Trevor Filter works in branding, media and modern culture as an analyst at Siegel+Gale (disclaimer). He lives in New York City. This is his personal tumblelog, which is mostly a conduit for exploring the proper way to use sarcasm on the internet.

Follow @trev

newsmedia
We try hard to shed our old image as stodgy and out of it. Perhaps too hard, sometimes… In any case, hipster’s second life as hip slang seems to have lost its freshness. And with so many appearances, I’m not sure how precise a meaning it conveys. It may still be useful occasionally, but let’s look for alternatives and try to give it some rest.

— New York Times standards editor Phil Corbett, delivering a slap on the wrist to his staff today. This time, it’s for overuse of the word “hipster” (a mere 250 times in the past year—the Village Voice has geographic breakdowns and charts). Those crazy kids.

newsmediainternet

The New York Times is for real

(In which I write a few too many uptight paragraphs about journalistic style on the internet, in the form of a “Letter to the Editor”—which I will ironically post on my blog, but never send.)

* * *

Dear Breaking News Alert editors at the New York Times,

When did you start being so colloquial? Over the past several days, I’ve noticed quite a bit of inconsistency in your tone—far more casual in some cases than it ever used to be.

Earlier this evening, for example, while informing me via email about Francisco Rodriguez’s altercation with his father-in-law, you mentioned that it resulted in “a ton of bad publicity” for the Mets. A ton? Like two-thousand pounds of negative press?

I don’t think that all the bits in all the bytes of all the press he received since last night would amount to even half of that. Using “ton” in this sense is pretty informal and colloquial (depending on your dictionary) for a publication whose standards editor prohibits common-use neologisms like “tweet,” don’t you think?

Honestly, I wouldn’t have said anything, if yesterday you hadn’t fudged another Breaking News Alert on something arguably more important. At 8:49 p.m., reporting on China’s “spectacular growth” in the second fiscal quarter, you wrote the following (emphasis mine):

The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

What! What do you mean China’s rise to power is “for real”? Of course China is becoming a substantial economic force. So just say that instead.

I’m not disillusioned yet; and I still love you, Gray Lady. I understand that most of this text is taken verbatim from the opening paragraphs of the breaking articles themselves. However, your job is to edit the news for an audience who appreciates straightforward language and uncluttered facts. Or we’ll take matters into our own hands.

A little more substance and a little less sensationalism is welcome in a time when newspapers can become the sources of record on the internet, too. After all, just because it’s not on paper doesn’t mean it can sound like Tumblr.

Sincerely yours,

Trevor Filter

yeasayermedia
If people are psyched on it, it’s going to get out there, because there is a demand for it…. Obviously you want people to buy your record, mostly because that’s the way you make a living. But also the packaging is important to me. I like putting work into that side of it and having it become these fickle ones and zeros floating around cyber space—it’s not very romantic.

— Chris Keating on how Odd Blood leaked almost two months in advance of its Feb. 9 release date (via BOMB; thanks Nate)

appletouchmediaconsumption
Yes, son; I know you can’t imagine what it must have been like, but I actually had one of the very first slates. It was called the ‘iPad’ back then, and I vividly remember exactly when I first laid hands on it.

— What we’ll tell our kids in fifteen to twenty years.
As much as I am tired of the rumor-mongering (just release it already), I can’t help the feeling that we’re on the cusp of a digital consumption revolution: one that began with the iPhone, really, and is just barely picking up momentum. (This is something that has been keeping me awake lately.)