Categories: OLD Media Moves

Avoiding the Jargon Jar

Grant Robertson of the Toronto Globe and Mail writes Sunday about how business journalists on the Fox Business Network hope to avoid the Jargon Jar.

Robertson wrote, “When the lights go up Monday morning on Fox Business, some of the anchors on Rupert Murdoch’s new financial TV channel will keep a jar on the desk. If anyone utters a phrase like ‘EBITDA’ or ‘asset-backed commercial paper’ there will be consequences.

“‘When they use a term like that, they’ll have to put $2 into the jar,’ said Brian Jones, senior vice-president of operations at Fox Business, which launches Monday on U.S. television and the Internet, and is expected to hit Canada in the coming months.

“The Jargon Jar is Fox’s attempt to bring financial news to the masses â€“ from small business owners to stay-at-home moms and first-time home buyers. The new channel, the first all-business station to be launched in North America since the folding of CNNfn in 2004, is a direct attack on CNBC, the market leader with a pipeline into 95 million U.S. and Canadian homes.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.