Category Archives: journalism

The curious case of the nearby word

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As an occasional journalism teacher I’ve noticed how students will use a word that sounds like the right word but isn’t. The latest is “resellers” used where I think the student in question meant “retailers”.

Here’s how the student used the word:

The global financial crisis has taken its toll on the Bathurst’s economic sustainability however the influx of university students however has changed the financial sustainability for many resellers.

It’s a horrible sentence for many reasons but the use of the word “resellers” is interesting. The student in question simply means the local shops, pubs and other business operations in the town of Bathurst. In a sense they are resellers – none of them actually makes the beer, the coffee beans, the dresses. So for a moment I doubt myself. I wonder if I’ve missed something. Maybe for the last 20 years people have been saying “resellers” instead of “retailers” or even “shops”.

No, no, no! I’m right, he’s wrong. It’s the WRONG WORD. It’s a word wrongly used in a horrible sentence.

Okay. But you know what? In the long term I fear (along with all my fellow hand-wringers out there) it’s student Win, teacher Fail. That student will go out into the world using these almost-but-not-quite right words and there will be no subs or editors to stop him and he’ll win the day and I’ll just have to sit here frustrated and despairing.

And in grief. There is a grief about the loss of words. That’s the thing. The language changes, yes, yes. But that means words are lost.

There’s more!
It’s now Monday, September 22, and I’ve decided to add further examples here, as I find the.
Kate Middleton “extenuates” her figure. I think the journalist meant “accentuates”. Close, but no cigar.

http://womansday.ninemsn.com.au/celebrity/royalwedding/155108/style-file-kate-middleton.slideshow

“I immerged myself” and “I diverged myself” when each of the writers meant to say “I immersed myself”. Source: Assignments, 2nd year university communication students, c. April 2012.

And here, a bottle of red wine is “imminently enjoyable now, particularly with a couple of hours in a decanter.” Even if the sip were imminent, I think they meant it was eminently enjoyable.
http://www.winestar.com.au/prod2434.htm
Retrieved Wednesday June 6, 2012

“Butting young fashion designers” instead of “budding”. Hilarious. Source: First year communication student, October 2012.

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It’s August, 2013, and today I have encountered:

  • A “learning curb” (learning curve).
  • What’s install (what’s in store).

Today is Monday, September 9, 2013, and I have encountered:
“The experience poses threats to the effective operation of video journalism, and with the industry heading exactly in that direction, this workshop has only reradiated the dependency on technology and double checking equipment.” (Possibly groping for reiterated but would have been better with reaffirmed.”)

Today is Saturday, November 2, 2013, and I have encountered this:

“Beyond the first page, viewers will be fully infested with the history of film scores in film from the late 1800s all the way up to the present day films.”Fully infested”! Fully sick, bro!

 

Today is Friday, December 20, 2013, and I have encountered this in a COM117 assignment:
“Sally feels a deep seeded emotion each time they hit the track…” (instead of deep-seated).

Today is Wednesday, January 8, and I have come across this in a student’s reverse-engineered script for the film I, Robot:
DEL SPOONER the man in the previous vision wakes up to the buzzing sound of his alarm. Giving an aspirated sign and the roll of the eyes he rolls over to turn off his alarm, with gun in hand.
My comment: What’s an “aspirated sign”? Do you mean an “exasperated sigh”?

 

Update 22/8/16

“My production idea is to produce a documentary that indulges into the challenges of rural medicine. “

The lovely grasses

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On the cabinet above the TV set, I have a large spray of dried grasses that I gathered a couple of years ago during a walk down Hawthornden Creek. As we made our way from the Boundary Road Reserve past the back of the university, environmentalist Chris Marshall pointed out features in the landscape and could tell us the name of every type of grass that was growing there. As someone with little or no knowledge of grasses, it was a bit of a revelation. Once I started to get my eye in, something that seemed amorphous and ordinary – the scraggly grass around an eroded creek – became interesting in its diversity.

It is great to see that Bathurst Regional Council has now singled out Hawthornden Creek for some TLC. It is the first of our six urban creeks to be targeted for rehabilitation and restoration. The creek, which is severely eroded near the archery club grounds, will get a series of rock ramps to slow the flow of water and loss of sediment. At its February meeting, the council voted to allocate $50,000 towards the first stage of the project, which would involve survey of the site, design of the in-stream structures and the implementation of on-ground works if available funds allow.

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With talk of a second track for Mt Panorama, wouldn’t it be great to have an electric (or renewable energy) car race around the mountain? It would be an international drawcard and give developers of new technology a great showcase for their products. I know I’ve said this before, but I say it again now just to keep the idea out there.

***

Speaking of renewable energy, we have an active local group exploring the idea of a community-owned wind farm in the area. The group has welcomed the recent report from the state parliament’s committee on rural wind farms, which recommends that the government supports the construction of power lines in remote areas to transport the electricity generated by wind farms. If this went ahead, it would be a great boon to the wind farm industry. The full report is available here.

This piece was written for the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN) column in the Western Advocate.

It’s all of us, Brian!

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We have a family joke – the “Not me Brian” joke. It began when a neighbour of my father was hosing the path in the vicinity of Dad’s car when the alarm suddenly sounded. The neighbour shouted, “It wasn’t me Brian!” So now, whenever we want to deny responsibility, we say “Not, me Brian!”

When it comes to cutting greenhouse emissions, the “Not me, Brian!” approach seems to be winning the day. The big players all have excellent reasons why their own sector should be excluded from measures to combat carbon emissions –  or at least thoroughly compensated.

The fact is that it’s all of us. Yes, there are some who like to deny that there is even a problem, or argue that even if there is a problem it’s not our fault and there’s nothing we need to about it. But the majority consensus around the world is that there is a problem and the problem is us. The problem lies in just about everything we do. The way we eat, move, work and play is increasingly unsustainable. The net effect of our activities is to emit more carbon than we sequester.

With grazier Peter Spencer’s hunger strike in Canberra over the right to clear his own property, attention has turned to how agriculture fits with climate change. On a global level, farming is both a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (and we’re all a part of this because we all eat!) and stands to be enormously affected by it.

Locally, farmers are organizing themselves against climate change laws that ban land clearing, arguing that this could destroy their livelihoods. They argue that farmers should not have to bear the brunt of the economic pain caused by emissions reductions schemes; that this is unjust.

The issues are very complex, but one thing is clear: everyone has to get on board. It’s all of us, Brian! At the same time, we need to ensure government policies are fair. It’s clear that the massive compensation proposed for the coal lobby doesn’t fit with the attitude taken to agriculture. If we want land to remain uncleared, then we need to give this a monetary value. As long as we go on eating, we’ll need agriculture. We need to work with our farmers, not against them, as change occurs.

Tracy Sorensen is the publicity officer for Bathurst Community Climate Action Network. Visit www.bccan.org.au

China and climate change

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Wasn’t Tuesday night a scorcher?! For me it came at the end of a hot but pleasant afternoon down beside the Macquarie River helping to staff the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network stall. While we were there to answer questions from the general public, it was also good for BCCAN members to chat amongst ourselves about the state of the world.

One member, BCCAN Treasurer Greg Walker, had just returned from a brief trip to Changchun, a city of seven million people in northern China. Greg found no sign of scepticism about climate change in that country. Instead, the talk was all about what can be done to meet the challenge.

But the Chinese fear that the developed world will try to take advantage of the developing world. They argue that carbon emissions should be measured on a per capita basis, rather than a per-country basis. They also point out that the developed world should be responsible for consumption as well as production of manufactured goods. They argue that Western consumers have shifted production of “dirty” manufactured goods to the developing world and that global accounting for emissions must take account of this.

“China refuses to accept the West’s dictate that China must reduce its overall carbon emission level,” says Greg. “To do so would condemn tens of millions to remain in poverty or impose enormous cost on China to convert rapidly to renewable energy sources.”

At the same time, China has made enormous investment in renewable energy projects, with more wind farms in that country than in the US. There are new regulations to force carbon efficiency gains in housing and production and reforms in the coal industry to close low grade dirty coal mines.

But Greg’s overwhelming impression was of the pace of building and construction and the inevitable increase in total emissions. “China is the world’s greatest producer of automobiles, the greatest consumer of concrete and I understand is even more dependent on coal fired power than is Australia!”

More on Greg’s trip to China can be found in the latest newsletter on the BCCAN website.

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Congratulations to Conservation Volunteers Australia’s John Fry, who won this year’s Jo Ross memorial award for his lifelong efforts to improve the local environment.

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Tracy Sorensen is the publicity officer for Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN). Visit www.bccan.org.au

Another big hole in the ground

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The Cadia open cut gold mine near Orange is a dizzyingly impressive hole in the ground. It’s impossible to look down into it, with its tiny trucks crawling up the sides, without a sense of awe. Last week, the State Government said yes to an expansion of operations to the east of the existing site. At its peak, the new mine is expected to produce a billion dollars worth of gold and copper every year. That’s a lot of money in anybody’s books.

But the expanded mine comes amid continued disquiet about its impact on local water supplies. Local farmers – a tiny drop in the financial ocean when set beside the giant mine – are alarmed about the draw down effect on groundwater. While the company has named 16 properties likely to be affected and has offered compensation, farmers just outside the seven kilometre zone worry that they will also suffer. There are also fears about the mine’s use of surface water in its operations, particularly if conditions continue to get hotter and drier. The expanded mine will require about 6 megalitres per day of additional water, an increase of about 12 per cent on its existing use.

As we know here in Bathurst, Cadia has long been eyeing off our relatively abundant water supply. Locals here in Bathurst continue to worry that if supplies in Orange dwindle, we will be asked to help out our neighbours – nothing wrong with that, except that this would be an indirect benefit to the Cadia mine. While Bathurst council has rejected this idea outright, the State Government’s enthusiasm for Cadia could see our own wishes overruled in the interests of the wider economy.

In the short term, there can be no doubt that the world values gold and copper and that we’re onto a very good thing. But over the long term, a new set of values – increasingly to be given monetary value – are emerging: water and food security and biodiversity. We have now said “yes” to Cadia but perhaps they should be pressed harder to give more to the environmental side of the ledger. What about making them fund wind power technology to be used in their own operations with side benefits for the local region? Yes, it would cost a lot, but they are making a lot.

Tracy Sorensen is the publicity officer for Bathurst Community Climate Action Network. Visit www.bccan.org.au