Permit me a short walk down memory lane today. Came across my high school journalism textbook the other day. Press Time was published in1963 and was introduced to it in my first journalism class in 1965. I thumbed through the glossary and picked out a few terms. My notes are in parenthesis.

    Copyreader: person who corrects and improves copy submitted by reporters (They have been called copy editors for decades in most newsrooms)

   Journalism: process of collecting, writing, editing and publishing news   (Good to know the fundamentals are still important)

   Scoop: exclusive story   (The adrenaline rush is optional)

   Rewrite man: in a daily newspaper office, the man who takes reporters' stories over the telephone and writes them for the paper (Women were not often placed in key newsroom roles back those days)

   Kicker (astonisher, read-in, tag line, whiplash): short headline in small type usually placed flush left and above a main head (Couldn't resist writing the term whiplash, which I'd never heard before)

   Got a question about newsroom terminology? Want to add a word and definition? Be my guest.

 

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