Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/574510
10 SEPTEMBER 23-29, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Up& Coming Weekly is a new medium for me. I've been in broadcast ing for 50 years and only occasionally have w rit ten for print media. There's a dif ference in st yle and format, so I asked Publisher Bill Bow man if he wanted me to adapt to newspaper. Happily, he said no, to just w rite f rom t he hear t . I realize I'm for t unate to love my profession. Lot s of folk s go to work not par t icularly lik ing what t hey do. It 's just a job. A s I've grow n older I've seen a lot of changes in media, and a lot of t hem are not for t he bet ter. There's been a decline in t he qualit y of journalism at ever y level regardless of media t y pe. Good repor t ing begins w it h good w rit ing. My f riends Margaret Dick son and Gilber t Baez are good w riters because t hey k now t he lang uage. And now t hat I t hink about it, good journalism really begins w it h lang uage. Apparent ly t he lang uage isn't being t aught as it used to be. I've had English teachers tell me t he impor t ant t hing is teaching st udent s to communicate w it hout a lot of emphasis on t hings like grammar, subject/ verb agreement and usage. Words have meaning , and all too of ten t hat doesn't seem to mat ter. Some words have become so over used and misused t heir meaning has been diminished, i.e. awesome and incredible. T V anchors have reduced t hem to vernacular. English has been so bast ardized t hat usage dist inct ions hardly exist any more… words like 'bring and t ake' or 'due to and because of ' and 'me and I' and t here are many more. Instead of set t ing examples for readers, listeners and v iewers, t he media has fallen prey to colloquialisms and t hey don't even k now bet ter. For what it 's wor t h, English usage mat ters to me, and as I set t le into t his new medium, I accept t he responsibilit y of using t he lang uage properly just as I have t ried to do on t he radio all t hese years. Beyond t he lang uage is t he nat ional media's fascinat ion w it h subject- oriented repor t ing. A ll it t akes is a forest f ire, a hurricane or major crime for t he 24-hour cable news net work s to ignore t he rest of what 's going on. They focus on t he pictorials associated w it h t he event and do wall-to-wall coverage ad inf init um. More recent ly t he Trump phenomenon has dominated T V news coverage. CNN has been highly crit icized for it s almost non-stop coverage of t he Donald, of ten at t he expense of serious president ial candidates whose v iews are ignored because t hey 're not as sensat ional. Now t hat last week 's Republican President ial debate is behind us, maybe CNN w ill gat her some news for a change. And what about all t he public opinion polls. W hose bright idea was it t hat potent ial voters need to be polled t wo or t hree t imes a week more t han a year out f rom t he president ial elect ion? The result s don't sway public opinion so why are t hey conducted? Sadly, serious media like local daily newspapers are going broke. Local radio st at ions to a great ex tent have given up news repor t ing. Local T V st at ions have become t he dominate news source for most Americans but much of t he coverage is rat ings driven. But t his is fodder for anot her day. Language Matters, As Does Content When It Comes to the Media and Those Who Report It by JEFF THOMPSON JEFF THOMPSON. Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.