You can read in the Philadelphia Inquirer about words and catchphrases of the year, but for me and many of my colleagues, there is one statement that fitly epitomizes the year that is gasping its last today:
“Our market-based, forward-looking plan is both a response to the recessionary economy, continued downward financial pressures on the news industry and our transition into a 21st-century multimedia enterprise.”
Thus Jonathan Slevin, publisher of the Washington Times, in a statement redolent of the rancid corporate-speak so familiar during the past twelve months, announces that he is sacking forty percent of the newsroom staff.
If legislatures (or, in the case cited, Congress) had any integrity at all, they would make such doublespeak grounds for justifiable homicide.
ReplyDeleteSlevin has obviously sacked all his copy editors. Lord, what a mangled sentence.
ReplyDeleteIt would appear the Washington Times is staffed by lawyers.
ReplyDeleteI am all sympathy for the fired workers, but anything the WashTimes does to kill itself off — it's never made money — is for the public good.
ReplyDeleteThe Times implosion is newsworthy: If owner-subsidized newspapers can't make it, the message should be crystal clear to anyone who still holds out the slightest hope for print news. Everybody needs to sit back, take a stress pill, and re-read Fahrenheit 451.
ReplyDeleteWhat newspapers need is a backwards-looking plan that restores quality to the newsroom. For now, who can forget the immortal words of a Washington Times city editor, "Damnit, we're on deadline. Stop levitating and type."
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