Kathlyn Clore

Three years ago, journalists were frantically reporting on a complex credit crisis they would eventually be critiqued for failing to predict.

Dutch reporters reported day and night on the “kreditkrisis.” Spaniards were busy covering the “crisis de crédito.” French speakers were abuzz about “pénurie de crédit.”

Changing vocabularies
Nomenclature for the crisis that burst on to front pages around the world in 2007 has evolved as the scope of the crisis itself developed.

As housing prices fell in the United States, the credit crisis began. Words like “subprime” and “adjustable rate mortgaged” danced across front pages.

As housing prices dropped and pink slips flew, we realized we were in a time of financial crisis. The European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve added billions of euro into the financial markets, prompting the need for many charts, graphs and explanatory stories.

We began talking about a economic crisis. Photos of Britons lined up outside Northern Rock ran across wire services everywhere. World leaders like Gordon Brown, George Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel kept op-ed writers in business with their support – or lack thereof – for national and international bailout schemes.

Employment data and a lack of consumer spending started to indicate we were in a recession, a tricky term economists like to argue about.

Later, it became the global recession.

In February, the Associated Press, a ubiquitous wire service that produces a style guide considered in the United States to be “the journalist’s bible,” went so far as to give the crisis its own title: the Great Recession.

A crisis by any other name
Many European publications and wire services have rejected the term.

“Let the historians, not the sub-editors, categorise major historical turning points,” Lisbeth Kirk, editor-in-chief of the EUObserver, said via e-mail.

Reto Gregori, chief of staff at of Bloomberg News, said journalists at Bloomberg are loath to use capital letters when it comes to characterising the economy.

“Historians and economists will determine whether the recession that started in December 2007 should be called the Great Recession,” Gregori said via e-mail. “At Bloomberg News, we’re sticking to ‘a recession’ at this point.”

Bloomberg News is a 20-year-old initiative of Bloomberg L.P., an American company data and software company well-known for the news terminals it sells to financial firms. It says about 350 newspapers and newsmagazines subscribe to its newswire.

Tim Quinson, executive editor of the Europe, Middle East and Africa bureau at Bloomberg, said Bloomberg may reconsider its position in the future. When doing so, it will take cues from academia.

“We have decided that we won’t change our wording until the National Bureau of Economic Research at Harvard University declares that the recession is over. Then analysts can review the landscape with more of historical perspective,” Quinson said via e-mail.

“Until then, we will call it a recession.”

Ditto at The Economist, the increasingly influential weekly newsmagazine from Westminster. It has gained in circulation in each of the last four years, unlike competitors like Forbes or Business Week.

Tom Standage, the business affairs editor at The Economist, said journalists there do not use the “Great Recession” unless quoting sources who use the term.

In the past, the Economist has tracked the use of the term “recession” in the business press.

“Typically we say “the recession” for the rich world and “the downturn” when talking about developing countries, many of which did not go into technical recession,” Standage said via e-mail.

The term “Global Recession” has been discussed in the newsroom and smaller meetings dedicated to updating the Economist’s in-house style guide, Standage said.

Generally, he said, it is disliked and not likely to find its way into the Economist’s style guide.

“We dislike jargon and other terms of art,” he said.

David Marsh, who edits the style guide at The Guardian, says the term “Great Recession” appeared in print 17 times in the past 12 months.

Guardian reporters included the term mainly when quoting sources and usually qualified it with a date range, “Great Recession of 2007-09.”

“The fact that it needs to be qualified by suggesting when it took place demonstrates, in my view, that it is not yet a widely accepted definition,” Marsh said in an e-mail.

Marsh said it is unlikely the term will be included in The Guardian’s style guide.

Nor will it crop up in style manuals at the Financial Times, executive editor Hugh Carnegy said.

Carnegy said he finds the term “rather portentous” and added that he prefers to let historians name the era.

“Once adopted, there is a danger it would proliferate in an irritating way,” he said in an e-mail. “In fact, thanks to the AP, it already has!”

Crafting constructs
Great Recession is an obvious throwback to Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted until the Second World War.

The term Great Depression was not used during those years, though. The then-president of the United States, Herbert Hoover, did use the phrase “a great depression” in speeches as early as 1930. But the term didn’t become popular right away.

It took until 1934, when a British economist Lionel Robbins published a book called The Great Depression, before a definite article and capital letters were added.

While most historians and stewards of journalistic style – including the Associated Press – readily use the phrase to describe what is widely accepted as the worst economic downturn of the last century, at least one is more cautious.

The Economist does not use the phrase Great Depression, preferring instead “the Depression.” The capital letter helps distinguish from other depressions.

“The lesson of history is that after the Great Depression, people found a new term for depressions (recessions),” Standage, at The Economist, said.

“Might the same happen again now? Will the Great Recession catch on, and subsequent recessions be referred to as downturns?”

Standage added that he hopes not; downturn is a euphemism used in countries suffering a recession.

In a January, 2008, column, the late linguist William Safire posited that the crisis would soon come to be characterized by a phrase starting with “the Great.” His column contemplated possible follow-on nouns like “Fall,” “Reckoning,” “Devaluation,” “Unwind” or, indeed, “Recession”.

Like the editors at The Economist, FT and Guardian, Safire warned against prematurely naming the era.

“…a national or global economy takes longer to sink deeply into recession. That’s why it is premature to settle on a word or phrase for whatever it is we’re going through today. An extended credit crunch or credit crisis? A “recession that would curl your hair,” in the Eisenhower-era phrase? Or just a run-of-the-mill recession, a mere “bump in the road,” the inexorable exhaling during the business cycle?”

Although the AP has taken a stand and assigned a special moniker to the era, it is quite evident that other editors are more cautious about using potentially inflammatory language to describe the crisis.

—
Flickr images from users alexthepink, Herschell Hershey, mike d’ leo

I am in the middle of a tedious editing project.

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’m really sorry to those of you who either:

1. Have native languages that call for capitalization of all nouns (This means you, Deutschland!);

2. Learned to speak MySpace before English.

Still: the awful Internet tendency to either capitalize or lowercase random words which should not be not capitalized or lowercased has to stop. Please.

I’m normally not a stringent grammar person. I thank goodness I have found the Grammar Girl podcast series (which is, happily, very searchable) so I can find quick and dirty tricks to help me remember how and when to use “comprise”. And I probably have to turn to my AP or Guardian (or EJC, or European Commission, or Times, or or or!) more times than I should.

But the capitalization issue, along with random or missing articles (the/an/a) are driving me crazy in an editing project with which I am currently busy. I’m editing what is essentially a series of encyclopedia articles about media conditions in a particular country, all written by non-native English speakers.

I thought Mario Garcia asked a great question on his design/innovation blog when he asked, “Do we associate all things Internet with lower case?”

This question, and Garcia’s redesign of the Daily Handelsblatt, a German newspaper, sparked a series of posts about whether the paper should use a logo with an uppercase “H”.

I most liked these two quotes Garcia posted on this topic:

From Oliver Reichenstein, lead designer of zeit.de, tagesanzeiger.ch and krone.at: “Yes, many internet users believe that internet is all about ‘lower case’ as the urls are fed so, therefore anything that is associated with it should reflect it. I think the truth is while the url in ‘lowercase’ is only a function of the medium, the internet, where the information being served, it has nothing to do with the branding of the Online product. On the contrary the Online property is best represented with a look that can then be extended to other areas and in this instance by the square in the brand colour and the cap ‘H’ - a direct take-out from the brick and mortar presence of the product.”

Also, from Rodrigo Fino, Garcia Media Latin America/Buenos Aires: “Lowercase was used because of technical restrictions years ago. Today all internet browsers and email programs understand uppercase.”

Exactly! So regardless of technology, branding or generational differences, can’t we all just go ahead and just embrace correct usage of English, which does not call for capitalization of anything other than proper nouns? Please?

Even online!

This morning I read a New York Times article about real time search.

I got to wondering: Do regional and local media workers realize how extremely search engines like Google and Bing have changed consumer habits? Or how real time search is making keywords and the atomization of content even more important?

I don’t think so.

At this year’s edition of the Online News Association annual conference, I chatted up a copy editor who works on the front page of the Washington Post’s website. I asked her about workflow issues: How do stories get from a reporter to the Web?

She described a very traditional newsroom workflow: journalists work with their immediate editor to perfect a story, and then it goes through two other layers of editors before reaching the copydesk. There it is packaged for the print product.

Afterward, it is bounced - virtually - over to the Web copy desk. There, this copy editor told me, the Web team will then put a new headline, insert keywords, perhaps recraft the lede to better optimize it for search engines.

This struck me as an extremely vintage way of doing business.

Why isn’t the Web team working with the reporter earlier? And why is the priority on the print product - i.e., why does the story go first to the print-edition copy desk? Why not Web first?

I would imagine that some breaking stories do flow first to the Web copy desk.

To be fair, this copy editor did tell me that the Washington Post will be making some changes to this workflow soon.

First, a most obviously needed change, it will merge its Web staff with the print staff. Print people work, this copy editor told me, in downtown digs. Web people work elsewhere.

Print-edition copyeditors are unionized, too, she told me, and typically make more money. The Web people are not unionized. The Web people make less money, I was told, and are often initially hired on six-month contracts (without benefits).

Moving the two groups of people into the same office would likely (hopefully?) be accompanied by a discussion about this disparity, she indicated.

Also, the Post will soon switch to a better content management system, or CMS. At present, I was told, print and web copy editors work on different systems. It’s hard to collaborate on story trimmings (like headlines, etc) working between these. But a new CMS - which both print and Web people will utilize - will help rectify the situation. It will allow for easier collaboration on headlines and SEO.

I was honestly surprised to learn how clunky the Washington Post’s system is - or, at least this copy editor’s description of it as such. There seems to be little communication between the Web copy desk and the original reporter.

If I were running a newsroom, I’d be asking reporters to think about keywords and how to write in a way that promotes the online visibility of their work. That way it isn’t left entirely to the copy editor (who has not been part of conferences between the reporter and various editors). I’d also be making sure there easy flow of ideas between Web and print copy desks.

Why is this so important? Because we are in the age of 1: one story, one song, one mp3, one article.

It is individual articles and songs and videos that are passed around on Facebook and Twitter. And these sites each have their own search functions. And their contents will be increasingly indexed by the Googles of the world.

Newsgathering operations and production work flows must be structured in a way that reflects this reality.

Yes, it can be frustrating to have to worry about guessing at how to publish work in a way that most advantageously manipulates algorithms so that stories stay on top of Google News (and, hopefully, Web) search results. Having to kow-tow to Google’s view of the world is tremendously frustrating.

On the other hand, that’s just how things work.

On the surface, it’s easy to sympathize with folks like Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thompson, who had this to say on a Web 2.0 panel with Googleicious Google VP Marissa Mayer:

“‘Right now, the most burden falls on the originators,’ he said, referring to costs such as having foreign correspondents reporting from hostile areas. ‘Google and Huffington Post are clever at what they do, but they are reverberation; they are not creation.’”

Right on, Bob.

What I’d ask you is when the creators of content - like your staff at the WSJ - are going to become so clever as to follow the lead of these online behemoths. You gotta be findable (Google) and produce in 1s (like Huffington Post, which derives an increasingly significant amount of traffic from Facebook).

Danny Sullivan produced a smart in-depth post exposing the lack of logic in some of Robertson’s further groans about Google, which included:

“Google wants to be the home page or wants to be the front page, and Marissa unintentionally encourages promiscuity. It’s about digital, the whole Google model is based on digital disloyalty. It’s about disloyalty to creators.”

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.

A friend who lived an Irish Catholic childhood turned me on to McCourt’s books. And about a third of the way into each one of his three books, I began trying to read more slowly.

I didn’t want the book to end; I enjoyed his characters and his dry point of view so much.

A loss. Wish he would have written more!

J-school friend: i’d suggest giving your posts more of a personal voice. it can be a bit hoity-toity this is the future of journalism sounding
Me: ok - yes, i am trying! i realize i’m not very comfortable doing that so I really have to try. but you’re right… my friends’ blogs I like most really use a unique voice
J-school friend: professional but personal
Me: yes… it’s harder than I thought
J-school friend: like use facts, interviews, etc… for cred but don’t make it sound like a trade magazine, which it has not for the most part. i’m no good at it either
J-School friend: yeah, i have to write this weekly column where we can be more personal, i tend to just write it as another story

A few weeks ago I had this conversation with (clearly) a J-school friend who works for a newspaper in Maryland. I thought of it today while reading a blog post lamenting the proliferation - and shortcomings - of what that blogger calls the institutional voice.

Institutional voice, as I interpret it in this instance, is the voice of the all-knowing disinterested reporter. It’s the rather drone-like, systematic voice we use and increasingly try to break out of when writing news stories. And, if you’re as lucky as my J-school friend and I, it was drilled into your head (fingers?) from the time you wore braces and wrote columns about how high school administrators should permit the girls soccer team to practice in their sports bras when it’s hot outside just like the dance team girls (TOTALLY discrimination. Totally.). Later, when your braces came off and you got to college, you used the institutional voice to bang out wrestling team features and 10-inch game stories (over and over and over).

It’s hard to escape, this institutional voice. Especially when a lot of older journalism professionals (perhaps: delusionals?) tell you this is the voice in which you must write at least a million words before you even begin to develop even the most rookie-level of writing abilities.

Even trickier, it seems, is how to balance the fact-driven, authoritative institutional voice with a more creative one.

A new-to-me example of a writer who has managed to shed the institutional voice and convey useful information (albeit not the most time-sensitive information) with flair is Jack Tomas. He’s writing the snark-a-licious “Get to know your dictator” series at Guanabee.com, a Gawker-esque site dedicated to Latin American pop culture.

He manages to write cheeky Wikipedia-esque profiles, some of which feature newsy tie-ins, of Latin American dictators past and present. His columns are a great way to feed readers their “veggies” (ie, information useful for becoming an informed citizen) with such a flair they don’t realize what they’re taking in. When I read the first one, on Hugo Chavez, I didn’t even realize how much I was learning.

Apparently Hugo is “the Jonas Brothers of leftist Latino politics” who in “1999 he was elected president and immediately began consolidating power. He got advice from his new BFF, elder dictator and beard enthusiast Fidel Castro”. And if I am ever in Venezuela, I will totally check out his TV show - “He stars in his own TV show called Alo, Presidente in which he holds the airwaves captive for four hours at a time, kind of like Don Francisco does with Sabado Gigante, but with less stupid hats and dancing boxes of Tide Ultra. [Ed: Although just as many breasts--his!]”

It’s no intense narrative effort, but at least it’s not the institutional drone you (er, your grandpa) read over the breakfast table each morning.

Today I spent 15 whole Internet minutes (You know how they say “dog years” are longer than “human years”? I believe Internet minutes are longer than real-life minutes.) at the singularly-themed blog Daily Routines.

I quickly found and appreciated (again) Ernest Hemmingway’s advice on writing routines, circa his years in Europe. I read his book A Movable Feast before visiting Paris in December, in which he discusses his routine. I like his idea of quitting while you still know what will happen next.

This website got me wondering if I will ever manage to be a “routine” person. It seems to be one of those habits of highly successful people which I am always striving for yet never attaining. There are some semblances of a routine I catch myself in sometimes, when I am allowed to set my own schedule more or less: I like to have a long breakfast (being quiet in the beginning but chatting over whatever I’m reading by the end), do a little work, do some fitness. Then I like to listen to the news (via TV or radio, lately I listen to WBWR, an NPR station out of Boston) while I shower and get dressed. Then I go to any appointments and then finally to the office. I like to work until well after dark, after which I like to either have dinner at home or go out for the evening. I like to end my day with a quick stroll around the Internet.

Someday I’d really like to improve my ability to wake up early in the morning. I have improved this ability quite a bit in the last six months, but it’s not really “there”.

Flickr photo from user mollygolightly