web

Sorry, nits. Meet your picker.

It bugs me (yes, puny play on words intended) to hear leaders of legacy media businesses refer to their "digital" strategies or products, meaning all their online/internet/web/social/mobile stuff.

How did "interactive," as the adjective of choice for such stuff, lose favor? It is both more accurate and more aspirational.

I run the interactive business for a group of local television stations. TV, in case you have been off the grid for the past decade or so, is now almost fully a digital business.

Before this job, I helped run the interactive team for a chain of newspapers. By the way, they, too, are almost purely digital businesses right up to the point where plates go on a press and ink meets paper.

If I say, "I run digital businesses for my company," that should thus mean, "I run my company." And that's not true.

The adjacent image shows what can happen when weak news subject matter leads to a disjointed report, and a worse promotional link.

The headline plays up how respondents to a new poll say Wal-Mart is the institution that best symbolizes America. The text below, which we newsies call a "teaser," cites two completely different poll findings, about taxes and Twitter. The thumbnail photo alongside? George Clooney.

Not knowing any better, one might ask: What does Clooney have to do with Wal-Mart? What do either have to do with taxes or Twitter?