How to Not Sound Like A Tool When Reporting Entertainment News

Every year the blogs and news sites of the internet discover new ways to drive me nuts, assaulting my brain with words and phrases that are ill-defined or meaningless, ring awkwardly in the ear, or are simply trite and overused.

In all cases they make the writer sound stupider than they intended.

If you are a journalists reporting on the things I love most, or if you hope to get into journalism, or if you simply want to hear the perspective of your target audience (somebody like me who subjects himself to poorly written news posts on a daily basis), please exorcise the following offensive items from your blog posts and articles:

1. “Price of entry”, “price of admission”, or “entry fee”.

You just mean “price”. It has become a bad habit for so many to always, unnecessarily, extend it into a phrase. You can talk about price of entry at a convention, price of entry to a cinema, and perhaps as a metaphor when talking about a prerequisite for something eg. the price of buying a console in relation to playing a videogame. Otherwise it’s trite, ugly, and imprecise.

2. “Hard-earned” cash

This is even more pervasive than the above. It seems almost impossible on the entertainment news sites to read the word “cash” without the writer having reassure you that your cash was “hard-earned”. This pandering to readers is unbecoming, and worse is the slimy sort of self-aggrandisement that comes from insisting that if all cash is hard-earned then the writer too suffers for his pay.

It’s just “cash”, and I’d rather be accused of not earning mine than hear this pathetic wording again.

3. “Retro-styled”

This is nitpicky, but it still bugs me. You don’t need to say “retro-styled” — just “retro”. Retro is a style. It sounds weird, like saying for instance “my shirt-clothing”. It smacks of a vapid author needing to cram in extra unnecessary words to sound impressive.

4. “Worth your time”, “Well worth your time”

Similar to “hard earned cash”, though not as irritating — it is better people talking about value for time than value for money, in my opinion. But this one still gets on the list for being enormously overused, to the point of cliche.

5. “Aged poorly”.

Most commonly used in relation to videogames — journalists of movies, music, comics etc. are a little smarter on this topic and have more respect for the past.

Games don’t age. They are a snapshot of a time. It’s more accurate to say that old games are young, in the sense that they represent an earlier period of time in the development of the artform. Super Mario Brothers is the platformer genre in its infancy — see what I mean?

When I hear journalists whine that a game has “aged poorly”, I just think, no, it’s you that have aged poorly, because you’ve become unable to appreciate game design of the past.

6. “Drops”

So-and-so movie “drops” of the Xth of Month. This-or-that game is “dropping later this week”.

Look: albums “drop”. Musicians “drop” albums. Contrary to popular belief, no other product can “drop”. Journalists from other industries only describe things as “dropping” because they’re trying to imitate the “cooler” journalists of the music industry who work at Kerrang or Pitchfork. Stop being such low-self-esteem losers and borrowing lingo from other industries to show off, and just talk like a regular person.

Games, movies and comics are released. The only thing getting dropped here are the writers who use this phrase.

7. “My jam”

Again with the pretentious music terminology. See above.

8. “Speaks to”

Fine if it is used to indicate something has resonated with you, in the sense of somebody “speaking your language” eg. this movie speaks to me. However, it has become horribly in-vogue for one thing that indicates another to “speak to” it, for some reason. The popularity of this wording speaks to the decline in our education system (for example).

Just as bad is when the speaker just means “talk about”. You could ask them a question and they’d say “I can’t speak to that”. Don’t then, speak to me, like I wanted you to.

9. “An excuse to…”

For example: “Rage is on sale for 70% this weekend. Seems like a good excuse to finally play it.”

I guarantee these toads never cash in such excuses — it’s just a lazy way of closing out their story.

It’s hard to make a news story sound interesting if it isn’t interesting news, but this is a feeble attempt at shoehorning in some personality. “See, I could play this game, you could play the game, isn’t this story relevant and engaging for us all?” Just report the news, dickhead.

I also hate this phrase for what it implies about the speaker’s attitude. “This bar isn’t it isn’t my favourite bar but I can excuse it tonight because it is doing cheap drinks.” It’s that sort of unenthusiastic tone that I head every time a journalist talks about their “excuses” for playing a videogame or watching a Netflix series. “Okay, I guess I’ll go and do this thing now, if I’ve got the excuse.” It doesn’t say much about their passion for the hobby, does it?

Besides, you’re a journalist, you get to do the stuff you’re talking about every day. What more excuse do you need? You’re not convincing anyone.

10. Sounding like a copywriter.

This isn’t a word of phrase, but more like a thought process to avoid. If you are a journalist, you are not the marketing department of the thing you are writing about.

I just read a report on variant covers for comicbooks that implored collectors to “get their wallets ready!”. Tell me, why is this journalist writing a call-to-action directed at readers? Are they getting a commission?

I remember New Super Mario Bros 2 being announced. The gimmick for that game is that there are coins everywhere, 20 times more coins than any other Mario game. The journalists might as well have been writing the press release: “It’s coin-mania!”, “I can’t wait to collect all those glittering coins later this year!”.

I didn’t read one article that asked “Wait… what’s the point? Why are you collecting all these coins? Aren’t they just pointless? Don’t they just give you more lives if you collect 100? Won’t that make the game too easy?”

I’m not saying don’t be passionate. Be passionate. You hopefully love the thing you are writing about, and want to let that show. I think that is part of the trap, especially when you also have a have a word-count to meet. It’s hard to add new thoughts to the piece after you’ve reported all the pertinent facts. I have been in that frustrating place too. That’s when it’s easy to write on autopilot.

But for the love of god, don’t lapse into the style of a press release. Journalism is not copywriting. Journalism is analytical, questioning, and honest even when honesty is uncomfortable. None of these qualities overlap with marketing materials.

What other words or phrases are annoying to hear online? Let me know in the comments.