Reporting Question

[Deleted]

Bill and others in the news bid'ness, I have a question.

I see more often, or maybe notice more often, in news reports lately something along the line of, "<the reporting agency> reached out to <whomever> for comment."

So what? How does that advance a story? Maybe <whomever> was out shoppin'....

These are the weighty matters that occupy my lizard brain in the late afternoons after a long week.

[billhammond]

Jan 8, 2021 18:36:02 GMT -5 @pauls said:

Bill and others in the news bid'ness, I have a question.

I see more often, or maybe notice more often, in news reports lately something along the line of, "<the reporting agency> reached out to <whomever> for comment."

So what? How does that advance a story? Maybe <whomever> was out shoppin'....

These are the weighty matters that occupy my lizard brain in the late afternoons after a long week.

In a nutshell, it's to alert the readers/viewers that the news agency wants to get that person's take on the matter at hand, tried, did not hear back but will update the report if and when a reply is received.

[Deleted]

What Bill said, although I hate the phrase "reached out" and never used it and never would. It is slangy. It is easier and more direct to say, "So-and-so did not return calls/emails/texts for comment."

In the modern world, officials (particularly politicians) pride themselves on being immediately available. If they don't return a call/email/text, they are probably ducking you. Many is the time I got a reply of, "Got your message. Will have a comment later." If they want time to collect their thoughts, that's fine by me. But I also want to tell the reader I made every attempt to get a timely comment from the person. In fact, it is unprofessional to write a story about someone without attempting to get comment from them.

[theevan]

Jan 9, 2021 6:03:53 GMT -5 @dhanners55 said:

What Bill said, although I hate the phrase "reached out" and never used it and never would. It is slangy. It is easier and more direct to say, "So-and-so did not return calls/emails/texts for comment."

In the modern world, officials (particularly politicians) pride themselves on being immediately available. If they don't return a call/email/text, they are probably ducking you. Many is the time I got a reply of, "Got your message. Will have a comment later." If they want time to collect their thoughts, that's fine by me. But I also want to tell the reader I made every attempt to get a timely comment from the person. In fact, it is unprofessional to write a story about someone without attempting to get comment from them.

Thanks for that. "Reached out" has been quietly nettling at my consciousness for some time. Along with a bunch of other current terminology.

[Deleted]

“Reach out” was a phrase I wouldn’t use. Same with “shooter.” An editor once stuck it in one of my stories and I complained loudly. “Shooter” is police slang, which reporters should avoid. “Assailant” or “gunman” work just fine.

Another phrase I refused to use was “outage,” as in “power outage.” In the olden days, we had “power failures,” but utilities realized that made them appear to be at fault; never mind that they usually were. So they came up with “outage,” a nice benign word that doesn’t admit fault.

www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/who-can-we-blame-for-the-ubiquity-of-the-phrase-reach-out-20170904-gyanwl

[Marshall]

"Oops. Looks like we had an outage."

[dradtke]

Jan 9, 2021 8:18:51 GMT -5 theevan said:

"Reached out" has been quietly nettling at my consciousness for some time. Along with a bunch of other current terminology.

Would you care to share more with us? Maybe we could dialogue.

[Rob Hanesworth]

Before "reached out" people said "called" or "tried to contact." Both worked fine. As did "gave" before "gifted" became the snooty way to say someone made a gift to an institution.

[howard lee]

Since I changed hats 12 years ago, and went from production technician to copy editor, I have been even more painfully aware of the way colloquialism has crept into everyday language—and even more egregiously, formal writing. The corporate speak, the erroneous use of reflexive pronouns, such as "If you have any questions, reach out to Bob, Marilyn, and myself," that I see every day from people who consider themselves professional writers, make me want to create a movement bearing down on the NY Department of Education and stress the importance of making English grammar a formally taught subject again.

My daughter approaches me sometimes and says, "Dad, read this memo from Ms. ______. She doesn't know basic grammar." And that is from an ELA teacher!

Yes, we can agree that English is a living language and evolves over the years, but to co-opt phrases from telephone company commercials and whatnot, and force them into everyday language as though stuffing a lingual sausage, thinking it's cool or will guarantee you inclusion in the "club" of whatever field or branch of society in which you participate, is just inane, enables herd mentality, and is a flagrant flouting of the basic principles that help make our language as precise and communicatively focused as possible.

So, mind your p's and q's, and everything will be jake.

[Deleted]

Jan 9, 2021 8:18:51 GMT -5 theevan said:

Jan 9, 2021 6:03:53 GMT -5 @dhanners55 said:

What Bill said, although I hate the phrase "reached out" and never used it and never would. It is slangy. It is easier and more direct to say, "So-and-so did not return calls/emails/texts for comment."

In the modern world, officials (particularly politicians) pride themselves on being immediately available. If they don't return a call/email/text, they are probably ducking you. Many is the time I got a reply of, "Got your message. Will have a comment later." If they want time to collect their thoughts, that's fine by me. But I also want to tell the reader I made every attempt to get a timely comment from the person. In fact, it is unprofessional to write a story about someone without attempting to get comment from them.

Thanks for that. "Reached out" has been quietly nettling at my consciousness for some time. Along with a bunch of other current terminology.

Public enemy #1: Using caveat as a verb. Burn it with fire, people! ON EDIT: Using any noun as a verb is right up there, too.

I was thinking about this, and have probably figured out my irritation. At work, we deal with a ton of coordination, both inside and outside my organization. I would hope my Boss trusts my instincts enough that I'm giving them the proper information I have and still seeking that which I don't.

I think, given my current state of mind, that when I get asked whether I contacted someone or not, my sarcastic self feels like replying, "Gee, no! I figured they would pull the need to communicate with me out of the ether. Until then, I'll just sit on my ass and wait."

I figure the same is true of good reporters. If something is not in a story, something was not known or relevant upon writing the story, and stand by for updates. Crap reporters? Who knows.

[Village Idiot]

Jan 9, 2021 10:15:01 GMT -5 dradtke said:

Jan 9, 2021 8:18:51 GMT -5 theevan said:

"Reached out" has been quietly nettling at my consciousness for some time. Along with a bunch of other current terminology.

Would you care to share more with us? Maybe we could dialogue.

You could source your dialogue from the Soundhole.

[drlj]

I reached over to grab a cookie.
I reached under the couch to find my pick.
I reached out the door to accept a package.
I reached over my head to touch the stars.

[Deleted]

Jan 9, 2021 14:28:45 GMT -5 @pauls said:

Jan 9, 2021 8:18:51 GMT -5 theevan said:

Thanks for that. "Reached out" has been quietly nettling at my consciousness for some time. Along with a bunch of other current terminology.

Public enemy #1: Using caveat as a verb. Burn it with fire, people! ON EDIT: Using any noun as a verb is right up there, too.

I was thinking about this, and have probably figured out my irritation. At work, we deal with a ton of coordination, both inside and outside my organization. I would hope my Boss trusts my instincts enough that I'm giving them the proper information I have and still seeking that which I don't.

I think, given my current state of mind, that when I get asked whether I contacted someone or not, my sarcastic self feels like replying, "Gee, no! I figured they would pull the need to communicate with me out of the ether. Until then, I'll just sit on my ass and wait."

I figure the same is true of good reporters. If something is not in a story, something was not known or relevant upon writing the story, and stand by for updates. Crap reporters? Who knows.

I once had an editor who had been a great reporter, but the skills that made him very good at reporting didn't serve him well as an editor. He wanted to micromanage every aspect of my work, from interviewing to writing. I had to remind him, gently, that I'd been doing my job for a few decades and had a good grasp at what I was doing.

It came to a head (and I lost my patience) on a story about a young soldier who lived south of Hastings, MN, who was among the first Minnesota casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan. Can't recall which. The editor assigned me to go interview his parents.

Over the course of my career, I'd interviewed FODPs (Families of Dead People) hundreds of times. It is always something you have to approach with the utmost sensitivity. And every family handles tragedy differently, and you have to play the interviews by ear because some families can handle some questions and others can't. It is just something you have to develop a feel for.

I contacted the Army to see about interviewing the family; I figured if one of their people made the interview request for me, it might go easier. The family agreed to it so I got ready to drive down to Hastings. My editor started sending me emails at the rate of one every 5 minutes. "Ask them such-and-such." "Ask them this." "Ask them that." Finally, he emailed, "Ask them to show you his bedroom."

I exploded. I told him I knew what the hell I was doing, and if I felt like invading their already delicate privacy by seeing his room, I would. Otherwise, I'd probably refuse to ask to see it just on principle.

The interview went well. I didn't spend a long time with them. Some FODPs welcome the opportunity to talk about their loved ones. Some don't. The guy's parents fell somewhere between, and when I got a sense they had enough, I thanked them, expressed my condolences yet again and went back to write my story.

The story said nothing about the guy's bedroom. The editor seemed pleased with the story anyway.

[Deleted]

Ugh. That would have driven me nuts, David.

[Deleted]

Drove me nuts, too. And make no mistake -- I had known the guy years earlier and he was an excellent reporter. But some reporters decide to become editors (the pay is generally better) and while some make that transition, some don't. The skills required for editing are very different than the ones necessary for reporting.

Going out to interview the parents of a fallen soldier is not an easy assignment. There are a lot of needles to thread and you realize you're intruding on people at the absolute worst time of their lives. So you really have to quickly develop a feel for how to get information from them and do so respectfully and a) not adding to their pain and b) not behaving like a vulture so you can sleep at night. And like I said, some do want to talk. Some don't. Fortunately, they wanted to talk.

I approached every story with a somberness most people wouldn't understand, but obits were somber on steroids. You knew people would be cutting out those stories and saving them in scrapbooks or the family Bible, so I gave them my best. I knew that 50 years or a century later, somebody would be reading that story and it had my name at the top. That's not immortality, but it's kind of heavy.

[Deleted]

It's also a very gracious and decent outlook.

[Dub]

Stupid, tiresome expressions always get me too. One of the happy aspects of being retired from corporate life is that I don't hear them as often as I used to. I still remember when the word paradigm started showing up. (As in "Brother Can You Paradigm") I'll bet Barnes & Noble sold a lot of dictionaries. It was one of those words everyone suddenly want to use to seem, you know, in the know. Trouble was a lot of people using it seemed to have no idea what it meant.

We would also get hit by people who wanted to seem more educated and erudite than they actually were. One of my favorites was an engineering director who would get all the concerned parties into a conference room and insist that they consense [sic] on an issue. He evidently thought that reaching a consensus implied that those in agreement had somehow consensed. I mentioned to him once in private that consense isn't actually a word but he kept using it anyway.

[RickW]

Some of my favourite Dilberts. I’ve been there, oh yes.

[millring]

We reached out to him to see if he ever stopped beating his wife. He declined to comment.

[howard lee]

Here are a few more that have, on occasion, made me want to scream.

Return on investment

Synergy
Customer journey
Deep dive
Impact
Ballpark
Core competency
Visibility
Startup
Sustainability
Pain point
Quick win
Hyperlocal
Next generation
Holistic
Logistics
Alignment
Freemium
Quota
Touchpoint
Retargeting
Content is king
Big data
Incentivize
Move the needle
Unpack
Ping
Drill down
Ecosystem

Bandwidth

Listicle

Scalable