Culture
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Language Corner — November 27, 2012 03:13 PM
Whine lovers
Complaining with a British accent
People do a lot of whining. Lately, though, many publications seem to be spelling the complainers (or their complaints) differently.
One editorial said of New York’s subway system: “But quick as a wink, the system was back, with nearly all lines back to pre-storm quality - which, on most days, is pretty damned good, no matter what the professional MTA...
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Language Corner — November 21, 2012 11:00 AM
Popularity contest
Words for the people
The article was discussing a survey on the popular view of marketers and politicians. “Both have a higher perception of their overall effectiveness than the general populace does,” the article said, and “both are disliked by the majority of said populace.” One question in the survey asked which professions “clearly do provide value to society,” and reported that teachers ,...
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Full-Court Press — November 16, 2012 10:40 AM
ESPN’s unreality-based coverage
Karl Rove's got nothing on the boys from Bristol
One of the main takeaways from last week’s election was that conservatives were living in a bubble of delusion, convinced right up until the returns started coming in that Mitt Romney would swamp President Obama in the electoral college. The candidate himself was said to be gobsmacked that he lost, and so decisively. This detachment from reality was mainly the...
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Language Corner — November 13, 2012 06:50 AM
Of storms and ships at sea
Let’s not take them personally
We have names. Our pets have names. And so do hurricanes and ships. But, unlike us and our pets, hurricanes and ships do not have sex. Or gender.
So, please, shouldn’t we stop calling them “him” or “her”? It personalizes them to a ludicrous extent.
Hurricane Sandy, which recently devastated parts of the Northeast, is a case in point. News...
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Critical Eye — November 6, 2012 06:50 AM
Q&A: Caitlin Moran tells it like it is
The foul-mouthed feminist's new book comes out on Tuesday
British columnist Caitlin Moran exploded onto the US scene this past July when her feminist memoir/manifesto, How to Be a Woman, became an instant bestseller. In honor of the American release of Moranthology (Harper Perennial, $14.99)—her follow-up collection of personal essays, celebrity interviews, and social commentary originally published in the Times of London—Moran talked about her unconventional start in...
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Language Corner — November 5, 2012 01:00 PM
What are the odds?
Dealing with percentages
Take this quiz:
If one candidate has 46 percent of the likely voters, and the other has 48 percent, what’s the gap between them?
If you said 2 percent, go to the back of the line. The gap between them is 2 percentage points. It’s a4 percent difference. (Either way, it probably falls in the margin of error, so don’t...
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Currents — November 1, 2012 12:00 AM
Language Corner
There, there
There are many ways to start articles and sentences. There is often a way to avoid beginning with the phrases that begin these two sentences. It can save words, but—more important—it can get readers into the meat of the matter more quickly.
“There are hundreds of apps aimed specifically at babies” can easily be “Hundreds of apps are aimed specifically...
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Critical Eye — November 1, 2012 12:00 AM
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of Out of the News, The Way the World Works: Essays, and The Stammering Century
Out of the News: Former Journalists Discuss a Profession in Crisis | By Celia Viggo Wexler | McFarland & Company | 195 pages | $40 paperbound
Celia Viggo Wexler left newspaper journalism in the 1980s for an unfashionable reason, motherhood. She did not return, but instead found compelling new ways to employ a journalist’s skills, becoming a writer/lobbyist for Common...
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Critical Eye — November 1, 2012 12:00 AM
The future’s so bright …
How to save the world while paying people with beer and hugs
In early 2012, a musician named Amanda Palmer took to Kickstarter to ask her fans for $100,000. Palmer, a veteran of the major-label system, was raising money to independently release her new album. “since [sic] i’m now without a giant label to front the gazillions of dollars that it always takes to manufacture and promote a record this big,...
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Critical Eye — November 1, 2012 12:00 AM
Color blind
When white men and three networks ruled the media, coverage of race was ... better? Damn you, Internet!
Last summer, Gawker asked veteran news anchor Dan Rather to review Aaron Sorkin’s new television series The Newsroom. It was an inspired choice. In The Newsroom, Sorkin feeds on nostalgia for newsmen like Rather—the mythical authoritative anchor who delivered objective facts to the American people in a simpler time, before blogs.
Perhaps predictably, Rather loved the show, giving it...
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Full-Court Press — October 26, 2012 11:45 AM
Cancer made Lance Armstrong hard to hate
It also made it easy for sports writers to ignore those pesky doping allegations
The final ace was pulled from Lance Armstrong’s house of cards Monday when the International Cycling Union (UCI) stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles—the victories that had ensured his fame, allowed his Livestrong charity to amass hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, and cemented Armstrong’s status as the greatest rider of all time. Now those Tours...
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Critical Eye — October 26, 2012 06:50 AM
When McGovern met Mailer
Revisiting an unjustly forgotten account of the 1972 political conventions
When former U.S. Senator George McGovern died in late October, he was valorized as the rare decent man working in a business of crooks, liars, and frauds. But this wasn’t just the usual whitewashing process that accompanies eulogies of a once-hated figure. Even while he was alive, indeed at the height of his prominence in American politics as Democratic presidential...
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Critical Eye — October 23, 2012 06:50 AM
Fact-checking at The New Yorker
An excerpt from The Art of Making Magazines
Last month, Columbia Journalism Review Books and Columbia University Press released The Art of Making Magazines: On Being an Editor and Other Views from the Industry, an anthology of insights and reminiscences from top magazine editors. The book is based on talks given to students as part of the Delacorte Lecture Series at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism....
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Language Corner — October 22, 2012 03:16 PM
However you want
Who’s on first?
A Florida correspondent writes:
My boss is obsessed with Strunk & White, and so tells me that I can never start a sentence with “however” when using it to mean “nevertheless.” I disagree with him and say that I can start a sentence with “however” when I mean “nevertheless” if I put a comma after the “however.” However (lol),...
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Language Corner — October 16, 2012 06:50 AM
Career advice
On the fast track to ‘careen’
Two accidents, two verbs:
In New Jersey, “The car careened down the street and smashed into several parked cars before coming to a stop.”
In Florida, “A Ford Explorer careered out of control, hitting the pedestrian on the sidewalk before smashing into a utility pole.”
If you’ve never heard “career” used that way, you’re probably young.
“Career” as a verb...
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Full-Court Press — October 12, 2012 07:00 AM
Hey coach, lighten up!
Steve Spurrier and his coaching cohorts get pissy with the press
Steve Spurrier, the wisecrackin’ ol’ ballcoach at the University of South Carolina, has the Gamecocks in rarefied air. After demolishing Georgia last weekend, a team that traditionally stomped Carolina, Spurrier’s squad is undefeated and ranked third in the nation. A huge game looms Saturday, when South Carolina visits LSU, last year’s national runner up, in Baton Rouge.
But with...
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Language Corner — October 9, 2012 06:50 AM
Forward-looking
Ways of telling the future
We have weather “forecasts,” budget “projections,” attempts at earthquake “predictions.” Most dictionaries say those are all synonyms for one another. So why doesn’t the nightly weather report call them “predictions” or “projections”?
Because the weather people know just how fickle Mother Nature is.
A “prediction,” Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary says, is “an inference regarding a future event based on probability theory.”...
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Critical Eye — October 8, 2012 06:50 AM
New Yorker writers dish about their craft
An event with The Moth saw writers telling "tales out of school"
The New Yorker Festival brought back its collaboration with The Moth again on Friday for “Tales out of School 4,” an adaptation of The Moth's popular and portable storytelling machine. This time it produced stories about writing for The New Yorker, as told by its by writers. Needless to say, New Yorker devotees packed the room at $50 a head...
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Language Corner — October 1, 2012 03:02 PM
‘They’ said so
Pronouns without sex
Whenever anyone who loves language wants to start a robust discussion, they have only to mention “gender-neutral pronouns,” such as “they” in this sentence.
The problem is that “anyone,” an indefinite pronoun, is singular, so it needs that singular verb “loves.” When the sentence gets back to “anyone’s” starting a discussion, a third-person singular pronoun is needed. But English has...
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Language Corner — September 25, 2012 10:49 AM
Apparently not
The trouble with the apparent heart attack
The American Heart Association says that heart attacks kill about 1,200 people in the United States every day. In many of those people’s obituaries or death notices, the cause of death will be given as “an apparent heart attack.”
Except, as many a journalism professor has noted, “apparent heart attacks” can’t kill; only real heart attacks can kill.
This advice...
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