CSotD: Pillsbury Doughboy sought for questioning
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Today's "In the Bleachers" takes aim at a sports cliche so ingrained in the game of football that it seems more like terminology than jock talk.
The sports department is an oddity at any daily paper. Even at a morning paper (as most are these days), the sports guys come in later and work later, because most of what they cover happens just before press time but still has to be in the next day's paper.
They're over in their own corner of the newsroom, scorned as "The Toy Department" by the sorts of reporters who fancy themselves as "journalists" whose stories about the construction of the sewage treatment plant or the cheerful 95-year-old bus driver will one day stand alongside John Hershey's "Hiroshima," Ida Tarbell's analysis of Standard Oil and Seymour Hersh's coverage of My Lai.
People, admittedly, need to know about the sewage treatment plant in order to vote intelligently or, more immediately, to attend the next city council meeting. But, beyond that sort of critical-but-unromantic civic-engagement stuff, it's mostly just things people want to read, like uplifting stories about cheerful 95-year-old bus drivers. Or last night's basketball game.
Granted, the sports department brings this scornful isolation on themselves to some extent.
They can't help it that they breeze in at a time of day when deadlines are starting to nail everyone else's nose to the monitor, so that their chipper start-of-the-workday chat about the latest major league sports story grates on their neighbors like an air hammer.
But the fact that they are under the aegis of the sports editor and rarely have to sit through the interminable meetings the "journalists" must endure is a truly alienating factor. They should sit there and share the pain, dammit.
While the journalists are locked up in the conference room, watching the clock tick inexorably towards deadline, and being told never to say "in lieu of bail" because it's jargon that nobody but an attorney or a journalist could possibly understand, and that you must always include a little boilerplate explaining what a grand jury does, and are being reminded that you can't, even in the business section, say "NAFTA" on first reference, but must spell out "North American Free Trade Agreement" — which then sparks a brief flurry among the editors over whether it should be written "NAFTA" or "Nafta" — the sports guys are back in their little Fortress of Editorial Autonomy merrily writing about ERAs and RBIs without spelling them out, and also citing "walk off homers" and "hitting for the circuit" without explaining what in hell they mean.
They are also permitted, though not encouraged, to assume that their readers know enough about the topic that they can write stories where they don't mention what sport they're talking about until a third of the way through, or cover a trade without specifying what position the player in question plays.
What they are actively encouraged to do is to use, not just "jargon," but out-and-out cliches, like "turnovers killed them" or, sometimes, "they were killed by turnovers," or, when doing analysis, "turnovers will kill you."
The secret is that sports fans like jargon and cliches. They want to feel part of the experience, they want to have that sense of standing on the sidelines, of chatting up players in the lockerroom after the game, and the use of insider phrases and jock talk provides that immediacy and intimacy.
The crowd appeal of this intimate approach is not lost, I would note, on the news departments of tabloids, which revel in catchphrases and jargon and cliches, so that there are no firefighters, only "blaze busters," and police are "cops" and the world of entertainment is full of people named Jacko and Bennifer. And criminals — whether alleged or not — are, by gawd, held in lieu of bail.
That's all well and good, I suppose, if your goal is to make people want to read your newspaper, but, I ask you, is it journalism?
RIP Ronald Searle
One of the most influential cartoonists of the past century died Friday, and, when the family announced it yesterday, I immediately thought of Friend-of-the-Blog Richard Thompson, whose work is often compared to Searle's and who has joyfully declared his admiration of the man.
Washington Post columnist Mike Cavna also thought of Richard and asked him for comment. Here's what he had to say, on his own Cul de Sac blog, where he added some nice Searle illustrations, a couple of which I am stealing, and where you can also scroll down to an appreciation he posted a year ago.
It's hard to mourn someone who made it past 90 and was always productive despite little issues like being a POW in the Pacific, which certainly makes listening to sportswriters gossip seem a feeble distraction. But his passing is a chance to reflect upon not just his work but his inspiration of other cartoonists, of filmmakers and of people who just like good cartoons.
Make sure you explore the links. It will be time very well spent.
And, boy, if you think Charles Dickens worked a tranformation on Alaistar Sim, take a look at what Ronald Searle did to him!
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