The worth of any journalist can be measured in inches – literally.
It’s not unusual to overhear journalists talking about how
many inches they have. At first thought, this kind of comment might be
construed as journalists in the midst of a pissing contest. And while that
probably stands true, the journalists were probably talking about inch count.
Most working folks measure their days in units of time but
for the working journalist, it’s measured in inches.
A typical journalist’s day looks like this:
- 15 inches before lunch.
- During lunch, edit a 25-inch piece.
- Finish 35-inch piece before deadline.
But because newspapers are shrinking, 10 inches in
journalism isn’t what it used to be. With column widths getting smaller,
journalists are having to learn the hard rule of brevity. A difficult rule for
the long-winded journalist.
Journalists measure their stories by inch count because of
phallic tradition.
Before Web sites, computers and the decline of print
journalism, newspapers were measured by inch count and laid out by hand. Even
though the practice is no longer necessary thanks to computer pagination,
editors and journalists alike, who fear change, cling to measuring stories by
the inch.
Journalists have their own ways of measuing the inch count
of their stories. Officially, there is a formula. It goes something like
dividing the number of words into 35 or dividing the number of lines by four.
But if there is anything journalists are known for, it’s they are not good at
math. So for most veterans, they have their own way of measuring their inch
count – mostly by eyeballing it. And like a single guy at a bar on Friday
night, journalists hope what they got is long enough.
After authoring a couple hundred of stories, computing a
story inch count becomes second nature.
So if this post is 320 words, let’s see add the five . . .
carry the one . . .
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Topics:
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Awesome
And then there are the stories that are so tedious we measure them in feet.
And when at least 16 inches get hacked out of our lovely prose … I guess that should be filed under “stuff journalists hate.”
“Even though the practice is no longer necessary thanks to computer pagination, editors and journalists alike, who fear change, cling to measuring stories by the inch”
So not true! As long as we’re talking newspapers that still print (not online-only news), a page still has a finite number of column inches, and you still have to work within those very real boundaries. If your editor only has room for a 15-inch story, you have to make it fit.
hehe that sounds fun…*
We soon believe what we desire.