Wednesday, August 16, 2006

With apologies to Stephen Colbert

Newsy, adj. Something, such as a typical MSM item, that would be news if it contained truth, rather than truthiness.

I'm not coining a new term here. A web search will turn up loads of sites where people refer to something that has some quality of news as being "newsy." I just want to emphasize a somewhat less gracious but more precise meaning, increasingly appropriate in recent decades, that more strongly implies that newsiness resembles actual news only superficially, or that it claims to do so but lacks the essence of objectivity and accuracy to a meaningful degree.

I'm tired of ignoring the slow drift to yellow journalism, or having to spell it out each time I'm in a discussion over an article that's much more sloppily assembled than a critical reader should be willing to tolerate.

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