Freeperisms and Teabaggerisms work their way into the mainstream media...

[madinmaryland]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091304476.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline

In the past year alone, as the language lay imperiled, the ironically clueless misspelling "pronounciation" has been seen in the Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Deseret Morning News, Washington Jewish Week and the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, where it appeared in a correction that apologized for a previous mispronunciation.

On Aug. 6, the very first word of an article in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal was "Alot," which the newspaper employed to estimate the number of Winston-Salemites who would be vacationing that month.

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of "spading and neutering." The Miami Herald reported on someone who "eeks out a living" -- alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a "doggy dog world." The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of "prostrate cancer."

Observers say, however, that no development contributed more dramatically to the death of the language than the sudden and startling ubiquity of the vomitous verbal construction "reach out to" as a synonym for "call on the phone," or "attempt to contact." A jargony phrase bloated with bogus compassion -- once the province only of 12-step programs and sensitivity training seminars -- "reach out to" is now commonplace in newspapers. In the last half-year, the New York Times alone has used it more than 20 times in a number of contextually indefensible ways, including to report that the Blagojevich jury had asked the judge a question.

..snip

[Kookaburra]

1. I had to chime in on this one

I find it difficult to tolerate some of the blatant stupidity that passes for journalism. When someone says "it's a doggy dog world," or the other atrocity, "it was a world win tour," I want to scream. Instead, in the name of civility, I keep my mouth shut.

(rant over)

[madinmaryland]

2. What is really ironic, is that there is continally complaining about the

"liberal media", but you would never see that type of sloppy writing in a liberal media outlet.

Thanks to Rupert Murdoch for legitimizing sloppy journalism.

:grr:

[Igel]

4. Alright then.

For all intensive purposes it sounds like you have a deep seeded anger. It takes alot of patients to put up with it, doesn't it?

(Yes, but I keep noting that the biggest changes in standard Russian from the 1500s to the present usually involved having a semi-educated class suddenly become the movers and shakers and wiped out the previous culture of literacy by keeping their own speech habits as they came to power. Lomonosov decided to allow colloquial Russian some space whereas those before him rejected the spoken language entirely; Pushkin helped make the educated form of the spoken language the standard; the Bolsheviks trashed the older, elite speech norms and made a form of speech much more like the vernacular the standard; and post-Soviet Russia decried the failure to uphold older speech norms as young people's speech took hold of the media.)

[Kookaburra]

8. Sounds familiar

[Fuzz]

10. "It takes alot of patients to put up with it" - was that intentional?

Please tell me yes. ;)

[Winterblues]

13. The entire first two sentences

It must be intentional...:shrug: I hope

[Nay]

3. These are the mistakes of 'writers' who don't read, and never have

read for either information or pleasure. They make these mistakes because they have never SEEN the phrase -- only heard it. And where are their editors? Oh, wait. There are none. They got laid off because they were 'useless English nerds.'

[xfundy]

5. Editors and proofreaders bit the dust some time ago.

And the rest of the staff of America's "newspapers" were expected to pick up their jobs. Of course they didn't, as the jobs that were cut were specialized, and necessary. Just like local news. When news became classified as "entertainment," and thus a profit center, standards dropped like flies.

Interestingly, this was about the time FOX Noise was hitting its stride. Go figure.

[SoCalDem]

6. spellcheck vs intelligent, good spellers who look for the context, syntax & the correct spelling

I even see misspelled BILLBOARDS.. & those things are quite expensive..

[political_Dem]

7. There are no journalists anymore. The real reporters are long gone or dying out.

:(

[Kalyke]

12. Actually, we left reporting to make ends meet.

Reporting pays lower than teaching.

Most of us went into PR or marketing to pay the bills.

[surrealAmerican]

9. These are examples of newspapers substituting ...

... a "spell-check" program for a human copy editor. It's a pity most of their readers can't tell the difference.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

11. Idiocracy

It's here

[EOTE]

14. Not all of those are mistakes.

For instance, professional football IS a doggy dog world.