Categories: OLD Media Moves

Many vulgar words now accepted in the WSJ

William Power of The Wall Street Journal writes about the business newspaper’s changing policy in terms of vulgar words in its stories.

Power writes, “As you might have noticed, we now allow the printing of most vulgarities if they are in direct quotations and our news judgment is that the quotation is important to include because it gives insight into how the person communicates, his or her depth of feeling on a subject, or character. Thus, an executive referring to a ‘shit storm’ or a politician (guess who) vowing to ‘bomb the shit’ out of Islamic State’s oil operations.

“We should continue to use vulgarities quite sparingly and only in direct quotes, not in our own voice.

“Only a few words are offensive enough that they still require a Barney dash—which is a long dash following the first letter of the obscenity, a style named after former Journal editor Barney Calame, onetime arbiter of decorum—which means that we let readers know the word without spelling it out. These Barney-dashed words include:

● racial epithets
f— or f—ing
● c— (vulgar slang, female anatomy)”

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.

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