News Anchors Lazy

(Prologue: Looking back at my post from September 8, I realize I need to pay better attention to my typos. It is only a meaningless blog, but still, gee whiz...)

Typos on a blog are not a sign of low intelligence. Nor are incomplete sentences spoken by a news anchor. But the latter, the subject of this post, really, really bug me.

When I went to Brown College for Radio and Television Broadcasting, I actually learned quite a little. More importantly, I learned how to learn for the profession.

Some things I learned I abandoned, because I learned how to learn what things I learned I could abandon. (I think that makes sense.) So even though I learned to say, "Twenty-seven minutes after seven o'clock" at Brown, I later learned to say, "Seven-twenty-seven." Important, sophisticated stuff like that.

One thing I learned, however, I never abandoned, yet apparently more and more news anchors have. That is, lead a story with a complete sentence.

Tonight, Mike "Pretty Boy" Pomeranz on KARE-11 led a story with, "A bicyclist dead tonight in Minneapolis." I don't know if that was the exact story; I do think it was about a bicyclist, or a pedestrian, or a human, who maybe died. The point is, it was not a complete sentence.

Why anchors think they need to do this, I do not know. I also don't know if the person who wrote it for the teleprompter wrote it that way, or if the anchor took some liberties.

I suppose the reasoning is similar to why newspaper headlines are not in complete sentences. But that really doesn't make complete sense. The newspaper headline for the same story would likely read, "Minneapolis Bicyclist Killed." That way, bigger letters can be used without filling up so much column space. Plus, just the key words are needed to interest you into reading further. But the only way the anchor economized was by removing the word "is." And if I'm not interested in that story, I can't just move on to the next one; I have to wait until he's done with that one. So he may as well speak in complete sentences from start to finish.

Maybe it's just laziness, much in the same way we always have to abbreviate things, like saying "thx" in an e-mail reply, or one I've done many times, documenting the history of an issue by typing, "Jun 30." (No, that was not a typo, I was making a point of how silly it is to abbreviate such a short month like, oh, never mind...)

Paul Magers was the consummate professional in my book. He even pronounced short-lived the right way! (With the long "I" sound, like "eye"...most people say it the other way.) I think when an anchor begins a story with an incomplete sentence, it is their way of trying to sound more authoritatively "newsy," and thus more professional. To me, it makes them sound no more professional than shuffling papers at their desk going into a commercial break.