A War For Words

A young journalist in 2008 should be nervous, anxious and ready to face an infinite abyss. I’m talking about the online world. A world that’s completely destroying the English language and murdering every grammar rule that’s left standing. A world that accepts “g2g” and “aka” as perfectly acceptable lingo. With the rise of online media and journalism, are we supposed to fall prey to the social norms that are being set? Or as journaslits, are we supposed to uphold the formal language we were taught as children?

I believe that the biggest challenge facing today’s young journalists will be a war for words. If the community of trendy Internet junkies is going to continue making up this new code language, then the beauty and grace of the English language will disappear faster than you can say “ttyl.” And by that point, the journalism students who spent four years and $120,000 to learn the art of writing will not be “lol-ing.”

Our biggest challenge will not be finding a job when we graduate. And it won’t be learning how to acclimate to life as an amateur anchor in Just-Past-The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Kansas. Our biggest challenge will be to uphold the standards of writing. It is our job to set the bar high and show the world that there is a difference between journalism and gibberish.

“Lauren Rosenblum is a print journalism student at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. She loves to bake, watch movies and aspires to have her own editorial column one day.”