Louche's Dictionary of Journalism, part 2

A month or so ago I started work on Louche's Dictionary of Journalism well I've got a few more entries for it now.

Angle - The spin put on a story to make it more exciting, for example only pretty girls ever get A-level results.

Aspirational - A magazine designed to be read by people who could never afford anything in it. Typically set up by people who want to spend time 'reviewing' Bentleys and yachts but who couldn't actually afford one. You can tell if a magazine is aspirational if it has ever had a special issue just on pointlessly expensive watches because no normal publication would be so dull.

Assignment - Something you'd only do because you are getting paid to do it.

Branding - A type of advert, typically seen in upmarket titles where the person booking the advert doesn't actually expect a response but just wants to impress their mates that they have got something going in a flash magazine. These adverts normally feature a black background with white text.

Contributing Editor - A special sort of freelancer who gets regular pay in exchange for writing something regularly. The contracts for this have to be made out of unicorn dust which explains why they are so rare.

Content - King, apparently. People who don't actually read like to say this a lot.

Ebook - The worst idea ever, books are even easier to swap electronically than music and so Ebooks will mean the end of days of publishing, at least as we know it.

House Style - the way an article has to be presented to fit in with the rest of the newspaper. Typically this means some words are banned like 'feisty' which immediately makes you want to use it as much as possible. Of course editors and columnists can ignore the house style because they are too important (and feisty) to follow it.

Intern AKA Work Experience - Student helper works for nothing. Depending on where they work they will either spend the whole time making cups of tea or seducing/being seduced by single members of staff.

Magazine - A special sort of newspaper that comes out infrequently, is mostly composed of advertising and very rarely contains any actual news. There is a direct relationship between how glamourous the adverts contained in a magazine are and how many people actually read it. The more glam the adverts the more likely the magazine is just brought to look nice on a coffee table.

Press Release - A special article composed by someone who doesn't want to write it, about a subject they don't really care about that is sent out to people who aren't interested in receiving it.

Topical - A story that in some way vaguely relates to a film/book/tv show currently in the public eye. Is no-longer enough to be a shocking bit of information that no-one has discovered yet, also known as a 'scoop'. Now it has to in some way tie-in with the latest Adam Sandler film. Strangely even newspapers do this, which is weird as surely they should be the ones who decide what is topical by reporting on it?

More will follow when I think of them.