Everybody needs an editor

You can imagine how a big old mug shot of an angry robin* will get you to reading inside:

In 40 years Cypriots have given Britain kebabs, easyJet, George Michael and Stavros Flatley.

Set against these varied gifts is a rather less palatable practice that is currently in full swing. In Cyprus they are trapping British robins, roasting them and eating them for dinner.

Form square men! The Navy's here! Details of this outrage?

... At the table they are generally gobbled down whole, after diners have spat out the feet and beak. Like the Queen of the nursery rhyme, two diners might eat four and twenty of the birds in a single sitting and pay €80 (£70) for the privilege.

Readers on the far side of the Atlantic are encouraged to check in at this point, but -- wasn't it the King who was served the four and twenty birds?


* Be not deceived. As Language Czarina points out, the one in "Mary Poppins" is an American robin.

That's that

Add to your list of ledes to be shot on sight: the "that's what."

"That's what" doesn't show up in the lede itself. It begins the second paragraph after an unsupported assertion, like this:

Embattled political consultant Sam Riddle not only pointed a shotgun at his live-in girlfriend when she apparently caught him with another woman, but he cocked the weapon, too.

That's what Magistrate Renee McDuffee said in setting a $25,000 bond for Riddle during his Tuesday arraignment on charges of felonious assault and using a firearm to commit a felony.

Unless you're James Thurber (which you aren't), the results will make you look silly. Except when you're dealing with cop stories, in which case it makes you look like a shill for the cops. Don't. Any lede that requires "that's what" attribution in the following graf is a Lede of Satan and must be destroyed or kicked back for rewriting.

This outstanding late entry in the Zeugma of the Year contest is also worth noting:

He also must stay away from former state Rep. Mary Waters, with whom he shared a townhouse on Navarre Place in Detroit and federal charges for alleged bribes to secure approval for a pawnshop to locate in Southfield.

Don't tell me. He made up his mind and a grab for the shotgun?

When Wal-marts go bad

From the Annals of Noun- Noun Modification, courtesy of Collegetown's best morning daily.

Take that, vehicle.

News and propaganda

Here's an interesting bit of evidence in the ongoing debate about whether Fox News is fundamentally a news organization or a propaganda organization. Revisions to GDP estimates are a fairly routine sort of story. They aren't emergencies or surprises; they happen at regular times in regular places, and, like sporting events, their news value depends in part on how much the actual outcome diverges from the expected outcome.*

What distinguishes this example is not the data itself but the way it's categorized for Fox readers. GDP growth is an objective element in the happiest sense of the term: there's an agreed definition and way of measuring it, so you can report it without accusations of bias. But at Fox, it's not a biz story or an economy story or a national story; it's placed under "politics."

Notice something else? Comments are enabled. Readers don't get the chance to "speak up" or "join the conversation" on every story at Fox, as they do at many other news outlets. I don't know if anyone's established a conclusive pattern yet, but it looks as if Fox doesn't bother with comments on stories that don't fit a kind of ritualistic, let's-sit-at-the-bar-and-bitch-about-the-old-days function.

The capture above shows no comments so far. If I were the betting sort, I'd bet that the first comments would be from these general categories:

How's that HOPE and CHANGE working out for you now?
10% unemployment doesn't feel like a "recovery" to me.
Worst and most corrupt administration in history.

For you media-effects fans out there (or Language Log visitors who kept up with the weekend's framing discussion), this is a highly testable bit of media framing: Does it make a difference in attitudes or depth of processing to categorize a GDP story as "politics" rather than "economics"? Under the right circumstances, it probably does. I don't think Fox knows that, in the sense that it hasn't tested the effect among 160 extra-credit-seeking undergraduates in a survey class somewhere, but that doesn't mean it isn't a deliberate ideological choice.

* NB: The story has moved up to the No. 2 position, with the hed "3Q Growth Marred By GDP Slowdown." As is often the case at Fox, it's hard to tell whether the hed reflects dishonesty or simple incompetence. The GDP didn't "slow down"; it didn't increase as much as the initial estimate had suggested. Funny thing is that at Fox, that category of error only happens on one side of the aisle.

Routines and WTF heds

Quick, you non-Ohio readers, what does this hed mean? More specifically, is it a noun phrase:

Children's major player in tumor war (arrested after high-speed chase)

Children's major player in tumor war (is invisible 6-foot rabbit)

or a completely formed hed?

It's the latter, but a couple of routines -- one general to the craft, one specific to this area* -- make it almost incomprehensible to the non-clued-in. Here's the lede:

As they work to unravel the genetics behind 20 killer tumors, researchers across the country will receive many of the samples they need from Nationwide Children's Hospital.

In context, "Children's" isn't any less sensible than "Beaumont" or whatever you call your nearest** Houses of Healing. Where did the fire victims end up? "They're at Children's." But without a cue, you really can't read the hed without the story, and that's not good.

You can also pass the time playing Pin the Linking Verb on the Noun:

Children's major is player in tumor war
Children's major player in tumor is war

... but that's getting a little excessive.

* Though it probably obtains, at least a little, in other cities where there's an institution called Children's Hospital.
** Consider this the standard plea to help stamp out "local," as in "the victims were rushed to a local hospital."

Hey, whatever

It is called the Motor City for a reason. The natives don't travel to and from the office on broomsticks powered by tofu and angel tears. Road directions and rules are generally organized to help cars get from place to place with minimal interference from those pesky humans.

Thus, my favorite combination of signage so far in the whole state, if not in the entire world in space. It's at the head of the 696 entry ramp at the easternmost checkpoint on the Ferndale border, and the Saturn has a case of cognitive dissonance every time we use the Stop/No Stopping route.

Lessons in hed writing

Today's tip: Make your heds more exciting by leaving out those pesky qualifiers!

The homepage hed says "won't reduce deficits." The hed on the inside page is duller: "CBO: Senate Health Bill Won't Reduce Deficits Quite as Much." And the lede?

The Congressional Budget Office said Sunday that the Senate health care bill would not reduce long-term federal deficits as much as previously estimated, acknowledging that it made an "error" in its original analysis.

It should be noted that the story has a Fox creditline and no AP shirttail, suggesting that it's a purely Fair 'n' Balanced product. Good thing the hed writers got the important part right!

Who did what to whom?

What takes the minds at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network off Carbonhagen, missing moms and the dawn of Nazi Communist socialized Mafia Chicago medicine? Celebrities! Diagramming party to action stations for this one:

TMZ reports Murphy's mother found the actress unconscious in the shower, and was in full cardiac arrest and started CPR.

Ghosts of textbooks past

Sometimes you can almost guess which skeletal page from which shroud-wrapped edition of which greisly textbook is sending tremors through the writers downtown.

Does "or more appropriate, Secret Santa" sound a little strange? The workbook-standard concept ended up as question 14 (part 4) on the first-round version of the old J110 style exam, on which you're supposed to change a sentence-initial "more importantly" to "more important." Why? Because, erm, well ... it's short for "what is more important," so it can't be the perfectly logical sentence adverb "more importantly." I mean, why go to the trouble of figuring out why people do what they do when you can follow the textbook and get the point?

Another one from today's A section:

With fewer than two weeks left in the year, the U.S. Senate on Saturday passed legislation that extends until the end of February eligibility deadlines for some key unemployment benefits.

Why "fewer than" two weeks? Because the book says numbers get "more than" and "fewer than"! One problem with that, though, is that we're not counting time in weeks here. "Fewer than two weeks" is one week or no weeks, not the 13 days that were (was?) on the clock when the lede was written. "Less than" isn't just idiomatic, it makes better sense -- but why make sense when you have a rule to follow?

And this:

For Monday, a 60% chance of snow exists.

Ever wonder why there's so much existing in news language? Might be a relic of the j-academy's occasional flirtation with General Semantics -- specifically, the part in which "be" verbs turn people into some sort of Whorfian zombies. Any reason not to say "there is" a particular chance of snow? Just the shadow of a textbook.

None of which is to say there's no editing at all downtown. Here's one from a wire story on the health care debate:

He also noted he successful­ly had fended off attempts to provide for a government-run insurance option to compete with private insurers.

Want to know what the AP sent?

He also noted he had successfully fended off attempts to provide for a government-run insurance option to compete with private insurers.

That's not the sort of adverb I'd spend a lot of time defending (when you fend something off, you succeed at fending it off), but moving the poor thing is a waste of editorial time with no conceivable improvement in the sentence. If you want to show me you're working, bring me the head of an "it's official." Or go over to the sports desk and cudgel the person who kept 'em from having a "celebrate"-free cutline day.

Hat trick of evil

Looks like Santa Cliche came early for the folks downtown. Packed into a mere two inches across the bottom of the front, we have:

An "it's official" (garnished with "butts out")

An "it's not easy being green"

And a double dose of Christmas song titles!

When you wring the institutional memory out of your newsroom, you're not just losing the people who remember whether two streets cross where the story says they do. You're also losing the people whose job is to gently remind reporters (and editors) that "It's not easy being green" and the like weren't original the last five dozen times we saw them.

3-2, top of the 9th

"Inconven- ient truth" had a good showing at midweek, with frontpage heds Tuesday and Thursday, but "con- ference in disarray" is fighting back to take the lead!

And don't forget to visit our concession stands for your Fox bobbleheads:

Assembled world leaders cheered on the socialist strongman during a rousing attack on all things capitalist at the Copenhagen climate conference. Chavez's prime-time climate speech included references to Obama as the "Nobel Prize of War."

...The Venezuelan president used the international forum Wednesday to slime developed nations for creating an "imperial dictatorship" that rules the world, urging his audience to "fight against capitalism," the "silent and terrible ghost" that was haunting the elegant conference chambers in the Danish capital.

...Calling on spiritual leaders as varied as Jesus, Muhammad and Karl Marx, Chavez bellowed that climate discussions were going on behind closed doors and draft agreements remained "top secret."

"The text presented is not democratic or inclusive," said Chavez, who has made it a practice in his native Venezuela to close opposition newspapers, radio stations and TV networks, and jails dissident politicians on spurious charges.

...Chavez regularly regales a captive audience of millions of Venezuelans on his weekly "Alo Presidente" talk shows, the marathon TV and radio sessions that give him space to rail against the bourgeoisie, excoriate the U.S. and even sing a ballad when the mood strikes.

By comparison, his Copenhagen screed was brief, but was certainly gobbled up by many delegates in attendance who let out a nervous laugh as he attacked President Obama.

...But the commandante did manage to address climate change itself, warning of the dangers posed by the failure to rein in carbon emissions and give aid to the Third World.

Not that often, actually

The bar is always set high for second-person ledes, and this is among the reasons why:

How many times have you cast aside a craving for sushi just to appease a raw-fish-repulsed dining companion?

Generally, you don't want your pronouns to tell readers at the outset that they aren't welcome in your world. Ledes that implicitly ask "are you a Charlotte yupster who's stuck with the sort of friends who still think salt, pepper and Sweet-n-Lo are fine herbs and spices?" poke a chopstick in the reader's eye. Don't do that.