Cursing in the newsroom
Slate raises the question, based on this week's episode of The Wire, whether anyone has seriously been dressed down for cussing in the newsroom. And it was promptly answered. (Via Romenesko.)
Umm, OK. I'll say it: I've asked a reporters to tone down their language in the newsroom.
Before I'm drummed out of the two-fisted-drinkers, "Front-Page" journalism clubhouse, let me explain. Two reasons:
* Loud cursing in the newsroom does offend some employees who weren't brought up that way. It's a matter of respect for others. While it seems daintier than some journalists prefer, managers have to worry about everyone. I put the emphasis on loud because my experience is that newsroom staffers are more tolerant of language than most places this side of construction sites. Cursing among friends around the water cooler or in the cubicle hasn't elicited any complaint here.
* We have school groups tour the newspaper a couple times a week. Teachers and parents don't want their children to hear that. If memory serves, a middle school kid's vocabulary can shame the most hardened reporter, but that's almost irrelevant when the word gets home what they heard at the newspaper.
Because I've been known to curse as part of daily conversation, it's really not all that hard to ask others to tone it down a bit. Now, when I got a call from our human resources department several years ago that someone had complained about a female worker not wearing a bra, that was a conversation that was uncomfortable.
By the way, we don't allow smoking or drinking in the newsroom, either, although we drew the line at an IT demand we not place our cups of coffee near computer keyboards.
Ok, let my beating begin. But keep the language clean.
Comments (7)
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So the bourbon in my desk drawer is probably a no-no?
Posted on January 29, 2008 4:41 PM
Only when you don't share.
Posted on January 29, 2008 4:43 PM
And then there was the time when, on deadline, the worker sat typing furiously at his terminal and shouted out a question as to whether a certain epithet was written as one word or two in AP style. About caused the editor to have a stroke...
Posted on January 29, 2008 6:41 PM
Damn.
Posted on January 29, 2008 6:44 PM
The day I cannot let out a good ole fashioned %$#@&(%#$, I don't wanna play news no more. Besides, those pasty journos got nothing on my Navy boot camp instructor.
That cat could cuss.
Posted on January 29, 2008 7:44 PM
My reporting professor was a former Marine Corps drill instructor. Force Recon. He would pull papers out of typewriters that had ledes on them that he deemed unworthy, then set them on fire with a Zippo and drop them into metal trash cans.
God, I miss the newsroom.
Posted on January 29, 2008 9:13 PM
Last week I invited a visiting preacher to play golf in our group. Most of the time 12-16 players and you never know who you may play with. When I got home, my first thought was you are dummy. The next morning I thought I had caught a break, it was 20 degrees and no way a guy from Alabama would play right ? wrong, he was ready to go. The first contact was, what the %^#$ are you doing here so early, Rachel run your sorry ass out of bed. I then had time to introduce him as a preacher. All went well the rest of the day. Until on the way home, I was driving my wife's car, and a flock of pigeons flew across the road. I guess he had heard these words before. Have a great day, it time to go and cuss that little white ball.
Posted on January 30, 2008 6:18 AM