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Media
May 31, 2006
Pimp My Post
Ever since MTV launched the hit show Pimp My Ride—hosted by the rapper Xzibit—two years ago, headline writers around the country have taken the opportunity to use the new lingo to, well, pimp their articles. The most recent example comes from a New York Times article about—or should I say paean to—high-end outdoor cooking entitled Pimp My Grill. But there are many others:
Media
May 20, 2006
'Worst Piece of Star-Vehicle Crap of 2006'
In this week's edition of Blurb Racket—the Gelf feature in which we take a close look at those critic blurbs that are a fixture of ads for movies—see breakdowns of blurbs for The Da Vinci Code, Just My Luck, Poseidon, and more. This week's Bogus Blurb of the Week comes in an ad for Russian Dolls:
Media
May 19, 2006
Keeping Up With the Jacobs
Every year, the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most-popular baby names from the previous year and the press treats the information like it's breaking news. "When kids born in 2005 head to kindergarten in a few years, a lot of them will be raising their hands when the teacher calls out 'Emily' or 'Jacob'," begins the Associated Press article about how—you guessed it—the names "Emily" and "Jacob" are America's most popular names for their respective genders. But what most media reports fail to tell you is how big those kindergarten classrooms would have to be—these names aren't really popular at all.
Media
May 10, 2006
Sports Luddites
Note to ESPN: Stuart Scott can do as many Def Poetry Jams as he wants, but SportsCenter just ain't hip. Sure, it's cool you want your viewers to participate in the show by sending in their best sports home videos, but in limiting submissions to VHS tapes, you're effectively keeping out everyone except your grandpa demographic. (And for some reason, I'm not sure I'd want to watch their athletic highlights.)
Media
May 10, 2006
Who Cares If Colbert Spoke Truth to Power?
Somewhere along the way, the Great Debate over Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (Google Video) has morphed into an argument about a vague cliché. No longer is it a question of whether Colbert's mockery of the president was funny or lame, cowardly or brave, wrong or right, but rather whether the man "spoke truth to power."
Media
May 9, 2006
Coming Soon to a Newspaper Near You
Headlines packed with jokes and clichés can be fun and interesting, but they can also diminish the impact of the stories they top. Recently, the San Antonio Express-News decided to ban puns from its headlines altogether after editors found that they had used nine different ones in one day. And as Gelf previously noted, the Times is also attempting to excise clichés from its pages. While the papers are in cutting mode, they might also take on this one: "Coming soon to an X near you", a tired pun on movie trailers.
Media
May 8, 2006
The Internet is the Leading Cause of Plagiarism
It's not just ESPN radio personalities who rip off email forwards for material. Daily Iowan managing editor and columnist Alex Lang put his byline atop a column entitled "Top 10 Reasons Why Jack Bauer Rules." Many of the reasons to adore the star of Fox's 24 have been kicking around the web and email forwards for a while, including on Astrochimp. (And a few of them have also appeared previously as Chuck Norris Facts.)
Media
May 8, 2006
What's in a Name?
The New York Times's 29-page memo to its staffers calling for improved writing and fewer clichés (posted on Gawker) contains this surprising suggestion about anecdotal openings for articles from Dean Murphy, who covered the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks for the newspaper: "There should be a particular effort to avoid using people in these sorts of ledes with names that, at best, will cause the reader to stumble and, at worst, stop reading any further." Gelf is all in favor of curbing anecdotal journalism, but we're not sure such a measure should be based on the unwieldy names of people who, at best, had no control over their lineage from certain countries.
Media
May 8, 2006
California Dreamin'
Did you know that, until this weekend, there was a chance for a second-round NBA playoff series between two Los Angeles teams? More to the point, did you know that many members of the media thought that this possibility merited columns upon columns devoted to it? Now that the Suns have won three games in a row (the last one in a blowout) to knock the Lakers out, it's fun to sift through the editorial wreckage of the aborted Hallway Series.
Media
May 7, 2006
To Hell With Honest Advertising
In an occasional feature, Gelf compares critics' blurbs in movie ads to what the actual reviews said. Not surprisingly, selective quoting and ellipses often turn pans or middling remarks into raves. Book publishers are often even more liberal with their quotations of critics. For New Yorker writer Caitlin Flanagan's screed against feminism, To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife, publisher Little, Brown, and Company performed alchemy on a scathing Newsday review, turning shit into gold.
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