On a recent trip to Philadelphia, we picked up the current issues of three weekly newspapers from the metro area, to see how they do what we do, down there.
The first thing we noticed was the unsavory language splattered throughout the pages of all three publications.
Not just a few of the “milder” curse words in an op-ed piece here and there, but actual F-bombs, all over the place! In movie and restaurant reviews, in news briefs, and in opinion columns. Apparently, that’s cool. (This was a few weeks after a fiery production-morning debate over our own decision to quote a local Twitter user’s “WTF” on the front page.
We couldn’t help but remember these Philly papers last week when news of the cleaned-up “Huckleberry Finn” first broke.
So we ask: are we the type of society that scrubs historically accurate dialect out of classic literature, then settles in with a stack of local lifestyle and arts publications weighed down with less than sophistacted syntax?
Of course, the “Huck Finn decision” has been met with a firestorm of criticism and it is, like the Great Bird Die-Off of 2011, more media hype than anything.
But we still wonder why the F-word is so effing popular? Why can’t we just say it is “extremely cold” outside, or “very delicious pizza,” instead of the four-letter laden alternatives?
Our assumption here is that you’d still rather read a weekly newspaper where swear words aren’t a crutch for colorful writing. But hey, if we’re wrong, just effing send us an effing e-mail and say so.
