For all the criticism I’ve directed towards the far-right Washington Times and its new editor, John Solomon, it’s only fair to give credit where it’s due — the paper changed its style guide this week, immediately making the paper more readable.
Chances are, the typical newspaper reader never pays any attention to an outlet’s style guide, in part because nearly all professional outlets use modern standards that few would even notice. But reading the Washington Times the past several years is far more jarring — while the typical paper might make a reference to same-sex marriage, for example, the conservative Times mandated that every such reference say, “Homosexual ‘marriage.'”
Solomon, his ideological leanings notwithstanding, apparently wants to help drag the Washington Times, kicking and screaming if necessary, towards something that at least reads like a legitimate newspaper. As such, he’s issued word that the paper’s style guide will drop some of the “hard-line conservative rhetoric” that has dominated the Times’ text. Solomon told writers and editors:
1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual, except in clinical references or references to sexual activity.
3) The quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage).
4) Moderate is approved, but centrist is still allowed.
5) We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens.
In other words, the journalism at the Washington Times will probably stay the largely the same, but it will start to at least read more like a newspaper and less like a right-wing blog. It wasn’t entirely expected, but Solomon clearly made the right call on this. Kudos.
Oddly enough, the paper’s fans are less than pleased.
Instead of praising the paper for striving for legitimacy, conservatives are annoyed that the paper will now use a more professional style guide. Alex Koppelman explained:
In a post on her blog, titled “P.C. at the Washington Times,” Michelle Malkin wrote, “Soon, they’ll drop ‘illegal’ from ‘illegal immigrants.’ Then, it’ll be ‘undocumented immigrants.’ Then, they’ll just go the Harry Reid route and call them ‘undocumented Americans.'” Malkin also favorably cited blogger Chris Kelly at Lonewacko, who wrote that the “illegal immigrants” change might “indicate that the Washington Times is starting down the slippery slope towards being like the Washington Post.” Similarly, blogger Extreme Mortman joked, “Bad news illegal aliens — you don’t exist anymore. So sayeth the Washington Times. Now that illegal aliens don’t exist anymore, maybe they can likewise make my parking tickets disappear.”
And on Newsbusters, the blog of the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog, Tim Graham wrote that the new styles “underlin[e] the ‘mainstream’ mistake — that whatever the reigning liberal sensibilities are in our news template, often defined by minority journalist groups, are defined as ‘neutral.’
Liberals joke that the Times would put ‘gay marriage’ in quotes, but the media mainstream is so sensitive in the other direction that they don’t even want to use ‘partial-birth abortion’ in quotes, so they tie themselves into vague and confusing pretzels about ‘certain late-term procedures which we don’t want to describe out of our fear of being rapped on the knuckles with a ruler by Kate Michelman and Gloria Feldt…’ This memo in no way means that Solomon is turning the Times into a liberal newspaper. You’d need more than a lingo change to arrive there. But it does suggest that Solomon has his eyes on impressing the national media elite, and not just impressing the inside-the-Beltway readership of the Times.”
How very silly. It’s not enough for the far-right that the Washington Times remain an unabashedly conservative, intentionally biased newspaper, advancing a partisan agenda in print. These conservatives are mad that the paper is going to use professional word-choice standards, which makes the whole thing less … fun.
In other words, the Washington Times will read less like a right-wing blog, and right-wing blogs have decided that’s a problem.
There’s no pleasing some people.