Sign Me Up, New York Times. I'll Pay.

Next year, the New York Times will begin charging frequent users of its website. A certain number of stories every month will be free. After that, there will be a charge.

I don't want to pay for something I'm used to getting for free. But the alternative is even less appealing: further erosion of the quality of news-gathering.

Some years ago, when we first started to see warning signs for the newspaper industry, I wasn't too worried. People will always need information gatherers, so the market will always support information gatherers. But I wasn't thinking about the quality question.

There's big money out there for bloggers and pundits who riff off news stories gathered by AP and major newspapers. Because it's more cost effective to talk about the news without gathering it, the pool of news gatherers could shrink even further -- so far that quality and reliability could fall to unacceptable levels.

So sign me up, New York Times. I'm ready to pay.

Yikes

From the main page at latimes.com today. Their layoffs are showing.

Okay .... NOW I'm going dark.

And I Thought Writers Just Found Copy Editors Annoying ...

The Washington Post had a good piece a few days ago about an increasing number of typos in their paper -- a trend that corresponds with a decrease in the number of copy editors there.

The article cites a decade-old study that emphasizes how messy copy can hurt a newspaper's bottom line (that means money, to all you publisher types). The idea is that "each misspelled word, bad apostrophe, garbled grammatical construction, weird cutline and mislabeled map erodes public confidence in a newspaper's ability to get anything right."

In times of extreme austerity, I tend to think of quality control as a luxury. I figure it's better to have good reporting with a few typos than to have pristinely edited fluff -- or worse. So it never occurred to me that copy editing is so integral to a news agency's money-making ability.

Maybe if this idea catches on I could someday be emboldened to ask for help paying for health insurance.

Nah.

I Guess I Didn't Get the Memo (with late addendum)

An LA Times story today reports:

Two senior Los Angeles Times editors were given new responsibilities Thursday as part of an effort to create a 24-hour newsroom serving multiple mediums.

Now, back in my day, starry-eyed wannabe wordsmiths were taught that the the plural of "medium" is "media." Yes, we knew, dictionaries grudgingly allowed "mediums" as a plural, but only because the ignoramuses were gaining influence.

But in an LA Times article about LA Times editors, such an egregious mistake seemed improbable. So I went to the LA Times' fall-back dictionary, Webster's New World College Dictionary, which says that "mediums" is preferred to "media."

American Heritage and Dictionary.com prefer "media" but allow "mediums." Merriam-Webster online, like Webster's NW, actually prefers "mediums."

Wow.

Here's the Webster's New World definition, which does seem to suggest that the Times should have opted for "media":


medium definition me·dium (mē′dē əm)
noun pl. mediums -·di·ums or media -·dia (-ə)
1. a. something intermediate; b. a middle state or degree, mean
2. an intervening thing through which a force acts or an effect is produced copper is a good medium for conducting heat
3. pl. media. any means, agency, or instrumentality; specif., a means of communication that reaches the general public and carries advertising: in this specif. sense, a singular form media (pl. medias) is now often used
4.any surrounding or pervading substance in which bodies exist or move
5.environment
6.a sterilized nutritive mixture, as enriched agar, for cultivating bacteria, viruses, etc.
7. pl. mediums. a person through whom communications are thought to be sent to the living from spirits of the dead
8. any material or technique as used for expression or delineation in art9.a liquid mixed with pigments to give smoothness

The Newspaper Apocalypse Officially Begins — In My Living Room

For some time now, people have been predicting the end of newspapers. Until yesterday, it was all just speculation. But as of 6:06 p.m. last night, it’s official. Newspapers are dead. A shocking and heretofore unheard-of event has heralded their certain demise and stands irrefutably as the seventh sign of the newspaper apocalypse: I returned a reader’s phone call.

Until now, such an event was unthinkable. I learned years ago, while working as a community newspaper reporter, that any reader who calls to talk to you is a reader you don’t want to talk to. Either he’s calling to accuse you of being in the pocket of developers who want to build a Jiffy Lube in his neighborhood or he’s calling to demand you write a feature story about his granddaughter’s finally mastering “Chopsticks” on the piano.

Of course, as a reporter, I was required to play dumb — to disguise my knowledge that all readers’ calls were things to be 1. dodged and 2. never, ever returned. So in that job I was obliged to sometimes answer the phone. Sometimes I even listened to my voice mail.

But I’m not a staff reporter anymore. I’m a columnist, with all the rights and privileges that come with not having a desk in a newspaper office or a published phone number or a 401K plan. You want to talk to me about my latest column about dangling participles? Send an e-mail. Maybe I’ll write back. (I won’t, but that’s another story.)

So yesterday, there was a palpable reaction in my gag reflex when I received the following e-mail from an editor of one of the papers in which my grammar column runs: “A local English teacher has a grammar question for you, but he refuses to use computers or e-mail. He asks that you call him at …”

All the old righteous reporter indignation came rushing back. “We’re running a newspaper here, pal, not a personal information retrieval service. I’m not your fact valet. Get a book. Kiss my grits.” And so on.

Then, without thinking or explanation, as if suddenly possessed by a powerful evil spirit, I watched my own right hand reach for the telephone and dial the man’s number.

The man sounded (brace yourself for a big surprise) old. He was looking for an answer to a question that had plagued him since he was in school (no doubt studying alchemy or the medical application of leeches).

Why, he wanted to know, was he taught it’s right to say “I appreciate your meeting with me” as opposed to “I appreciate you meeting with me”?

That’s when the evil supernatural forces at work unleashed their full wrath. I found myself not just wanting to help, but actually (shudder) enjoying the conversation.

I gave him a speech about both being acceptable (he already understood that) before getting to the heart of his question: What, exactly, is the difference and why do some people consider the one with "your" superior to the one with "you"? I told him that the answer hinges on the question: Is your –ing word a gerund or is it a participle?

In “I saw him walking,” the object of the verb “saw” is the pronoun “him.” So what’s that “walking” doing there? It’s a participle. Participles are modifiers. This one is modifying the pronoun “him.”

Compare that to “I saw his walking.” Here, the object of the verb – the thing being seen – is the walking. “His” is not the object. It’s modifying the object “walking.” So because “walking” is working as a noun, it’s a gerund. (Obviously, the speaker's intention is crucial here. And, FYI, this construction is often called the "possessive with gerund.")

Again:

-ing form as noun = gerund
-ing form as modifier = participle

The people who oppose "I appreciate you meeting with me" sometimes call it a fused participle. In that sentence, the speaker likely means that he appreciates the act — the meeting. So, according to this view, the whole gerund/participal distinction is violated. If "meeting" is intended as a thing and not a modifier, then what's that "you" doing in there? It's like saying, "I enjoy ham salami." Again, that's just the hardliners' line. Both forms really are acceptable.

I’ve written a bit about this issue before, but I’d never really had the chance to talk to someone about the mechanics. I was enjoying it. I felt so dirty.

The man was respectful, grateful, and hanging on my every word. He thanked me for indulging what he suspected was an uncommon request and perhaps an imposition. That led to the question: How often, he wanted to know, did I talk to readers on the phone to answer questions like these?

“There’ve been a number of times over the years that editors have e-mailed me to ask me to call readers,” I told him. “Until today, I had never returned one of those phone calls. Not ever.”

He laughed: “Why me? Why now?”

Rather than admit that my body had been possessed by the underworld’s most accommodating demon, I let the demon do the talking: “Well, you know, I used to have this attitude that I didn’t have to provide that kind of service. But newspapers are in trouble. Big trouble. And I guess I just figured that, if I can provide an extra layer of value to a reader, maybe I should.”

Mark January 8 on your calendar. Because the day I’m so afraid for the future of newspapers that I actually return a reader’s call is the day newspapers are officially toast.

Wily News Writing

When I was a community news reporter, I found that one of the hardest things about the job was that, no matter how much reporting you did, you never had enough information. For example, imagine you’re reporting that a well-known chocolatier, whose store burned down the year before, is about to reopen. You sit down to begin writing and you come up with a lede like, “After a bitter setback and year of rebuilding, Shay’s Candies on Tuesday will begin making chocolates once more.”

But then you stop. Yes, the store will reopen on Tuesday. But no one you interviewed actually said they were going to start making chocolates on that day. Perhaps manufacturing started days prior. Perhaps they’ll reopen selling just jellies until their chocolate vat is back from the shop. You just can’t be sure. What’s more, is it really accurate to refer to “a year of rebuilding”? Perhaps the owners took a sabbatical before they started picking up the pieces. Perhaps they had to spend months wrangling with insurance companies before they could start.

So you do what I always did. You “write around” the holes in your information.

“A year after a fire destroyed the Shay’s Candies factory and store in Torrance, on Tuesday the beloved chocolatier will reopen / resume serving up the sweet stuff / start selling its famous candies once again / etc.”

This happens all the time in news writing. Your words try to make a liar out of you. And it takes constant vigilance to make sure you don’t accidentally stray into an inadvertent untruth.

It’s hard, it’s challenging, and it can make you feel downright wily at times. And it’s why I found the first few sentences of a Los Angeles Times cover story today so impressively slipperylicious:

Former Justice Department official Eric H. Holder Jr. emerged Tuesday as Barack
Obama’s leading candidate for attorney general, and the president-elect’s
transition team was trying to gauge whether there was sufficient bipartisan
support for him in the Senate, sources close to the transition confirmed. Those
sources said that the internal vetting process for Holder was still being
completed and that top transition team members and Democratic allies of Obama
were working to make sure that Holder would not face any significant obstacles
during the confirmation process.

Notice how the writer handled issues of factuality and verification. Holder “emerged.” That could mean a number of things, but it leaves wide open the possibility that it refers to nothing more than rumors. One or more members of Obama’s “transition team,” were wondering what kind of support Holder might get, “sources close to the transition confirmed.” Then comes a clever passive: The internal vetting process “was still being completed.” By whom? We don’t know. The article doesn’t say.

Usually, when you see wily writing like this, it leaves open the possibility of somewhat sleazy motives – a publication wants to milk a rumor for some ink, even though they have nothing to go on. However, it’s my opinion that the publication’s motives are usually much more responsible. The writer and editors believe there’s real substance to the rumor. They believe they’d be remiss in NOT reporting it. But they don’t have any facts to go on yet. So they “write around” their lack of information to focus on possibilities of interest to their readers.

Of course, all information attributed to unidentified “sources” should be weighed with caution. In fact, I believe that responsible news consumers should demand that sources be identified except under the most extenuating circumstances. But since this Holder rumor had already spread like wildfire, one could argue that this story justified it.

Either way, I think it’s good practice for news consumers to read between the lines, always asking, “What, exactly, is this news story claiming to ‘report’?”

Weekend Edition (Wherein I stray even further than usual from the topic of grammar): The Queen of "Huh?"

In an episode of The Simpsons, Bart nabs a handful of someone else's business cards then hands them out saying, "Look at me! I'm a business jerk."

I'm not a business jerk. Not that I'm not a jerk, mind you. It's just that I'm a little challenged by the business part. Still, on the increasingly less frequent occasions when I actually read the newspaper, I like to read the business page. There's some good stuff there -- stuff you can't learn anywhere else.

For example, I learned today that Edison International's profit in the second quarter nearly tripled. Interesting during a time of so many energy woes. But it gets more interesting: According to the Los Angeles Times, this is due partly to "lower utility taxes."

Huh? We lowered taxes? In a way that helped add about $157 million to Edison's profits?

Huh?

The Edison story was on the main page of the Los Angeles Times business section. But when I turned to a very small Bloomberg wire story on the bottom of the next page, that's when I really started to wonder about this business-jerk business. It's also when the business stuff began to intersect with my usual blog topics of writing and words.

The 173-word inside story is about a lawsuit against Chevron -- a lawsuit alleging anti-competitive behavior that "caused substantial harm to (California) consumers of gasoline due to increased retail prices."

From what I can piece together, here's what happened. In 2003, after California adopted some new clean-air standards, the Federal Trade Commission sued Unocal for failing to disclose it had some patents pending on refining technology for cleaner-burning gasoline. Two years later, Chevron bought Unocal and inherited the suit. Sometime in the last few weeks, the company coughed up $48 million in a settlement with California consumers who were members of the class action.

So, distilling down further the alleged injustice to consumers:

• Company applies for patents.
• Company stays mum on applying for patents.
• Consumers are thus screwed.

In the grammar game, ignorance has become my sort of stock in trade. I ask stupid questions (a humiliating-but-essential survival habit I picked up as student who entered college with just an eighth-grade education) and share the answers. How DO you spell "ambience"/"ambiance"? Stuff like that.

But today I'm extending my brazen ignorance to another arena: business. So with that I ask, is it just me? Or has the LA Times/Bloomberg failed to connect the dots for all of us who can't insert the word "business" before the title "jerk"?

Am I the dense one? Or did the wire/paper fail to fully explain what happened?

This makes me NOT want to read the business page. I feel dumb. I don't get it. Surely, the problem is my ignorance and not the paper's failure to write for us garden-variety jerks, right?

Sure, I COULD try to do some of my own research. I mean, they've probably been covering this extensively and I've just been too pea-brained and distracted to follow it, right? You'd think so. But when I type into the LA Times archives the kewords "Unocal" and "patents." I get exactly one hit: today's story.

Maybe I should stop trying to understand stuff that's over my head and just join in the headline-fueled chorus of voices going all Jerry Springer on how John Edwards cheated on his cancer-stricken wife.

No. On second thought, call me the Queen of "Huh?"

A Veteran's Parting Thoughts on the Los Angeles Times and the News Biz

My former boss, Bill Lobdell, who recently took a buyout from the Los Angeles Times, has posted his insights on the future of the paper. Great reading for anyone interested in the news business: http://lobdellsoc.blogspot.com/2008/08/42-things-i-know.html

It's funny how you think your ideas are original until someone who "brought you up" states them -- then suddenly you realize where you got them from. As a reporter and city editor in the Times' community news division working under Bill, I adopted his same passion for and belief in community news. It was only upon reading his post yesterday that I realized my ideas weren't original.

A Scientific System for Newspaper Editors to Determine the Printability of Any Particular Obscenity

A recent comment by the Reverend Jesse Jackson regarding the reverend's desire to express dissatisfaction with presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama by severing certain of the senator's body parts has revealed the disturbing unreadiness of the nation's newspapers to deal with newsworthy vulgarities and issues of censorship.

For example, though the Los Angeles Times printed in full the reverend's comment, the New York Times euphemized the most anatomically illustrative and thus most objectionable portion of the comments. Papers in Kansas, I'm told, used no words at all and relied instead on crayon drawings depicting swords and figs. (Note: the accuracy of such accounts has not been verified.)

Clearly, our nation's newspapers find themselves at a critical point in history, facing the toughest question in their esteemed history: When, where, and in what context can one make reference to certain protein-rich kernels? Meetings in editorial boardrooms stretch into the wee hours as the nation's best news minds make keen observations such as, "... yet I'm very comfortable printing it when Rachael Ray says to put them in brownies."

This crisis threatens to grind our nation's newspapers to a halt. And I, for one, cannot just sit back and let that happen. So, in a patriotic and altruistic application of my language expertise as well as my experience as a newspaper editor, I have come up with a complex but foolproof formula for newspaper editors to discern the printability of any profanity.

I call it the Customary Usage Normalizing Test.

According to this system, all obscenities are assigned a number value based on their relative offensiveness. The higher the number, the less printable the word.

This variable, referred to as the Forensic Unambiguous Censorship Kurtosis, centers on two main variables:

1. a word's definition as pertinent to bodily elimination functions
(Septic-Highlighting Ingestion Terminology), which carries a base value of 7

2. pertinence to reproductive functions (Total Wantonness Algorithmic Table), which gives a word a base value of 8

Modifiers can increase a word's value -- a process referred to as Adjectival Shock Supremacy.

Like the values of the base words themselves, Adjectival Shock Supremacy is measured in terms of relevance to elimination (added value of 1) or reproduction (added value of 2).

For example, Webster's word for "a stupid or silly blunder," that is, "boner," does not carry any offensiveness points when used thusly. But a homonym with an anatomical connotation would have a value of 8. A modifier with reproductive connotations, e.g. "raging," would increase that value to 10. While a waste-elimination-connoting modifier, e.g. "pee," would bring our root word to a less-objectionable 9. Other modifiers commonly considered to imbue obscene impact include "stiff," "wet," "bouncy," "hairy," "sucker," and "engorged."

As it is true that words spoken by such influential people as the president carry greater news value and thus greater justification for reprinting potentially objectionable quotations, newspapers should subtract a value of 2 from these leaders' words. This is called the President/Regent/Imperialist/Commander/King quotient.

The final variable factors in the sensitivity of any publication's readership. Community papers with extensive coverage of school, church, and family activities, for example, would use a different formula to assess acceptability in their publications than a national newspaper of record. Thus, all papers can assess each word's acceptability based on a simple rating system called Publication User-Specific Sensitivity Yoke.

Thus, "cock" (+8) modified by "engorged" (+2) spoken by the president (-2) could be printed in the Los Angeles Times, because that publication carries a PUSSY rating of 9, but not in the New York Times which carries a PUSSY rating of 7.

I sincerely hope our nation's newspaper editors will adopt this system.