Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to NewsvineFrom the memo the new editor-in-chief of The Washington Times sent to his staff to advise them of upcoming layoffs. This is a masterpiece of Dilberty corporate-speak:
Over the next few weeks, we will make a difficult journey. The effort will be expeditious and fair, even-handed and humane. It will require us to say goodbye to some colleagues we have known for many years and to celebrate their many accomplishments as they leave us. It will also allow us to welcome some new colleagues whose skills will improve our capabilities, particularly in the digital arena.
If you want to get an idea of the mood inside the journalism business these days, wait till midnight tonight, turn off all the lights in your house, shut yourself in your bedroom closet, put on your sunglasses, pull a paper sack over your head, and stare expectantly at the future.
Subscribe
Comments
My view is halfway between trotsky's and Eric W's/Rjak's: I understand the need for shorter paragraphs, but I still prefer paragraphs. The New York Times is no less easy to read because it features paragraphs with three sentences.
I know that I am not a typical newspaper reader, but as newspapers get dumber and dumber, I find less and less reason to bother with them. It's like we don't want to bore readers by cluttering up their newspaper experience with words. I often feel today, even when I read my own newspaper, that I'm reading the script from a TV newscast. I like complexity and expressiveness in the way I get my news! I wonder if the likelihood that we in the news biz are alienating readers like me is compensated for by the simplicity-favoring readers we don't lose. As someone whose living depends on keeping readership up, I'd rather lose people like me than lose people like them, if it meant my paper still had the means to keep me gainfully employed. But I do wonder if we're going at this the wrong way.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | April 3, 2008 7:41 AM
While column format may be part of the reason for the "one-sentence rule," in the example I gave (the real story - i.e., the beating death - not my made-up apartment fire story), the sentences do not logically flow from one to the next. The story jumps around and back and forth. Even if the sentences were printed in a book, it would be hard to join them together into a paragraph or paragraphs in the order in which they're printed.
So, which came first: the chicken or the egg? Is the story printed according to the "one sentence rule" because it is so poorly written that it does not lend itself to proper paragraphing? Or does it lack coherency/cohesiveness because the author is required to write in single-sentence paragraphs with no expected logical or topical flow from sentence to sentence?
I can understand why the newspaper format might necessitate the one-sentence rule. You make a good point, trotsky. On the other hand, many stories seem to display the problems/characteristics I described, and I wonder to what extent the one-sentence rule thus makes things worse, not better?
Posted by: | April 3, 2008 7:56 AM
Our local paper has a daily feature which reprints an excerpt from that day's edition of 150, 100, & 50 years ago. The complexity of the writing in the 1858 edition as compared to today's is astonishing. It's not really good, from a literary point of view--it's ridiculously mannered and not necessarily that impressive in substance. But it's complicated enough that a contemporary college student would probably whine if forced to read it, and many contemporary high school grads might not be able to.
Posted by: Maclin Horton | April 3, 2008 12:02 PM
I mentioned on another blog about another topic [i.e., people in the pews (and sometimes in the pulpit) hating "theology" and "theological terms," thinking it's too complicated or elitist] that, as Maclin Horton notes, we are a stupider people today. I suggested giving McGuffeys Readers to a sample of typical American ADULTS and seeing how far into the Graded Readers they can get before they start scratching their heads. I think the results would be pretty appalling, especially if you then asked them to summarize or restate what they had just read.
Posted by: Eric W | April 3, 2008 12:40 PM
Eric,
Yes, disorganized smatterings of facts are one of the problems of news reports.
Rod,
My great fear is to watch the stories on my own newspaper's Web site that garner the most traffic. Clicks are brutally efficient at telling you what people are reading, and complex, nuanced prose rarely makes the top 10. Nope, that doesn't make me happy either.
I do love the suggestion from the recent Atlantic (linked here, IIRC) about following the most e-mailed stories. What did you share with someone?
But pay-per-click advertising is ruthless.
Posted by: | April 3, 2008 9:20 PM
Post a Comment
Are you aware of our Rules of Conduct?