Word of the day: hack

I'm currently reading the anthology London: City of Disappearances, edited by Iain Sinclair. One of the essays in the collection, Alan Wall's 'Grub Street', has a lot of interest to say on the word 'hack' (as in hack writer or journalist).

If I could, I'd share the entire essay with you, but here are a couple of extracts:

Deriving as it does from a hackney horse, as in hackney carriage, and therefore something put out to hire, the term [hack] is used throughout the eighteenth century to mean a sorry creature, raddled and worn-out, a jade.

Johnson's Dictionary doesn't refer to writing at all under his entry for Hack; it is merely a matter of putting oneself out for hire. But the next meaning of the word listed, and one that was current at the time, is prostitute, for the hack sold his brain and his lexicon in exactly the same way that a drab sold her body.

And now I appear to work in IT

I may not have mentioned, but I was promoted a few weeks back from 'senior layout sub editor' to 'assistant web editor'. Fear not: I still spend a goodly proportion of my day subbing, for both print and web.

Anyway, I was stopped at lunchtime today by a couple of middle-aged female market researchers, who wanted to know whether I could help them with their survey.

"Um, maybe," I said.

"First we have to check that you don't work in any of these professions," market researcher A told me, handing me a list.

I looked at the list and there at the top was 'journalist'.

"Sorry, I'm a journalist," I ventured.

"What's your exact job title?" market researcher A asked me.

"Assistant web editor," I replied.

"Oh, that'll be OK, it's only IT," market researcher B told market researcher A.

I didn't stick around to complete the survey...

Roget: 'headline writers and journalists'

There was an interesting article on Peter Roget, creator of the thesaurus, in The Times' Books section yesterday. I took a little exception at the following though:

At its worst, [a thesaurus] is a crutch, for crossword enthusiasts, students desperate to imply a little learning in an essay crisis, headline writers, nervous after-dinner speakers and, yes, journalists.

Headline writers and journalists? All the headline writers I've ever met have been journalists. Perhaps Ben Macintyre, who is the author of this piece, means 'headline writers and other journalists'.

In the same way, it bugs me when people (including some of my colleagues) refer to 'production staff and journalists'. Sub editors and designers can be journalists too!

Wikipedia agrees with me on this.

Word of the day: churnalism

I came across the word 'churnalism' in this month's issue of the National Union of Journalists' magazine the Journalist. It was coined by union member Nick Davies, and it signifies 'the practice of regurgitating material, rapidly and under pressure, from outside sources without checking'. Davies says:

"Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have generally become more passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material.

"Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda."

Putting aside the irony of me copying this almost verbatim from another source, I can completely relate to Davies' comments. On the magazine that I work for, we are relatively well staffed and resourced, but even so time pressures can often tempt individuals to cut corners, rely too heavily on press releases, and turn to sources such as Wikipedia without checking facts.

Comments?