On the record, journalists abhor jargon, better known as fancy technical words used to explain everything from bureaucratic processes to police investigations and court trials to economic trends. Editors are always bemoaning the use of it, since journalists’ mission, technically, is to make complicated matters easy to understand for readers.
But look at any newspaper article and journalists will have written phrases like “non-life threatening injuries” and “looming fiscal budget crisis” instead of “the guy’s going to survive” and “the state’s running out of money.”
Why do journalists like jargon? Because while it’s true that many reporters are learned people, a good number of working, daily-grind journalists graduated from college with a major that probably didn’t require much class attendance or brain power. History. American Studies. Liberal Studies. Sociology, and the granddaddy of all the questionable majors, Communications.
It comes down to journalists wanting to sound like they actually learned something in college between the keg stands and drug binges.
Which isn’t to say journalists aren’t smart. But they’re probably more street smart than book smart, so when a journalist is covering something and uses jargon in a story, it’s usually explained by two main reasons: there’s so much jargon in the subject matter that some of it slips through and using it makes journalists feel like authorities on a subject they’ve spent half an hour Googling.
Plus, it makes readers think journalists know what they’re talking about. So throwing in some jargon is a subconscious way of throwing them a bone. And since journalists are increasingly covering a little bit of everything, they can usually hold a casual cocktail party conversation on almost any topic for about 10 minutes. Go past 10 minutes, though, and they’ll most likely try to change the subject.
This one comes from Robert Salonga, a reporter and friend from the Bay Area.
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Nailed it.
Oooh yes. Nice post. Thank you Robert for contributing. Reminds me of overkill of some words as well – Global meltdown, war on terror..I could go on and on.
I don’t know that I’d agree those are jargon like: “non-life threatening injuries” and “looming fiscal budget crisis”. I think the general public can grasp it. But journalists have their own jargon they love to toss around: nutgraf, lede, hed, dek and more.
Let it be known that I used “non-life threatening injuries” in a story yesterday.
Try working as a journalist in a country where most people don’t speak english, and every translated government or business press release contains at least 5 uses of the word “framework.” Reading through jargon becomes an art form.
Us PJ’s LOVE our jargon about camera equipment. Oh man…