A Glossary for the Nineties: Chapter 8 - Media and publishing

[Taken from A Glossary for the Nineties, by David Rowan (Prion Books, 1998), based on the column of that name in The Guardian's Weekend magazine through most of the 1990s. © David Rowan]

CHAPTER 8: MEDIA AND PUBLISHING

How the communications industries try to communicate

ACTEME n. For those not yet fully post-modern, this is the new term - as described by the writer Gilbert Adair - to mean "a single narrative unit or chunk in a (not necessarily) fictional discourse" that stays in your mind and "resonates". It is what those awful modern novelists apparently lack. By contrast, Arnold Schwarzenegger is "a living, breathing acteme".

AGA SAGA n. lit. The literary form that owes much to Joanna Trollope, whose bourgeois heroines live in idyllic Cotswold cottages and tend to find romance amid the Aga stoves of domestic bliss. Not many orgasms, but plenty of wholesome recipes.

AUDIOTEXT n. The realm of entertainment - or soft porn - inhabited by telephone numbers beginning 0898, 0891, etc. Silky Suspenders and Share My Fantasy now sound a lot more respectable as part of a medium known as audiotext - and it sure beats telling people you work in the telephone-sex industry.

AUTOPATHOGRAPHY n. That literary variation of autobiography (as named in Time Out) which seems to be swamping the bookshelves. From Ben Watt's book about his auto-immune disorder to Robert McCrum's tome about his stroke, the I've-been-ill confession is the current big thing. And if you find reading them traumatic, you could always write about that.

BARNEY SLUG n. The extremely young form of couch potato. It comes from the States, where a popular kids' TV programme, Barney & Friends, has been gluing young eyes to the screen. Barney is a purple dinosaur who, presumably, will soon be turning your own children into slugs.

BITRAKING n. comp. The on-line version of investigative journalism: a combination of bit and muckraking. Newly fashionable as mainstream publications appoint cybercorrespondents to find stories on the Net, and exemplified by the scandal-monger Matt Drudge, whose Website did so much to damage Bill Clinton.

BROADLOID n. sl. A serious newspaper - the sort that you'd call a broadsheet - except that it chooses a tabloid format. The term was recently used in discussions of what could become of the Independent. Now all we need is for someone to coin the term tabsheet (oops, just done it).

CHICK-FLICK n. A film designed to appeal to women - The First Wives Club, for instance, or Heathers. Hollywood insiders' slang for the mid-nineties moneyspinner.

CHIPPINESS n. The tendency to wear a chip on one's shoulder, a media term enjoying vogue thanks to Andrew Neil's single-handed efforts to evoke it. The editors of both the Guardian and the Telegraph cited the man's chippiness when reviewing his autobiography. Indeed, the term could prove Mr Neil's enduring legacy to English letters.

EDUTAINMENTn. Computer animation, video games - anything that makes educational messages palatable. And according to film producer David Puttnam, schools are about to be flooded with the stuff, which is seen as an ideal vehicle for commercial messages.

ELECTRONICALLY REDLINE v. To cable up the information superhighway so that it avoids the less than super-low-income areas. The cables, you see, don't cross over to the red-contoured parts of the city, so only the rich can use the new cable phone, TV and Internet services. Politicians are now waking up to electronic redlining , with red faces in telecom company HQs.

FACTOID n. TV news presented in tabloid form, currently used on CNN to describe those items that make soundbites appear complex. This usage has modified the word's earlier meaning (coined by Norman Mailer in 1973) of journalistic "facts" of spurious origin.

FROTHBUSTER n. lit. The new type of fiction that is currently heading up the best-seller lists. Rather than romantic, glamorous heroines, this genre prefers anxious, cynical, unfulfilled women characters. Spot them by the man worries and the food obsession. Also called a fluffbuster.

GANS n. In the slang of tabloid newspaper photographers, this is the club they claim to belong to when they are in trouble. Gans stands for the "Give-us-A-Negative Society" to which they belong once they have missed that snap of Fergie's toe or Ulrika sunbathing. When the snapper shouts "Gans!" to more astute colleagues, a pledge is made to return the favour.

GOAT-FUCK n. sl. That media creation which gained sudden fame in the Redwood/Major leadership race. It's the army of camera crews, reporters and sound recordists that besiege a newsmaker, which resembles in its animated confusion nothing less than a bunch of copulating beasts . No, nothing to do with bestiality, darling.

GOREFEST n. The genre of nasty videos which involve a generous number of mutilations, decapitations and other cheap and gruesome forms of bloodshed. The trade nowadays also talks of chop-sockeys: these are much of the same kind of thing but with a Bruce Lee-ish flavour. Happy viewing.

HORMONE DRAMA n. A television series, usually a US import, designed to attract viewers not through dramatic interest but through its glamorous cast. As in "ITV is to drop the popular hormone drama Beverly Hills 90210 from its schedules because its storylines are to become too adult . . ." (The Stage).

INFOTAINMENTn. Entertainment dressed up as informative programming: it's how the broadcasters justify those gory reconstructions of violent crimes, or that footage of motorway crashes screened under the pretext of making you a more careful driver. Well, it's in the public interest, innit?

MAINSTREAM v. In journalism, to quote people from as many groups as possible so that your stories overcome prejudice that's racial, sexual, ageist, etc. Mainstreaming, increasingly the appropriate thing in US publications, keeps minorities in the mainstream. Also known as diversity-insourcing.

MEDIAGENIC adj. Able to communicate well, through all forms of mass media. A development of telegenic, but the all-round skill is more important to today's politician in delivering the message.

MEME n. A unit of cultural ideas or meanings that spreads quickly throughout society, paticularly through the media. Memes carry information that varies from fashionable ways to wear a T-shirt, to newspaper obsessions with religious symbols appearing in sliced tomatos. The term was coined by the geneticist Richard Dawkins.

MEDIA VIRUS n. The particular type of meme (qv) that obsesses the media. The modern-day media obsession reproduces so quickly and effectively that it spreads like a virus through the datasphere, in the terms Douglas Rushkoff coined in his book Media Virus!. So when one paper decides toe-sucking is the trend of the moment, expect the fad to spread rapidly to all the others.

MOCKUMENTARY n. The mocking form of documentary filmmaking, exemplified by Michael Moore's Roger and Me, about his attempts to interview the head of General Motors.

MONSTERING n. A severe telling-off, especially in the media world (also known as a bollocking). Favoured by types such as David Montgomery of Mirror Group Newspapers, said recently to have given a "Hitlerian monstering" to a quivering employee.

MORPH v., n. To manipulate an image using a computer so that it ends up looking like something entirely different. Tony Blair might gradually become Margaret Thatcher, or Noel Gallagher could turn in to John Lennon. And as it happens over a series of images, the transition can look ominously believable.

MULTIPLEX n. It used to be a group of screens in a cinema; now it's a package of channels in a digital-television bid. Keep up, now.

MUNDIMEDIA adj., n. The mundane antidote to multimedia. The industry spent billions developing innovative and groundbreaking multimedia games and tools, but then discovered that many consumers prefer established technology. Why read a CD-Rom when a book is easier to carry?

NARROWCAST v. The variant of radio broadcasting born of the "selective targeting" of local channels in the nineties. Narrowcasting relies on identifying small but more loyal audiences, perhaps linked by a love of folk music or of Elvis.

NEWSCAKE n. A newsreader, as recorded by Vanity Fair magazine, known not merely for journalistic skill, but also cheesecake good looks.

OJ n. Not a Simpson, not even a soft drink, but the latest in talk-show hosts. The online jockey hosts discussions on the Internet. Just like the video jockey (VJ) and the disc jockey (DJ) before.

PARTISAN TV n. The latest trend in TV talk shows, in which the host's extreme prejudices matter more than the guests. Left-of-centre presenters out to offend New York partisan TV audiences have recently included Jesse Jackson and, on the far right, Rush Limbaugh, now notorious for radio talk-shows spiced with attacks on "feminazis", "compassion nazis" and other pink liberals.

PILGER v. A verb invented by the journalist Auberon Waugh (and with it, pilgerism, pilgerisation and pilgerish), that the Oxford Dictionary of New Words defined as conducting journalism "emotionally and with little regard for factual detail". Trouble is, the man the term was named for - journalist John Pilger - took exception, and Oxford decided to rethink. So for the moment, in case a libel write arrives, we'll just leave you to define this one yourself . . .

PIXELGRAPH n. A digitally altered photograph: you take an image made up of electronic "pixels" (picture elements), and make whatever you want from it. "Created actuality", as the New York Times calls it.

PLUGFEST n. A major media opportunity (such as Radio 4's Start The Week) to plug your new book mercilessly. Unless the spite outdoes the puffery, as with Melvyn Bragg's recent utterances, when it becomes what Sunday newspapers now call a slugfest.

PREQUEL n. A story or drama episode that post-hoc rationalises the de-facto a priori. In other words, a sequel in reverse: this one goes backwards in time to fill in the plot, giving extra episodes or chapters to the hungry punter. If Only Fools and Horses, for instance, ended with the Trotters as millionaires, why not give the braying public a prequel that follows their early years?

PROF, PROF OFF v. To silence a radio talk-show caller by using a time-delay mechanism. Most commonly done because the caller decides to utter a profanity - hence the prof. And all the listener hears is a jingle and an interrupted phone call.

PUC n. acr. A Previously Unknown Child, in the current slang of Hollywood soap-opera writers. So many PUCs are being written into tired plots that they needed such a shorthand term - aptly, it's pronounced "puke".

RAGGLE-TAGGLE adj. The fashionable way to dismiss any diverse group of policital protestors. Popularised by the Sun, which saw the poll-tax rioters as a "raggle-taggle army of Toytown Trots", but now favoured by all of middle England's preferred tabloids.

REALITY TV n. The type of low-budget television in which "real people" are given a camcorder to record video diaries of "ordinary life". Such "home movies" have become a staple of nineties television, partly no doubt because we are all nosy as hell.

ROOFTOP JOURNALISM n. That unsatisfactory trend in television news-reporting identified by war correspondent-turned-MP Martin Bell. The journalist spends all day hanging around a satellite dish on a rooftop, waiting to give updates on a story, and never has time to go out and actually cover the story.

SHOCKUMENTARY n. Yet another variation on the documentary, this one pretending no higher moral purpose than blatant plundering of ratings. The logic: viewers are shocked by footage of people jumping to their deaths from burning buildings, police shoot-outs and animal predators ripping apart other creatures of the wild. And when viewers are shocked, they do tend to keep watching.

SIGNATHON n. A mass book-signing by a group of authors, in the publishing phenomenon that became popular around 1997. The sensitive bunch - the collective pronoun would be a "paragraph of authors", or a "paranoia of authors", according to the Daily Telegraph - then take their pens, and their anxieties, from shop to shop.

SOAPUMENTARY n. That new but already outgoing aspect of nineties television culture exemplified by The Living Soap and other "fly-on-the-wall" tales that do tend to go on. Not to be confused with shockumentary, the mockumentary, or the soap-on-a-rope.

STRATEGIC RERUN n. Television programmes that, according to Will Wyatt of the BBC, "will bear a second life on the channel for those who missed them". These are, of course, what used, in a more embarrassing manner, to be called "repeats".

SUBSIDY PUBLISHING euph. The new, ego-neutral way to talk about vanity publishing. As the ads put it, Does Your Book Deserve Publishing? Of course it does; though you will have to, er, subsidise the process.

TITTYTAINMENT n. Television that exploits sex to gain ratings. The term originated in the States, but has now arrived in Germany, where a glut of programmes concerned with such issues as Swedish massage techniques have aroused more than the obvious. "Tittytainment", lamented the weekly newspaper Die Woche, keeps the masses quiet by feeding them the sweet milk of low-grade entertainment as though from an enormous breast.

VIDIOT n. A video-camera operator whose intrusive gyrations around a performing rock star ensure that the audience's view is obstructed and the performer's attention is merely on the lens. Current slang among roadies (as in "Now that f***ing vidiot's f***ing dancing with Jarvis ...").

WARTRAIT n. A warts-and-all portrait of a celebrity. It's the opposite to the gushing Hello! type of profile, and is on the increase among the more commercial end of publishing. Vanity Fair magazine defined the genre as hackiography.

WHOVIAN n. An obsessive fan of that dated children's television programme, Dr Who. Most Whovians are aged over 40. Not to be confused with Trekkies, obsessive fans of Star Trek. They're far older.

WOK ON THE WALL n. sl. A satellite dish, in the poetic argot of the Liverpool streets.

WOOF n. The loud applause a stand-up comedian hopes for. A favourite word of BBC warm-up comedians.

YUVVIE n. sl. The new term for a Jewish thespian, coined by Maureen Lipman as a combination of luvvie and Yid in response to Trevor Nunn's critique that the term luvvie was as offensive as Yid. Lipman's solution, she explained, "manages simultaneously to suggest upward mobility and . . . an endearing susceptibility towards chronic fatigue".

ZINE n. Almost a magazine, but one you can produce yourself, about whatever obsesses you. Definitely not about a commercial approach to income, regularity and quality of reproduction. In a radical bookshop near you now.

ZOO FORMAT n. That boisterous, exhausting aspect of contemporary media favoured by people invariably described as wacky, zany or completely insane. Increasingly popular on radio, where fiftysomething presenters believe it allows them an illusion of youth (not to be confused with yoof); or on television, where the audience joins in. Take, for example, the Rantzen Report, described in a letter to the Times as "zoo TV, tabloid TV at its worst", because audiences are "geared up to boo and hiss at the baddies".