I studied news journalism in college and they kinda hammered in that in news journalism it's more important to communicate information consistently and to target a wide audience than it is to make "good writing."
There are style guides you have to follow and words like "slammed" end up getting used a lot despite not quite being accurate because they're words that are used a lot.
The other thing is that usually the person writing the headlines isn't the journalist.. and sometimes they do a lot of versions of the same headline and when people click more because of the word slammed it ends up sticking.
Your comment perfectly encapsulates one of the central contradictions in modern journalism. You explain the style guide, and the need to communicate information in a consistent way, but then explain that the style guide is itself guided by business interests, not by some search for truth, clarity, or meaning.
I've been a long time reader of FAIR.org and i highly recommend them to anyone in this thread who can tell that something is up with journalism but has never done a dive into what exactly it is. Modern journalism has a very clear ideology (in the sorta zizek sense, not claiming that the journalists do it nefariously). Once you learn to see it, it's everywhere
yeah, unfortunately they need to make money to exist. And that creates all sorts of incentives that aren't great. I still like journalism and think it's an important part of a working society, but I decided pretty quickly after studying it that I didn't want to be part of it
I'll take that just like Lee Camp being a journalist.
So they use the word often, because its often used by them? Pretty ass backwards, but also makes sense for sensationalist "journalism"
I don't see how it's backwards, the word drives clicks and is commonly used. It's unfortunate but most journalism has to be profit-motivated to survive these days.
How hard is it to ban the word slammed in your style guide? Excuses are the nails to build a house of failure.
I kinda alluded to it but they probably don't want to ban the word because it's commonly used and it drives clicks.
I studied news journalism in college and they kinda hammered in that in news journalism it's more important to communicate information consistently and to target a wide audience than it is to make "good writing."
There are style guides you have to follow and words like "slammed" end up getting used a lot despite not quite being accurate because they're words that are used a lot.
The other thing is that usually the person writing the headlines isn't the journalist.. and sometimes they do a lot of versions of the same headline and when people click more because of the word slammed it ends up sticking.
Your comment perfectly encapsulates one of the central contradictions in modern journalism. You explain the style guide, and the need to communicate information in a consistent way, but then explain that the style guide is itself guided by business interests, not by some search for truth, clarity, or meaning.
I've been a long time reader of FAIR.org and i highly recommend them to anyone in this thread who can tell that something is up with journalism but has never done a dive into what exactly it is. Modern journalism has a very clear ideology (in the sorta zizek sense, not claiming that the journalists do it nefariously). Once you learn to see it, it's everywhere
yeah, unfortunately they need to make money to exist. And that creates all sorts of incentives that aren't great. I still like journalism and think it's an important part of a working society, but I decided pretty quickly after studying it that I didn't want to be part of it
I'll take that just like Lee Camp being a journalist.
So they use the word often, because its often used by them? Pretty ass backwards, but also makes sense for sensationalist "journalism"
I don't see how it's backwards, the word drives clicks and is commonly used. It's unfortunate but most journalism has to be profit-motivated to survive these days.
How hard is it to ban the word slammed in your style guide? Excuses are the nails to build a house of failure.
I kinda alluded to it but they probably don't want to ban the word because it's commonly used and it drives clicks.