Tag Archives: jargon

local news

Happy Trails, Part 146: On the technology fast track

Someone once said you’re never too old to learn new tricks.

This old guy is learning ’em . . . in a hurry!

My wife and I are purchasing a home in Princeton, Texas. We signed a huge stack of papers this past week. Now comes the technological know-how I am being essentially forced to acquire as we finish the move.

We have a “smart home.” We have opened up an Internet service to the new place. Just today, the Internet provider installed the guts to our Internet wiring.

Then we have this “smart key” business. I’ll try to explain it.

The “master key” was activated to recognize my wife and me. The builder’s representative showed us how to use the front-door key, the back-door key, the garage-door key by using a tiny metal probe we poked into the “smart” portion of the master key.

One more “smart home” feature needs to be installed. It will come from Amazon. A tech will come to the house and will walk us through the setup of the “Alexa” feature that allows us to speak to the house to get it to do certain tasks we will ask of it; things like turning lights on and off.

I try to stay current, but I have to say that this technology is requiring me to learn a language I did not understand. I am happy to report that it is coming to me — a little bit at a time.

Hey, print journalists speak a language of their own to each other. It’s not quite jargon that doctors, lawyers, engineers or astronauts use when they talk among themselves. But, they do speak a unique language.

I am believing now that the computer-wise among us surely speak to each other in a language only they understand.

I am looking at retirement in a whole new context these days. I am glad to be no longer working full time. I also am enjoying — as best I can — the fairly steep learning curve I am climbing while we finish the move into our modest, but so very modern, home.

If this old man can learn something new, then anything is possible!

media news

Newspaper jargon is changing

You know what “jargon” means, yes?

If not, I’ll tell you: It’s an esoteric dialect that only those who practice the craft being described can understand.

Doctors speak to each other in jargon; so do lawyers; same, I suppose, for accountants, automobile salespeople or restaurant managers. They can use language only they get.

Well, newspaper editors and reporters have jargon, too. It involves words and phrases such as “burying the lead,” “head bust,” “cutline,” or “filling a hole.”

Those of us who toiled in the newspaper business know those terms and what they mean.

Well, it’s been determined that newspaper jargon is changing. It’s not even unique to newspapers any longer. It has become a form of digital-speak.

The Dallas Morning News this past week announced buyouts involving 167 newsroom employees. Some of them are well-known names to those who read the newspaper.

http://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-life/07-24-15-dallas-morning-news-buyout-familiar-names/

Perhaps the most telling comment came from a friend of mine, who happens to be an old-school, ink-stained newspaper guy in eastern New Mexico, who said that the phrase “‘We’re all salespeople now’ never should come from a newspaper editor.”

Yet that’s what came from the mouth of DMN editor Mike Wilson in announcing the buyouts.

The Dallas Morning News is going to emphasize its digital operation. Wilson said the personnel being bought out were going to be replaced by individuals who will be more digitally minded. He called the replacementsĀ “outstanding digital journalists.”

According to a story posted on an online site: “In a recent digital-lingo-filled interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Wilson said that the staff would need to be better at building audience online, stating, ‘We are all salespeople now.’ He described categories such as education and the (Dallas) Cowboys as ‘verticals,’ and used the verb ‘curate.'”

Verticals? Curate? What the … ?

Some of the bigger newspapers in the country are going digital. The Dallas Morning News is just the latest.

There once was a time when print journalists were secretly proud that they could talk to each other in a language no one else understood. Well, folks, those days appear to be over. Whoever is left standing after all these purges is going to learn a whole new language.