As much as I struggle with conforming to AP style, I understand the importance of consistency. That's the subject of this article from Mashable, "Social Media Grammar: The 'Checkin' Conundrum," which deals with the tricky new terms social media has given us: "checkin" and "check in".
Basically, "checkin" is a noun and "check in" is a verb. The hyphenated form, check-in, should be avoided.
The article also deals with a common problem with incorporating "checkin" and "check in" into an article. Does one check into or check in to? According to Mashable, "check into" would change the meaning of the verb. The appropriate phrase is "check in to."
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
First Blog Post Ever
As far as first week assignments go, this one isn't so bad. I had been meaning to start a blog for some time now, not necessarily about being a journalism student, but at least this way I get my feet wet!
This being the third day of classes, I have nothing really to report about the class so far, but there has been something journalism related on my mind. I read this article this morning (by Tim Cuprisin via @OnMilwaukee) and it reminded me of something my News Media Writing professor said in class yesterday. For every factual error on our assignments for that class, he will automatically deduct 20%. Now, the article discusses this difficulty in journalism as it is related to bias. The Glenn Beck Washington Mall rally was reported as drawing a crowd of anywhere from 1 million (according to Michele Bachmann, a Beck fan and a U.S. representative - R., Minn.) to a modest 87,000 (according to CBS News).
Firstly, there is the obvious problem of how to estimate crowd size accurately (the article suggests using physical markers - from Main St. to College Ave.). Unless an event takes place inside an arena of some sort or has a recorded admission, it is easy to get an estimate very wrong. What is more disturbing, however, is how estimates are used to further a particular bias. "A million-strong crowd" sounds much more impressive than "87,000, plus or minus 9,000."
That definitely sounds like B-level reporting.
This being the third day of classes, I have nothing really to report about the class so far, but there has been something journalism related on my mind. I read this article this morning (by Tim Cuprisin via @OnMilwaukee) and it reminded me of something my News Media Writing professor said in class yesterday. For every factual error on our assignments for that class, he will automatically deduct 20%. Now, the article discusses this difficulty in journalism as it is related to bias. The Glenn Beck Washington Mall rally was reported as drawing a crowd of anywhere from 1 million (according to Michele Bachmann, a Beck fan and a U.S. representative - R., Minn.) to a modest 87,000 (according to CBS News).
Firstly, there is the obvious problem of how to estimate crowd size accurately (the article suggests using physical markers - from Main St. to College Ave.). Unless an event takes place inside an arena of some sort or has a recorded admission, it is easy to get an estimate very wrong. What is more disturbing, however, is how estimates are used to further a particular bias. "A million-strong crowd" sounds much more impressive than "87,000, plus or minus 9,000."
That definitely sounds like B-level reporting.
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