The language of journalism /

Editor of Encounter's for 31 years and an idiosyncratic critic, Lasky cares about language use and details its erosion in a meticulous review of US newspapers. Although he acknowledges trends in literary criticism and analytic frameworks such as semiotics, he eschews them as foundations to review English's decline. Instead, Lasky discusses how newspapers overuse split infinitives, profanity, poor grammar, and truncated sentences. He details the profusion of excess jargon and misuse of words ("paradigm," "parameter") in contemporary news writing. Though the book emphasizes English use, Lasky's abundant examples of transgressions suggest journalistic imprecision, indolence, and a degree of malpractice. Entertaining, erudite, well annotated, and exceptionally well written, this is neither a memoir by a veteran journalist, e.g., in the style of Max Frankel's The Times of My Life or My Life at The Times (CH, Oct'99), nor academic journalism criticism. As a commentator, Lasky is more in the tradition of Edmund Wilson, H.L. Mencken, and E.B. White. Recommended for libraries supporting English and literary criticism as well as journalism. R. A. Logan; University of Missouri--Columbia

In the first of a three-volume collection, Lasky, former editor of the defunct British periodical Encounter, asserts that sloppy journalism is debasing language and that this, in turn, corrupts culture. To make his point, Lasky collects hundreds of passages from print journalism and then comments on trends in language misuse. Alas, his comments are frequently sneering, as when he claims that a Washington Post reporter is writing "like some aging coquette, trying hard to mime her old come-hither look." This tone of derision permeates the book and distracts from Lasky's argument, creating an atmosphere of contempt rather than instruction. The final chapter, which chronicles the rise of what Lasky calls "the f-word" in common journalistic use, will challenge anyone's assumption of what free speech means. It is unfortunate that getting there is so tiresome, with Lasky so intent on repeating what is bad and ugly in journalism that ultimately the language is diluted even more. Recommended only for academic libraries with extensive journalism collections. Cheryl Van Til, Kent Dist. Lib., Comstock Park, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.