Continuing with this little previous offering of mine, I spoke with a print journalist today about this little left/right media thing and my own view that it is skewed towards the idiot.

He replied that I was exactly right and cited a Gannett corporate editorial policy. Now, I already knew that Gannett (USA Today, et al.) owns many media outlets and is notoriously right wing.
(Let's forget Murdoch holdings for a moment, shall we?)
Anyway, he explained that he knows people that write for Gannett and people that have written for Gannett and that they are often up-in-arms with frustration because Gannett changes their copy. The point of all this? Well, the point is that it is Gannett standard editorial policy to change copy as to not be above an eighth-grade reading level.


Now please excuse me and allow for a victory jig.

x,.;l;sold;s';ka,,dajeui;ls;''a,-=pwned./asdf

and related to the above post...


Eighth-grade reading level common but tricky standard
AUGUST 8, 2008 (article)

You might have heard the standard advice that, to communicate effectively, we should aim to write at an eighth-grade reading level. And you might have puzzled over that advice with a few simple questions, such as "Why?" "How?" and "What - are you kidding me?"



Unfortunately, the answer to this last question is "No, I'm afraid not," because the answer to the first is this: According to various research reports, eighth grade represents the reading level of the average American.

That's not terribly impressive, of course, because it makes us sound like a nation of high school dropouts. But today's topic isn't our national literacy rate; it's how to get your writing projects' readability level where you want it.

If your goal is to create instruction manuals, newsletters, Web copy and so on that can be read and understood by the average eighth-grader - or at any particular grade level -
how do you know when you've hit the mark?
There are several formulas for estimating the readability level of text, and several return a grade-level measurement, such as the Automated Readability Index, the Gunning Fog Index, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and the charmingly named SMOG, which stands for "Simple Measure of Gobbledygook."

the rest: http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs..../1046/BUSINESS

This is embarassing, atari...how dumb is all that, dude?

Your intelligent contribution astounds me.

This is me...astounded.

Ahh. I wasn't critising you. I was supporting what you were saying.

I'm astounded that someone gets it. What an intelligent contribution to er, have a little support.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

...support group...

A friend goes to a support group. He had a meeting tonight. I think it's an hour he does this thing every week. He's told me about some of the people in the group. Life can be er, fucked-up.

Are you being sarcastic?

Yeah, very dumb. Unbelievably dumb. Why wound anyone think that's a good way to inform society? To offer information on an eight-grade level like that is preposterous. Crazy how the love of money makes people (even people with even a little power) let it go to their head.

I think I lapsed into eighth-grade level earlier...