Kill the trees
Martin Stable, late of the late Press Gazette in London, argues that we need to stop saying “paper.”
Newspaper brands may continue to set the agenda, but the English language really needs a word like journal or Zeitung that makes no mention of wood pulp in describing what multimedia news organisations do.
Tags: newspapers
November 29th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Your post reminds me of an anecdot.
I’m currently working about the (dreadful) situation in the French newspaper industry. Last week, there was a sort of seminar with children and teenagers meeting the main editors.
Most kids said they were not very attracted to newspapers and one of the reason they gave was : “Newspapers kill trees”.
I don’t know about the situation in the US but I thought it would be interesting for the French industry to launch very fast a communication campaign to describe the efforts of the paper industry to preserve and develop forests and trees. Otherwise, this might just be another factor that will drive youth away from the papers.
Thank you for your excellent blog.
Maxime
November 29th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
This is retarded. It’s called a newspaper, paper for short…
Anyway, I get most of my news online now anyway, so I guess I maybe saving some trees.
November 29th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
I lean toward the term news provider. Newshub would be more accurate, but it would probably be shortened to shub. Norg is what they’re using in Philadelphia, but that sounds ugly and self-consciously eccentric.
Fifteen years ago, I got a job on the wire desk, or what they sometimes still called the telegraph desk. I suggested changing it to the satellite desk, but it didn’t take.
Most likely, we’ll end up with a retronym: the print newspaper.
November 29th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
This is my own prejudice … but I still use the word newspaper quite often, even when referring to something digital. Why? Because newspaper journalism is different, and I believe better, than television or radio journalism. Newspaper.com sites are different, and I beleive better (on average), than TV news web sites.
I still believe in newsppaper journalism. I want to see that become better and more robust on the web.
And all the things you and a I talk about in regards to user content and participation, in my mind, fit better under the rubic of community journalism, which to me is another way of saying newspaper journalism.
It’s just a hard word for me to escape.
Even as my life is totally digital now.
November 30th, 2006 at 8:43 am
This is asinine. There’s a long tradition of words reflecting their now outdated origins, like linguistic fossils. “Novel”, “magazine”, “album”, “movie”, “radio” (and “wireless”), even “computer” all reflect their origins in times when they embodied new concepts. Consciously renaming something usually results in names and labels that are still inaccurate whle lacking the charm of originality (”progressive”, anyone?).
February 26th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Here is a comedy piece I wrote about killing trees.
http://web-magnets.com/pblog/index.php
July 20th, 2007 at 11:12 am
good morning.