'The Taproot of Modern Journalism'

"The daily newspaper is the taproot of modern journalism. Dailies mainly date to the eighteen-thirties, the decade in which the word 'journalism' was coined, meaning daily reporting, the jour in journalism."

Another good article about, well, the state of journalism: "Hard News: The state of journalism" by Jill Lepore, in the January 28th issue of The New Yorker. Online it's the same article but it's called "Does Journalism Have a Future? In an era of social media and fake news, journalists who have survived the print plunge have new foes to face." I haven't actually finished reading it yet, which violates the Pinker Rule*, but I wanted to mention it before we get too far from the "Dire Predictions" post.

"...Journalism, as a field, is as addled as an addict, gaunt, wasted, and twitchy, its pockets as empty as its nights are sleepless. It's faster than it used to be, so fast. It's also edgier, and needier, and angrier. It wants and it wants and it wants. But what does it need?"

Mike
(Thanks to my dear Momma, who has gifted me with a subscription
to The New Yorker for the past umpteen years.)

*My brother Scott and I have a rule with each other we call the Pinker Rule, named for Steven Pinker—can't recommend a book until you finish it. Pinker is a brilliant but loquacious, some might even say logorrheic, writer who I swear can write digressions that last 90 pages. I'm only kind of kidding. Sometimes you can start one of his books with vigorous enthusiasm, little suspecting the bleak detours that await the way forward.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Harsh reality

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Eolake: "I’ve almost said this many times before...'Logorrheic'!?! Man. I can’t decide if I’m more frustrated or more delighted with the vocabulary you expect us to have!"

Mike replies: Nice word, eh? To me, words are just playing. Believe it or not, I'd actually have a wider audience if I wrote to a lower vocabulary level, which I can do. I just figure people here don't mind doing what I do—I go to the dictionary at least once a day every day of my life. It's not a chore; I rather like it. I even enjoy looking up the meaning of words I already know, to see if there's an inflection or a subtlety I might have missed.

And by the way, sometimes you readers send me to Noah's big book, too.

Comments

[Geoff Wittig]

I really enjoy writing. The process of crafting a pithy, meaningful paragraph can be very satisfying, particularly when you find the perfect word to convey a subtle, nuanced idea very precisely. It's like building a house, using words instead of 2x4"'s. If that perfect word is a bit uncommon and sends readers to their dictionaries, some of them will feel a bit of delight at learning a new word that smartly captures a thought they may want to express in the future. Win/win all around.
One of Shakespeare's unique attributes was his colossal vocabulary. The average English speaker has a working vocabulary of perhaps 20,000 words. Shakespeare is credited with more like 60,000 to 80,000 based on his literary output, and he had no qualms about minting new compound words when they transmitted a thought better than existing ones.

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Thanks Mike, I enjoy reading the work of someone who likes to use the English language beyond the basics. Never too late to expand one’s vocabulary. I usually have links to thesaurus.com and the Oxford English Dictionary close to hand.
Incidentally, for an Australian it’s a toss-up between Oxford and Merriam-Webster - both are relevant due to cultural history. Also, our national dictionary - the Macquarie (named after a prominent and controversial figure, in early European history of Australia, with a penchant for naming places after himself) - operates on a subscription model.

[john robison]

You have sent me running to a (online) dictionary more than any other writer I follow. And, When still in high school 50 and some odd years ago I always scored 99+ percentile on word recognition sections of the SAT.

[Taiyo]

Wonderful word, Logorrheic; thank you very much for using such language - love having to open a dictionary before moving on to the next word.