Kathlyn Clore

I am in the middle of a tedious editing project.

Flickr image from user vivoandando

Many documents have been poured over. Much has been learned - by me. Some phrases have been changed. Also, by me.

Hopefully, both products - me and the documents - have been improved.

A problem I’ve been mulling:

New terminology reflects a gradual shift in publicly accepted thinking and emerging realities. As Innovation Journalism playboy David Nordfors wrote in 2007, innovation requires new words (iPhone, smart phone, Twitter) and a public that can use those words in conversation.

Simultaneously, as we integrate new words the existing realities move toward becoming “old” and the terms we use to describe the existing reality become stale.

This is a problem for editors, who have to decide what phrases are passe, which represent commonly accepted vernacular, and what terms represent still-fringe nomenclature.

At the moment, it still seems acceptable for media workers and academics to use the terms:

New Media
Cross-Media
Cross-platform
Hybrid media
Online media
Internet media
Online Television

Which of these these terms fair and accurate? A bit passe, some of them, I have begun to think.

Here I begin to feel like a climate change scientist: Can I describe a particular time frame in which these terms will go bad? If so, how? (With a degree in linguistics?)

New media doesn’t particularly seem that new anymore; the term is particularly confounding because “old media” isn’t an apt characterization of anything, really. To deem “old media” and “print media” synonymous would be a cheat, inept.

I do like the phrase “legacy media brands”, I like how it hints at “the establishment”; those large branded chains that are slow to change.

Separately: In the face of: free papers, the free press and freesheets — what’s the most succinct term for papers that cost money? Paid-for papers?

Anyone?

I have refereed two writers whose work I regularly edit to this easy-to-follow Power Point that Paul Bradshaw of the Online Journalism Blog produced and shared.

It includes some good reminders for myself and others who can sometimes forget that not all readers are going to become engrossed in the content we are paid to write, edit and read.