Thursday, May 26, 2005

What's in a (Paper's) Name?

Picking on local media is always great fun. I’ve found this true everywhere I’ve lived. I certainly do it here on this blog.

TV is perhaps the easiest target. I think this is largely because you get to see the reporters and newscasters often saying and doing foolish things.

But there is another phenomenon that has interested me. People almost always really hate their local newspaper. Oh, they may read it every day, front to back, but almost everyone is pissed off by something, if not everything, the paper does. That then translates into people expressing an overall poor opinion of the paper. Stemming from that is the manipulation of the paper’s name into something derogatory.

For example, Journal becomes Urinal. So you have the State Urinal-Register or Freeport Urinal Standard.

When I was a student at SIU in Carbondale we had The Southern Illinoisan and the Daily Egyptian (the student daily paper) become the Southern Illusion and Daily Erection respectively.

I don’t remember the two Chicago dailies having derogatory nicknames but maybe I’ve just not heard them. (I have heard the Sun Times called the SomeTimes but I’m not sure I get that one).

Anyone else have any other examples?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Chicago Defender has been known for years as the Offender, due its frequent misidentifications of people and misspellings of their names.

Growing up in Dowener Grove, Illinois, I often heard my parents refer to the regrettable local paper the Reporter as "the Repeater".