New York Times decries “Tweet” is for the birds
By Linda Forrest
Oh dear.
The standards editor at the New York Times (@nytimes) has banned usage of the word Tweet, insisting that its use flies in the face of the paper’s general avoidance of “colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon.” His reasoning is that Twitter might be next year’s proverbial bird-cage liner and the Times will have egg on its face for adopting this word before its usage was properly established and therefore considered “ordinary.”
Just today, the Oxford English Dictionary added a number of words to its tome – data center among them. Until now, was that just jargon? When I consider the OED more closely, however, maybe it’s not the best arbiter of what’s ridiculous and what’s not, as evidenced by this meant to be comical but rather frighting piece. I’d be very interested in the standards editor’s position on muggle and gaydar. Perhaps the paper could devote an On Language feature to Frankenfood or bouncebackability… Here’s an interesting article where the columnist behind On Language reports on the fact that Tweet was 2009’s WORD OF THE YEAR. That would indicate that the word is in common usage, would it not?
If it’s familiarity with terms that the editor is worried about he can rest easy in the knowledge that fully 87% of Americans know what Twitter is; you can be assured that fewer people than that know what paleolithic means, Mr. Standards Editor. And paleolithic is exactly how you seem to the 105 million registered users of the platform.
What truly strikes me as comical, however, is that this comes despite of the great extent to which the NY Times itself Tweets, er, writes on Twitter. The paper as a whole, various sections and, according to @nytimes, 96 staffers all have distinct Twitter accounts. I hate to tell you, Phil, but this thing’s catching on.
What I fear is that this indicates a larger problem – how out of touch the media can be with, well, how to be successful in the modern media marketplace. Heaven knows Rupert Murdoch’s plans to rip the Wall Street Journal content from search engines as they erect a paywall is doomed to failure. Should be interesting to watch. The Times itself is planning on employing a metered pay system itself next January. Too late. People have been enjoying your content for free for far too long to want to pay for it now.
This does remind me of a time in 1999 when I was privy to a tour of one of the major record label HQs and the president, when asked what their online strategy was, said “we’ve got a couple of guys working on it. Nobody really knows what they do, but I’m sure this ‘Internet’ thing will be short-lived anyway and we’ve got it well in hand.” We know how that worked out. It would be a shame if the New York Times suffered the same sad fate, but this obtuse move doesn’t bode well for its future.
