There are only so many ways to say the same thing. Eat through a box of candy hearts and you'll find that love, the most expressed emotion, has a terminal list of articulations. That's the nature of language, especially common, everyday English, which is a only laymen's sample of the hundreds of thousands of words to choose from. Language exists to communicate. "Communication" comes from the Latin word communis, or "common," according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. Journalism also exists to communicate news and ideas to "common" people.
But what happens when journalists choose some of the more obscure words, uncommon to most readers? Some say communication gets interrupted by the hubris of a linguistically erudite writer when he or she either fails to or refuses to "dumb down" a term. Others say it is yet another part of the public service aspect of journalism, one that educates as well as informs. But, since most people don't keep a pocket dictionary handy except when traveling in a foreign country, most likely a confounded reader will simply skip over the word and risk losing the full meaning of the message. That is unless he or she is reading the New York Times online. The ability to highlight any word in an article to get its definition presents the new risk of catching nervous click syndrome, but offers readers the chance to expand their vocabulary to include words such as "interlocutor" and "apotheosis."
Perhaps the difference is in the publication. Readers expect a certain level of vocabulary from an internationally respected newspaper such as the New York Times. But, as one commentator pointed out, USA Today is generally thought of as a more mainstream paper, and its language follows as such. Like most issues in journalism, it all depends on the audience, so the occasional (aka not a paragraph full) SAT vocabulary word has a place somewhere. Plus, if a less-known can further specify a thought or an image, why not use it? Clarity doesn't just refer to making things easy to understand.
Just as many words can say the same thing, many people have been saying the same thing about the future of journalism and its current "predicament."
Leonard Downie Jr.'s Report on "The Reconstruction of American Journalism" reiterates many of the same points that have defined the swirl of worry surrounding the journalism industry. As someone who has been in newspapers since the '60s, Downie was part of the industry in its prime and he helped define the press as a trusted establishment in its golden years in the '70s. His tone denotes a mix of pride, authority, confusion and idealism.
It's the latter that might cause some to question his analysis of the current media and his suggestions for reform. His concept of online media is too closely related to the conventional functionalities of a newspaper, writes Martin C. Langeveld, observing that simply the networked nature of the Web distinguishes the two forms. He also gives a more concrete example of how young people and students can begin to make changes in the industry in a journalist's version of Teach for America in which college graduates could get a one year fellowship at a news organization.
Journalism students and professors, writes Alan Rusbridger of the U.K.'s The Guardian, should be the main sources of innovation and should focus less on preparing for "jobs that won't exist," which presumably refers to newspapers or traditional broadcasting.
Along the same lines, Jan Schaffer says the fundamentals of the news process that defined shoe-leather journalism for the greater part of the 20th century could be so outdated that they're partially to blame for the current crisis. He emphasizes the importance of audience. Commentors on on Schaffer's article suggested the wagging finger should be turned around and that maybe "who or what was to blame for the crisis in journalism" is..."journalists." Reader involvement is crucial, yet overlooked, Schaffer writes. But if the only authority of a reader lay only in the fact that he is a reader, is that enough to base an industry on? I use a computer, and although I have no clue of the inner workings of this mysterious machine, would I have the right to tell Dell how its engineers should wire and construct its products?
The main concern of Downie's report is about "independent reporting," which many say is vital for local (and hyper-local) coverage. Among the increasing partisanship of the press, reverting back to the old days when papers were controlled by political parties, writes Paul Starr, the local bureau fades and hopes for a free, unbiased non-profit financial model are dashed.
Financing is really at the heart of the issue because so much information allows for exploitation of articles to such a degree that the idea of controlling the flow sounds almost dictatorial. But as more and more channels open up with new Web sites almost every day, not to mention the exponentially expanding network of social media outlets, something has to change about how information is shared and sold. (By the way, I have never even heard of 90 percent of the sites webbed into Fred Cavazza's image.) It's hard to imagine that "common sense" journalists should be expected to keep up with this roiling mountain of technological development. If there's a place for social media aides in the news room, great. If not, let's just stick to what we know and report the news like journalists have been doing since Ben Franklin's time. I wonder what he'd say if he was asked to tweet for twenty minutes.
