Cut This Story! — The Atlantic (January/February 2010)

By Michael Becker | Published: January 6, 2010

The software industry has a concept known as “legacy code,” meaning old stuff that is left in software programs, even after they are revised and updated, so that they will still work with older operating systems. The equivalent exists in newspaper stories, which are written to accommodate readers who have just emerged from a coma or a coal mine.

via theatlantic.com

From an intriguing essay by Michael Kinsley in the Atlantic about how news writing wastes a lot of words that he says would be better used getting to the point. Lots of people have responded to this essay over the past couple of days, and I'm going to try to write a proper post about it soon.

Cross-posted from my Posterous site at Becker's Online Journal

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Michael Becker has been blogging about academia, digital culture and journalism since 2005. He is the Web editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
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