Category: default || By jt3y

In the pantheon of hack writing, one of the cheapest gimmicks has to be the dictionary intro. You know the type: "Webster's defines 'hack' as 'one who works merely for reward and not out of devotion or enthusiasm.'" Writers who resort to the dictionary lede have nothing to say --- for me, seeing an essay or news story with the phrase "Webster's defines ..." is a sure-fire clue to stop reading. (Other sure-fire phrases that signal me to stop reading include "By John Grisham" and "In NBA action today.")

Even when I was a kid, I could tell that using "Webster's defines" as your introductory paragraph was cheesy. It ranked one step below stealing your entire science fair project about glaciers out of the World Book Encyclopedia or copying your book report off of the dust jacket. (Was the teacher really supposed to believe that a sixth-grader thought Charlotte's Web was "a beloved and timeless classic for the ages"?)

Now, it seems, there's a new writer's cheat for those people too lazy even to cross the room and look for the dictionary. It's called the Google search. I've been seeing hack writers use the Google search to justify well-nigh anything (and I found these examples using Google, of course):

Tom Weir, USA Hooray, April 13: "'It's amazing that some of the people who are No. 1 overall on some people's boards aren't even No. 1 on my board at their position,' says Kiper, who has been analyzing the NFL draft for 27 years. His last name generates nearly 1,500 Google hits when paired with 'draft guru.'"

Rick Stone, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 10: "PBIFF has become a cultural asset in a state that is mentioned in nearly 11 percent of the Google hits returned by the search phrase 'cultural wasteland.'"

O.K. Carter, Fort Worth Startlegram, April 10: "A prolific producer, she's since had 65 novels published including more than 50 New York Times bestsellers now available in something like 30 languages -- White Hot, Hello, Darkness, The Crush, yada yada. No wonder she has 4.7 million Google hits."

Mike Sunnucks, Phoenix, Ariz., Business Journal, April 8: "A search on Google for 'online degrees' and 'online MBAs' shows just how competitive the higher education marketplace has become, bringing back 60 million hits."

Andrew Wolfson, Louisville, Ky., Courier-Journal, April 24: "The telecast has drawn a flurry of attention. It has been the subject of 40,000 hits on Google, the Internet search site, and more than 300 articles and opinion pieces in newspapers in the United States and other countries."

Etta Walsh, Springfield, Mass., Republican, March 31: "A check of the Internet search engine, Google, elicited 230,000 hits for 'Chicopee Falls,' almost all of them for the area's second-largest city. References were also found to Chicopee Falls, Wis., and Chicopee Falls, Hampden, Maine, but there was no additional information about either locale."

Stop! Please, for the love of all that's right and holy, just stop. You're not "proving" or "showing" anything. You might as well try to prove how many stars are in the sky by standing outside and counting them.

Naturally, once the big boys of "journalism" take up a bad habit, it eventually filters down to the little guys. Over the weekend, for instance, I received my monthly copy of one of my favorite antique car magazines. According to one writer, a Google search for "Henry Ford" returned more "hits" than a search for the names of several other inventors, thus proving that more people are interested in Henry Ford than in any other inventor.

It's enough to make me want to hang myself from the garage rafters with a fan belt.

For crying out loud, Google just looks for the occurrence of the phrase --- it doesn't decide in what context the phrase appears. "Henry Ford" might appear in a text called "Michigan's most famous anti-Semites" or in the sentence, "The most overrated industrialist of the 20th century was Henry Ford." Google would find "Henry Ford" in both of those pages.

And Google returns many false matches --- it might be finding web pages about Henry Ford II, who was a decidedly different kind of a chap than his grandfather; or even pages about people named Henry who own Fords. It might even find some of the 237 people from Anniston, Ala., to Bothell, Wash., who, according to Verizon, are listed in the white pages as "Henry Ford." (The next Almanac entry will be about "writers who try to prove points by searching the telephone directory for funny names.")

Still, I can overlook this kind of sloppiness in a hobby magazine, which goes out to a limited number of people and whose writers aren't paid much, if at all. (Some hobby magazines, and I am not making this up, pay their contributors in free copies of the magazine. Try taking those to the bank and cashing them in.)

I have less tolerance for hackery in a magazine like Time, which has about 4 million subscribers (and presumably they aren't all doctors and dentists). Out of all of the groaners in John Cloud's 5,800-word love letter to Ann Coulter, which I won't bother to dissect (dozens of other people have already done that), perhaps his most egregious howler is the sentence, "Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Google the words 'Ann Coulter lies,' you will drown in results. But I didn't find many outright Coulter errors."

If you can't prove that something's true via a Google search, then you certainly can't prove a negative, either. I just Googled the phrase "Youghiogheny River" in summer "smells like old fish" and didn't come up with any results, but stand on the boat launch in Boston on a hot day this August and tell me it's not true. (The irony, of course, is that because I've just written "Youghiogheny River in summer smells like old fish," and published it on the Internet, in a few days Google will find that page.)

Perhaps, then, if John Cloud wanted to find some "Ann Coulter lies," he could have done something like, oh, I don't know, fact-checked one of her columns or books. You know, something that would have justified what I suspect is a generous Time magazine salary, and which could have been reasonably considered "journalism." Plugging random phrases into a Google search is most definitely not.

Remember: If you see someone passing off the number of Google hits as "research," it's not. It's hackery, and deserves all of the scorn you can muster.

I wonder what hacks used as a crutch to prop up their lazy writing before they had Google? Oh, yeah, they reached for the dictionary. You know, Webster's defines "dictionary" as a "reference book containing words, usually in alphabetical order, along with information about their forms, etymologies, meanings, pronunciations, and syntactical and idiomatic uses" ...

(UPDATE Correction, not perfection: See the comments. I originally wrote "Bothwell" instead of "Bothell." Hat tip, Heather.)

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Speaking of hackery: The Almanac was off yesterday because I was recovering Sunday and Monday from my annual spring sinus condition. Our customer service representative, Helen Waite, will be refunding the cost of yesterday's Almanac, so if you'd like a refund, go to Helen Waite.