Keats, Emily Dickson, Bronte, and others, and later, Thomas Wolfe, Jack Miles, Stanley Fish, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck and others. I had early aspirations of going on to becoming an English professor. This would, of course, require graduate school somewhere other than Clemson. And in order to stay closer to my family and friends, I declined that option and started working at a retail store in Clemson to make ends meet. But we’re getting bogged down. To make it short, a journalism instructor at Clemson University (S.C.) saw something in me, I suppose, and gave me a favorable recommendation, thus allowing me to get an interview with a local newspaper in Clayton, Ga.

My future aspirations would lead further than this blog and my current position. I would like to do some writing for a major magazine on the topic of either politics or religion or history … or perhaps, a well-read online publication, by way of a weekly or monthly column, if the opportunity ever presented itself.

But back to writing as a career. I think at some point in the latter part of 2007-08, I came to the realization that a writer is what I am, like Hitchens and others. I think before then, I was just trying to scratch by, have fun and the like. Although, I was attempting to write some (bad) poetry and fiction in high school, so the interest was there early on.

Today, I take a certain pleasure when I am in the company of fellow writers, like the editor at the paper for which I work. And I don’t mean pulp fiction writers who crank out 10 novels a day. Those folks aren’t writers; they are entertainers. I mean people who appreciate the language and have something meaingful to say through it, like Milton, Wolfe, Paine, Locke, Vonnegut and others.

At the expense of this getting too long and to catalog the renewal of the domain name and this site for another year, here are 15  of my favorite posts from the last year and four months, beginning in May 2008. Thanks for reading!

On Dobson’s ‘dissection’ of Obama’s June 2006 speech 

Why I assume a god (I ironic to the core, since more than one year later, I would make an opposite case.) 

2012 Olympics go intergalactic?

Comments on the presidential debate

 Zimbabwe: House of cards 

Debunking reincarnation

On Cruise, thetans, Hubbard and Xenu

Limbaugh, unhappiest, most miserable person alive? Perhaps

The newspaper crisis as I see it

 Unrevolutionary tea

On ‘Milk’ and homosexuality (Revised)

Glimmer of hope in Zimbabwe

Our forward-thinking Founders

Hare brains defeat reason in Iran

The God question: My testimony

The newspaper industry unfurled

I admit. I haven’t worked in the industry for decades. I don’t concretely know what sells newspapers and what doesn’t. I know the direction the industry is going, and I know some strategies for luring potential readers to slip their hands into their pockets, find a couple quarters and deposit accordingly. But do any of us in the industry actually know what sells papers? Is it Godzilla-esque pictures or headlines? Teasers? Coverage on the issues that matter most to them?

I’m a word guy. I think well-crafted, well-reported stories are more important to fulfilling our service to the community than pictures or gigantic headlines. Especially in this era of “bigger is better” and less (content) is more, I suppose I’m in the minoritythere.

But the truth is this: we are living in an era where Reading — and its cousin, Learning — are not just dying, but are becoming taboo. Sure, Joe Schmoe reads, but it’s a headline here, a snippet there. The ability and desire to dig deep into the written word, to dig deep into complex issues has long-since escaped us. And that’s why the written word, the printed press, is slowly nailing itself to a cross. It really is a self-sacrifice. Newspapers still claim to be the authority on local issues ranging from zoning to immigration to water authorities and crime, but the nation’s leading papers — The New York Times being the exception … because it can — do their utmost to bury that important content inside the newspaper, thus making the front page appear like some daily Michelangelo painting, replete with teasers, huge pictures and giant headlines. But, consequently, my life calling is not to graphics and pictures, though I’m adept to these things, but to words on a page. Still, I play along.

Why have even the nation’s largest papers succumbed to such devices? I offer The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a prime example. The Anderson Independent-Mail as another, which, consequently, has seemingly banished copy altogether from its front page.

This, because the economic situation at many newspapers is that bad, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle on cable television and the general dumbing down of America. Continually, we hear about buyouts, restructuring, etc. within the industry’s leading papers. Photos and graphics become necessary in order for newspaper to compete and not be drowned out in the blare.

Obviously, this speaks to a larger issue: that of our Red Bull-infused, spastic society. And admittedly, I get caught up in the great and rabbit race to nowhere. Frequently, I will catch myself surfing online, and — oooh — something else comes up that I might like to check out, thus diverting my attention from whatever I originally was seeking information about. What was it? I can’t remember. It’s maddening. In another post, I quoted Kurt Cobain on television:

I hardly write any stories and I don’t work on my songs quite as intently as in the past. You know why??? Television Television is the most evil thing on our planet. Go right now to your TV and toss it out the window, or sell it and buy a better stereo. — “Journals,” Kurt Cobain

I posit that the Internet is the new television.

Have any of you heard of The Spectator? It was a short-lived publication in the early-18th century. It was published in an era where coffee houses were hubs of political and societal conversation and learning. People then read as if their lives depended on it, and often, they did. Television, since the late 1930s has served to muck that up. The Internet has mucked it up further. I would argue that the Internet is actually more productive for the educational betterment of society than television, but neither wins a gold star.

Simply, I wish folks today read as if their lives depended on it. We simply have to promote a society that is bent on making reading the printed word a priority. Why? Because, as convenient and good as it may be, the Internet isn’t ironclad. Books in hard copy form are ironclad. Government documents in hard copy form are ironclad. But once they reach the Internet or e-mail, they can be manipulated at will by people who know more than you about Web site security. By way of example, my entire blog www.jeremystyron.com, which is on a separate server, completely went down for a few hours yesterday I can only assume, by a hacker.

I’m not optimistic that such a society will emerge in the near future — our society will continue wind-blown into its own technological tailspin — but I am committed to at least trying, in as much as I can, to focus people to more hard copy learning. I say that while admitting that any kind of learning and reading, virtual or not, is benefitial.

The most efficient studying takes place, I feel, not when one is, in tandem, listening to music, playing an online solitaire game and reading some essay for class, but when one is sitting upright at a kitchen table, hunched over a book — with nothing as a distraction — with, perhaps, only a cup of coffee as company. Such a commitment will assist in building a society again more focused on the printed word, one more focused on dissecting and vetting the complex issues that confound us.

Increasingly annoyed by say-nothing blogs

You know what is increasingly raising my blood pressure? Surfing WordPress for some opinion writing, news or what have you, and finding blog posts that consist of one link and nothing else. Or, blog posts that are merely cut and paste of some other news story or video that can be readily found on some other site.

You shouldn’t have a blog if you don’t have something original to say. Anything else is regurgitation.

Another victim to the blogosphere sucking machine

As I exclaimed here:

I admit that I have a user account on blogger.com. I have another at deviantart.com and another on myspace.com. I mostly use the former two sites for viewing artwork and photography, while the other, I rarely visit anymore – too many weird-ies lurking about.

Needless to say, I haven’t quite felt the need to board that overcrowded train headed for blogger-town just yet. I am amazed, however, at how many colossal news outlets feature the vignettes and quips of their reporters.

From nytimes.com to washingtonpost.com to the Anderson Cooper 360-degree blog, the amount of bandwagon-boarding is at once astounding and a bit frightening for journalism in general.

in this column: http://jeremystyron.blogspot.com/2006/09/bloggers-go-koo-koo-for-cocoa-puffs-by.html, I originally had a lack of positive energy for blogging. Hogwash, I thought. Millions of kids, adults and college students pretending to do journalism when many have never stepped foot on a hallowed, coffee-stained newspaper floor? Millions of sounds of fury, signifying nothing, I thought.

As the column states, I still feel there’s a lot of bogus stuff in blogs. And, the reason: blogs are really nothing more than journals that have been publicized into more than they are. Bloggers can write anything about anyone or anything without any professional checks or balances which exist inside newsrooms across the country. Writers and editors feed off each other, keep each other sharp and challenge one another to continually improve in integrity and quality of product. Blogs are absent of all this. Sure, some writers do genuine reporting, while others use the space as more of an op-ed free-for-all, as I’m not-so-eloquently doing here. Needless to say, I have fallen prey to this fascination. While I have no desire, inclination or time to write a real journal – as in sitting down with tangible pen and pad in hand, and waxing philosophical about my life, activities and thoughts contained therein. I do have that inclination here for some reason. Perhaps it’s because of convenience that I have, at last, boarded that overcrowded blog bandwagon bound for cybertown. Perhaps it’s because it’s a public and easily indexed way to communicate one’s thoughts. Perhaps its because, as I don’t write at my current position at work, as most of my time is chewed up laying out pages and editing others’ writing, I have to write. As others need water and food, this is a simple, yet undeniable need of mine. I have to either be in the process of writing or have an idea hatched to be written at all times. I do believe this is at the heart of it all. I have to write, and if I don’t, I shrivel up inside. If I don’t, ideas pile up, weigh heavy on my shoulders, then eventually, and tragically, they are either forgotten or die like a supernova balled up tight. And this, my friends, is the clanging, necessity-laden, wordy enclave in which I live everyday.

Joseph Addison had The Spectator; I suppose I have this space.