What journalists hate most
Added: (Sat Jun 21 2003)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
Immediate future has completed a survey of technology and business journalists across the trade magazines and nationals asking what words they hate most in press releases.
With most editors receiving more than 200 emails a day, difficulty in getting past the first sentence results in your carefully crafted release disappearing into the bin. Cryptic messages fill inboxes and post trays. Journalists it seems have grown tired of endless press releases festooned with meaningless tech speak.
There are some that are well known, ‘solutions’, ‘end-to-end’ and ‘leading edge’. Common and meaningless words. But it seems that Jargon is a living thing. New words are entering journalists’ eyeball-rolling lexicon with alarming speed. As our industry grows and new technology is born, we add to our list of extraneous words.
Philip Buxton, netimperative‘s editor, says: "‘Leverage‘? What‘s wrong with ‘use‘? Or ‘compelling‘. What‘s wrong with ‘good‘? We already have perfectly decent, simple and straightforward words that require a fraction of the time to decode than the jargon that replaces them - and this is what puts off journalists, because time is at an absolute premium. But we should also admit that poorly written press releases go straight in the bin because we are all inherently precious about the English language. Journalists might even be missing good stories as a result, but I think we all imagine it‘s for the greater good."
Results of the survey are available at http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk/170 and the mini report includes quotes and comments from key journalists. Most importantly there are a list of banned “Jargon” words to help you avoid the most common mistakes.
…ends/
Notes to editors
immediate future Ltd is an independent public relations and communications consultancy, specialising in media, creative and digital industries. The Immediate future team is highly experienced in both corporate and business-to-business PR.
The company is active members of Internet Integrity, advisors to BIMA, the EMF, e-consultancy, and participate at the DTI Initiative ‘the Digital Content Forum’s action group on standards’
Clients range from public and private companies, to ‘not for profit‘ organisations and include, Tribal DDB, OMD Digital, Weapon7, Press Red, YooMedia Plc, Zip TV, Affiliate Window, Thoughtbubble, 3rd sense, Playaholics, access conferences, Skive Creative, BWDMA, Techmerit and redhotcurry.com.
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