New Book on Media Lingo Gives Newspaper History as Well

By: Sarah Weber For a reader outside the media industry, terms like "broadsheet," "picas," "bulldog," and "refer" may sound like a foreign language. But for journalists, these terms are part of the jargon that dominates their workplace. Richard Weiner, the author of the Webster's New World Dictionary of Media and Communications, along with 22 other books, has assembled a new collection of media jargon. "The Skinny About Best Boys, Dollies, Green Rooms, Leads, and Other Media Lingo: The Language of the Media" (Random House) is not only a media dictionary, but a history book as well, one that Weiner hopes will be as fascinating to lay readers as it is for the seasoned professionals within the fields he covers.

"My current book is sort of a popular version of Webster's," Weiner told E&P. "but it can be useful to journalists. I think it's a fact that journalism jobs are dwindling. Many journalists -- whether they're novices or experienced -- are now seeking either freelance work or jobs in public relations or broadcasting, or other fields that are booming. I think that today's journalists need to know the language of other media."

Weiner's fascination with and love of media and its etymology dates back to his youth in Brooklyn, N.Y. While attending James Madison High School, Weiner would satisfy his news appetite with some of the many dailies that New York offered, including the Herald Tribune, The New York Times, and The New York Post. Though the dailies and locations may have changed since Weiner moved to Miami Beach, Fla., his passions have not: "I'm fortunate to be old, healthy, happy, and energetic. And since I don't know how to golf or play tennis, my hobby has always been a media buff. What keeps me energetic is that I'm still writing and still learning."

Weiner's optimistic nature is evident when discussions veer towards the decline of newspapers and, subsequently, the decline of the jargon.

"In our Internet age, people will use words and it won't occur to them that the words are from another era. Wire service, for example. It's been years since the AP transmitted [copy] via telegraph wires. But even the AP still uses the term.

"As William Safire said in his New York Times column in the [Times] magazine, old words sometimes have an appeal, and people don't even think of them as old words."

Excerpted below are three of Weiner's entries on the jargon of journalists:

-- "Bulldog (the earliest edition of a morning newspaper, published the preceding night) and bullpup (the first edition of a Sunday newspaper) probably originated in the 1890s, when the New York World and other morning newspapers published early editions in time to catch the mail trains, with the newspapers fighting like bulldogs to make their deadlines and to outscoop each other. Another alleged origin holds that in 1905 William Randolph Hearst urged the editors of his New York American to write strong headlines that would bite the public like a bulldog."

-- "A morgue is a library, reference department, or collection, particularly at a newspaper or magazine. The word originates from the file of biographies prepared in advance of the death of prominent individuals."

-- "Newspaper writers used to signify the end of a dispatch with the number thirty, written as -30-. The origin may be the Roman numerals for thirty, XXX, which were used by telegraphers as a sign-off. Another theory is that the first telegraphed message to a press association during the Civil War ended with the number thirty, when it was common practice for telegraphers to end a message by indicating the number of words it contained, which then became the standard sign-off."