Every Sunday that rolls around when I have to write on this blog without a specific assignment, only told to write about anything having to deal with news editing, I struggle to find a topic. But, as I have already confessed to being a celebrity gossip junky, it is in that realm of journalism that I always turn to in such times.
Tonight, while simultaneously watching the Oscars and reading my People magazine, I thought about how funny it is that the media, most likely editors in particular, create simple monikers for celebrities probably just to save space in both spoken and written forms of media, but these nicknames stick forever and become extremely recognizable. For instance, instead of always referring to Hollywood's "golden couple" Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie by their full names, someone in media decided to just refer to them as "Brangelina;" and now that is a widely acceptable way to refer to the couple and their family by all media outlets.
Brangelina wasn't the first. Years ago we all knew Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez as "Bennifer," that is, until Ben traded J. Lo in for a different Jennifer (Alias' Jennifer Garner) and thus Bennifer II was created. And how could we forget the constant media frenzy and crazy couch-jumping that is TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes)?
Of course these monikers occur in "real" news as well. Most recently, Nadya Suleman, mother of newborn octuplets and six older children, has been given the nickname of "Octo Mom."
Although this ability to essentially rename celebrities and other prominent newsworthy people is not one of the most noteworthy perks held by the media, it is truly remarkable to think about the power the editors in media have even in little instances such as this.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Week 3
Another week, another blog.
Last week as I was studying for our quiz in JOUR 420 (over everything in the Stylebook, A to F) I came across a topic for this week's blog entry.
The entry for "blond, blonde" in the Stylebook is "Use blond as a noun for males and as an adjective for all applications: She has blond hair. Use blonde as a noun for females."
Truthfully, this whole entry was surprising for me. I'll admit that I have always been a terrible speller, but I have never even considered that there were two ways to spell blonde/blond. Every time I need to write the word, I spell it without an 'e' on the end.
To think that if I'm talking about a boy with blond hair, I call him a blond but if I'm talking about a girl with blond hair, she is a blonde reminds me of what I learned in my high school French class- that in most cases the masculine form is without an 'e' and the feminine form is with one. I never realized that we had a bit of this in the English language as well.
Maybe I'm the only person who didn't know this until now, and if that is the case, I'll just blame it on my hair color. And yes, I'm a blonde.
Candace
Last week as I was studying for our quiz in JOUR 420 (over everything in the Stylebook, A to F) I came across a topic for this week's blog entry.
The entry for "blond, blonde" in the Stylebook is "Use blond as a noun for males and as an adjective for all applications: She has blond hair. Use blonde as a noun for females."
Truthfully, this whole entry was surprising for me. I'll admit that I have always been a terrible speller, but I have never even considered that there were two ways to spell blonde/blond. Every time I need to write the word, I spell it without an 'e' on the end.
To think that if I'm talking about a boy with blond hair, I call him a blond but if I'm talking about a girl with blond hair, she is a blonde reminds me of what I learned in my high school French class- that in most cases the masculine form is without an 'e' and the feminine form is with one. I never realized that we had a bit of this in the English language as well.
Maybe I'm the only person who didn't know this until now, and if that is the case, I'll just blame it on my hair color. And yes, I'm a blonde.
Candace
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Week 2
So this week I was told to go to this website and write about what I found.
The link is to the Lifestyle and Features Blogs section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website called "Words to the Wise."
While I found many intriguing blog entries that I could easily write about, the one in particular that I chose was the blog titled "You know you are from Wisconsin when..." by Kathy Schenck. In this entry, Schenck writes about how being from Wisconsin led her to misinterpret the following facebook status update: Craig just wrote a scene involving, among other things, a brat on an airplane.
As a Wisconsin citizen for 20 years, Schenck thought Craig meant brat as in short for bratwurst, the sausage that made Milwaukee famous, instead of brat as in an annoying, whiny child. She then goes on to reference other Wisconsin-isms like calling water fountains "bubblers."
I can somewhat relate to Schenck's "brat" misunderstanding, as the first few days of my freshman year here at the University of Illinois I found myself constantly defending my so-called southern accent to everyone I met (all of whom were of course from Chicago or the suburbs).
My argument was always the same: I may be from south of Champaign, but only about an hour south, meaning I am not from "the south," I am from central Illinois.
After much attention was brought to the way I talk, I admitted to the fact that maybe I pronounced the name "Jen" more like "gin" and maybe when I said the number "ten" it sounded more like "tin."
Even though I somewhat compromised on the accent debate by admitting to the flaws in my speech that I had never noticed before, I couldn't manage to convince my new Chicago friends that they seem to put a hard 'a' sound where o's should be. (Which they totally do).
My most comparable "brat" situation occurred early freshman year as I was sitting in my dorm cafeteria with a bunch of boys from my floor. I was telling them the story about why this girl and I didn't really get along, and I simply stated that I had caught her mouthing me once at a party. They all immediately started cracking up. I didn't understand.
The boys seemed to think what I had said sounded dirty, so I quickly explained that I meant she had been mouthing me as in talking bad about me.
"Oh, so like bad-mouthing, you mean?"
I had never really realized that where I'm from, in central Illinois, we've dropped the "bad" from the phrase "bad mouthing." And I had definitely never considered that without the "bad" it could possible sound dirty to the non-Taylorville ear; Not until my embarrassing moment at the lunch table that day, at least.
In the two and a half years following the "mouthing" episode at lunch, I now definitely make sure to say "bad mouthing" instead of mouthing, and I have also trained myself to properly pronounce 'Jen' and 'ten'-sounding words.
And I'll admit that now when I go home and my girlfriends are gossiping about who was mouthing who, I chuckle to myself.
Until next week,
Candace
The link is to the Lifestyle and Features Blogs section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website called "Words to the Wise."
While I found many intriguing blog entries that I could easily write about, the one in particular that I chose was the blog titled "You know you are from Wisconsin when..." by Kathy Schenck. In this entry, Schenck writes about how being from Wisconsin led her to misinterpret the following facebook status update: Craig just wrote a scene involving, among other things, a brat on an airplane.
As a Wisconsin citizen for 20 years, Schenck thought Craig meant brat as in short for bratwurst, the sausage that made Milwaukee famous, instead of brat as in an annoying, whiny child. She then goes on to reference other Wisconsin-isms like calling water fountains "bubblers."
I can somewhat relate to Schenck's "brat" misunderstanding, as the first few days of my freshman year here at the University of Illinois I found myself constantly defending my so-called southern accent to everyone I met (all of whom were of course from Chicago or the suburbs).
My argument was always the same: I may be from south of Champaign, but only about an hour south, meaning I am not from "the south," I am from central Illinois.
After much attention was brought to the way I talk, I admitted to the fact that maybe I pronounced the name "Jen" more like "gin" and maybe when I said the number "ten" it sounded more like "tin."
Even though I somewhat compromised on the accent debate by admitting to the flaws in my speech that I had never noticed before, I couldn't manage to convince my new Chicago friends that they seem to put a hard 'a' sound where o's should be. (Which they totally do).
My most comparable "brat" situation occurred early freshman year as I was sitting in my dorm cafeteria with a bunch of boys from my floor. I was telling them the story about why this girl and I didn't really get along, and I simply stated that I had caught her mouthing me once at a party. They all immediately started cracking up. I didn't understand.
The boys seemed to think what I had said sounded dirty, so I quickly explained that I meant she had been mouthing me as in talking bad about me.
"Oh, so like bad-mouthing, you mean?"
I had never really realized that where I'm from, in central Illinois, we've dropped the "bad" from the phrase "bad mouthing." And I had definitely never considered that without the "bad" it could possible sound dirty to the non-Taylorville ear; Not until my embarrassing moment at the lunch table that day, at least.
In the two and a half years following the "mouthing" episode at lunch, I now definitely make sure to say "bad mouthing" instead of mouthing, and I have also trained myself to properly pronounce 'Jen' and 'ten'-sounding words.
And I'll admit that now when I go home and my girlfriends are gossiping about who was mouthing who, I chuckle to myself.
Until next week,
Candace
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Week 1
Hey everyone, it's Candace. I definitely never thought I'd be someone who kept a blog, but since it is required for class, here goes nothing...
Given that the assignment this week was so broad (write anything that has to do with news editing) I thought I'd stretch the parameters as far as I could in order to address a topic that has been driving me crazy all week.
Jessica Simpson gained 10 pounds, so what? She still isn't fat. And even if she was fat, what would that matter? Is Jessica Simpson's weight gain really worthy of the covers of this week's Us Weekly and People? Better yet, did it really deserve this
http://www.nbcdfw.com/blogs/newdawgblog/Tony_Romo_Is_Not_A_Chubby_Chaser.html
humiliating cartoon in the New York Post? Definitely not.
In my opinion this cartoon should have been edited right out of that issue of the New York Post. Its publication only made the newspaper look unprofessional, inaccurate and more like a trashy gossip rag than a reputable newspaper. And if the Post felt it absolutely necessary to address the "story" of Jessica's weight gain, they should have written an article and published it in the Page Six section and called it a day instead of printing this nasty piece of garbage.
It is probably worth mentioning that I am somewhat of a celebrity gossip guru and always saw myself writing for Us Weekly someday. Despite my love of all celebrity news, I am not a particularly huge fan of Jessica Simpson. The fact of the matter is just that I find this "story" to be of zero importance, and quite frankly, way too cruel, even for a girl who is only famous for her looks anyway.
Well that's it for my soapbox this week.
Candace
Given that the assignment this week was so broad (write anything that has to do with news editing) I thought I'd stretch the parameters as far as I could in order to address a topic that has been driving me crazy all week.
Jessica Simpson gained 10 pounds, so what? She still isn't fat. And even if she was fat, what would that matter? Is Jessica Simpson's weight gain really worthy of the covers of this week's Us Weekly and People? Better yet, did it really deserve this
http://www.nbcdfw.com/blogs/newdawgblog/Tony_Romo_Is_Not_A_Chubby_Chaser.html
humiliating cartoon in the New York Post? Definitely not.
In my opinion this cartoon should have been edited right out of that issue of the New York Post. Its publication only made the newspaper look unprofessional, inaccurate and more like a trashy gossip rag than a reputable newspaper. And if the Post felt it absolutely necessary to address the "story" of Jessica's weight gain, they should have written an article and published it in the Page Six section and called it a day instead of printing this nasty piece of garbage.
It is probably worth mentioning that I am somewhat of a celebrity gossip guru and always saw myself writing for Us Weekly someday. Despite my love of all celebrity news, I am not a particularly huge fan of Jessica Simpson. The fact of the matter is just that I find this "story" to be of zero importance, and quite frankly, way too cruel, even for a girl who is only famous for her looks anyway.
Well that's it for my soapbox this week.
Candace
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