Newspaper Speak

Watching the slow death of the Charlotte Observer is pretty painful. But in brings back a lot of fond memories. And newspaper journalists still cling to an increasingly anachronistic vocabulary, including: Spike | To reject a story. The term derives from the metal spindles which pierced unwanted submissions. Wires | News agency reports. Leg | A column of text. Screamer | A sensational banner headline. Bulldog edition | An early printing. Jump | When a story continues on a different page. Above the fold | A story placed at the top of a broadsheet which can, therefore, be seen even when the paper is folded. Lede | The paper’s main story, or an article’s opening salvo, as explained here. To bury the lede is to hide a story’s most interesting facts in the body of the article. I miss the roll of the old presses, slow and purposeful at first then faster and faster til the sound was deafening. It was if we were printing money on newsprint.