Hacks divided by an (un)common jargon

Sunday, 22 June 2008, 07:56

In a recent Twitter exchange, Jay Rosen explained why journalists refer to the first “graf” of their stories as a “lede”, a quirk of jargon that had puzzled Dave Winer.

Except, of course, that here in Britain we do no such thing. To British hacks (a term which is not quite the pejorative it is in America) the first “par” of a story is the “intro”. No risk of confusing that with the lead that used to be used to seperate lines of type.

Apparently, some journalists take this jargon-translation a step further.

We recently learned that at the Financial Times, at least, what Yanks call the “nut graf” is known, naturually, as the “bollocks par”.

(For civilians, the “nut graf” is the paragraph that explains why a newspaper story, usually a feature, is significant.)

Entry Filed under: Journalism