Journalism Glossary Wiki

This page is intended to be a glossary of old and new media terms of

relevance to the practice of journalism. To edit or add glossary entries on
this page, please click here or email your suggestions or questions tojohn
at journalism.co.uk. Wherever possible when adding or editing items
please include links to relevant sites. Your edits may take up to two hours
before they appear live on this page.

A special thanks to Graham Holliday for his contributions.

A
Above the fold - A broadsheet paper folded in half for display. The top half
of the page, above the fold, is held to be the most important real estate in
the paper. A reporter’s ambition is to get an article on the front page; a
reporter’s supreme ambition is to get that article above the fold.(courtesy
of John E McIntyre)
Ace - an on-call reporter.
Active Proceedings (sub judice) - These occur in a criminal court of law
when a person has been arrested, a warrant for his or her arrest has been
issued, there are bail conditions (including police bail), a summons has been
issued or a person has been charged (with a criminal offence).
ABC - Audit Bureau of Circulations; a group that audits newspaper
circulation figures.
ABCe - Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic - division of the ABC that
audits traffic figures for online publications.
ACAP - Automated Content Access Protocol, a platform that would allow
search engines to recognise the terms and conditions of specific websites.
Add - Copy to be added to a story already written.
Adobe InDesign - Desktop publishing program, now being used more
widely in place of QuarkXPress.
Ad impression - Term used to describe the number of times an advert is
seen. Advertisers usually sell space based on the exposure per thousand
impressions. This is called Cost per impression (CPM). Alternatively, they
might sell on a pay-per-click (CPC) basis (also known as cost-per-click -
CPC)
ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line; high bandwidth web connection
often just called broadband.
Advance - A story outlining a future event. Also means to raise the priority
of a story or an upfront payment for written work, particuarly long articles or
text.
Advertorial - An advert in the form of a complementary editorial piece,
usually labelled as an advert.
AJAX — A bundle of technologies and techniques that allow a web page to
do things quietly in the background without reloading the whole
page.AJAX is not a programming language, but rather an acronym used to
describe that bundle, “Asynchronous Javascript and XML.” AJAX provides
much of the functionality associated with Web 2.0. One of the first big uses
of AJAX was Gmail, which allowed it to be much more responsive than other
web e-mail at the time. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Algorithm — A set of instructions or procedures used in order to accomplish
a task, such as creating search results in Google. In the context of search,
algorithms are used to provide the most relevant results first based on those
instructions. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
All Caps - A word or sentence written in all capital letters.
AM Mark - the symbol used for denoting the end of a feature story in a
periodical.
Analogue television - TV transmitted in radio waves as opposed to digital
TV.
Android — Usually used in the context of Android phone, Android is a free
and open source operating system developed by Google that powers a
variety of mobile phones from different manufacturers and carriers. It is a
rival of the iPhone platform. In contrast to Apple's tightly controlled
architecture and App Store, Android allows users to install apps from the
Android Market and from other channels, such as directly from a developer's
website — which allows for X-rated content, for example. Some well-known
Android phones are the Nexus One, the Motorola Droid and HTC Evo. Expect
to see competitors to the iPad running a version of Android. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Angle - The approach or focus of a story. This is sometimes known as the
peg.
AP - the abbreviation for the Associated Press.
API - the abbreviation of Application Programming Interface: a set of
functions, procedures, methods, classes or protocols that an operating
system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer
programs.
App — Short for application, a program that runs inside another service.
Many mobile phones allow apps to be downloaded, leading to a burgeoning
economy for modestly priced software. Can also refer to a program or tool
that can be used within a website. Apps generally are built using software
toolkits provided by the underlying service, whether it is iPhone or
Facebook. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Assignment - A job given to a journalist by an editor.
Astroturfing - A term used to describe fake grassroots support on websites
and in blog comments. A method most usually employed by the public
relations and advertising industry and political groups.
Atom — A syndication format for machine readable web feeds that is usually
accessible via a URL. While it was created as an alternative to RSS(Real
Simple Syndication) to improve upon RSS's deficiencies (such as
ambiguities), it still is secondary to RSS. (See also, RSS) (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Attribute - to quote the original source of material, whether it be a quote of
copyrighted work.
Audit - An independent assessment of the validity of statistics used in
adverts, newspapers etc.
AOP - Formed in 2002, the Association of Online Publishers is an industry
body for UK web publishers. The AOP represents the interests of 160
publishing companies.
Average issue readership - Number of people who have read the
newspaper or magazine in the period that it was issued, also known as AIR.

B
B2B - Business to business; describes a business whose primary customers
are other businesses.
B2C - Business to customer; describes a business whose primary customers
are individuals.
Background - Information given to a reporter to explain more about the
situation and details of a story. Sometimes shortened to BG.
Back bench - Senior journalists on a newspaper.
Bandwidth - The amount of data that can be transferred through an
internet connection.
Bang out - A composing room ritual in which an employee leaving the
premises for the last time is commemorated by the pounding of pica poles
against metal surfaces in a commemorative clamor. (courtesy of John E
McIntyre)
Banner ad - Web advert, normally found at the top of a page. Typically
around 468 by 60 pixels in size. Sometimes called a web banner.
BARB - Broadcasting Audience Research Board, measures TV audience
numbers.
BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation.
Beat - The area or subject that a reporter regularly covers.
Best boy - Broadcasting term for second-in-command of a lighting team.
Beta - Used in software publishing, 'beta' is the name given to a pre-release
version of a software product.
Blawg - Weblog dealing with aspects of law.
Bliki - Combination of a blog and a wiki; a blog that can be edited by
readers or an approved group of users.
Blind interview - An interview with an unnamed source.
Blog - An online commentary or diary often written by individuals about
hobbies or areas of specialist interest. Blogs commonly allow comments
below entries and are published in reverse chronological order. Also known
as a weblog.
Blogger - A person who writes a blog.
Blogosphere/Blogdom/Blogiverse/Blogmos/Blogostan - All things
relating to blogs and blog communities.
Blurb - Brief introduction to the writer, usually following the headline.
BRAD - British Rate and Data; a company that logs every periodical that has
to do with advertising in Britain.
Break - When a story is first published.
Breaking news - Unanticipated events developing during the publication
cycle, requiring updates and occasionally wholesale revision of pages.
Breaking news is conventionally greeted by profane expressions on the news
desk, city desk, or copy desk. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Broadcast - communicating using radio and/or TV.
Browser - A piece of software that allows users to view internet pages.
Popular browsers include Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.
budget - Also called The daily budget, or list of pending articles, either
completed or imagined, typically discussed at an afternoon news meeting at
which preliminary decisions about what is to go on the front page are
made. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Bulks - Copies distributed free, normally for promotion.
Bulldog - An early edition. The Baltimore Sun continues to produce a
bulldog edition of the Sunday paper that appears Saturday morning.
(courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Bump - To move the position or timing of a story.
Buried lede - The central element of an article mistakenly appearing deep
in the text. It must be disinterred (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Burn off - To dispose of articles that have previously been rejected for the
front page or section front by running them on a day of low circulation. Look
at your Monday paper. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Button - A small web advertisement, usually around 165 by 90 pixels in size
and commonly found in the right or left hand columns of a website.
Byline - A journalist's name at the beginning of a story.

C
Cable television - TV delivered into the home through an underground
cable.
Campaign - The various stages of an advertising project from beginning to
end.
Cap - Upper case.
Caption - Text printed below a picture used to describe it and who took it.
Sometimes called a cutline.
Cascading stylesheets (CSS) - Technique used for designing web pages.
One file that defines the style for a whole site.
chaser - A page or set of pages typeset after the formal edition close to
attempt to get breaking news into the paper. (courtesy of John E
McIntyre)
Chat rooms - An interactive part of a website where visitors can write
messages to each other people in real time. Also known as forums and
message boards.
Churnalism - Bad journalism; journalists that churn out rewrites of press
releases.
Centre of visual interest (CVI) - The prominent item on a page usually a
headline, picture or graphic.
CIOJ - the Chartered Institute of Journalists.
Circulation - Number of copies sold by newspapers or magazines. In the UK
these figures are monitored by ABC - The Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Citizen journalism - Term used to describe the reporting of news events by
members of the public most commonly on blogs and social networking
websites. Other terms include participatory journalism and networked
journalism though it should not be confused with civic journalism, which is
practiced by professional journalists.
Civic media — An umbrella term describing media technologies that create
a strong sense of engagement among residents through news and
information. It is often used as a contrast to “citizen journalism” because it
also encompasses mapping, wikis and databases. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Classified advertising - Advertising placed by individuals in newspapers.
Sometimes called small ads.
Clickthrough - When a reader clicks on an advert and is redirected to a
new page. Advertisers sometimes buy adverts based on a rate per click
called a Click-through rate or CTR.
Client side — Referring to network software where work takes place on the
user's computer, the client, rather than at the central computer, known as
the server. Advantages of doing so include speed and bandwidth. An
example is Javascript, a programming language that allows developers to
build interactivity into websites. The work is done within the browser, rather
than at the hosting website. (See also server side) (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Closed question - A simple yes/no question that does little to encourage an
interviewee to open up.
Cloud computing — An increasingly popular computing model in which
information and software are provided on demand from over the Internet
rather than staying on local computers. Cloud computing is appealing
because companies can reduce the amount they spend on their own
computer servers and software but can also quickly and easily expand as the
company grows. Examples of cloud computing applications include Google
Docs and Yahoo Mail. Amazon offers two cloud computing services: EC2,
which many start-ups now use as a cheap way to launch their products, and
S3, an online storage system many companies use for cheap
storage. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
CMS (Content Management System) — Software designed to organise
large amounts of dynamic material for a website, usually consisting of at
least templates and a database. It is generally synonymous with online
publishing system. The material can include documents, photos or videos.
While the first generation of content management systems were custom and
proprietary, in recent years there has been a surge in free open-source
systems such as Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. Content management
systems are sometimes built custom from scratch with frameworks such as
Ruby on Rails or Django. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
cold type - Headlines and text produced on photographic paper and pasted
up in a composing room. Increasingly supplanted by electronic transmission
of pages directly to a printing plant, where the pages emerge as metal plates
to go on the printing press. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Column - A regular feature often on a specific topic, written by the same
person who is known as a columnist.
Composing room - The place in which printers, now vanished, once
assembled pages in hot type or cold type. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Contempt of court - The criminal offence of ignoring court rules.
Convergence - The term used to describe multimedia newsrooms producing
news for different publishing platforms.
Cookie - Small text file that is downloaded to your computer when you visit
a site. The next time you visit, the site can use the file to remember details
such as your login information.
Copy - Main text of a story.
Copy approval - A source or interviewer asking to see the text of an article
prior to publication. (Always discouraged!)
copy editor - An anonymous drudge who attempts, against great odds, to
correct the many faults of writers before publication. Extinction imminent.
(courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Copywriting - Creating the text for an advertisement.
Coverline - Captions on a magazine cover.
Cover story - Leading story used on front cover.
CPA (Cost Per Action) — A pricing model in which the advertiser is
charged for an ad based on how many users take a specific, pre-defined
action—such as buying a product from an online store—based on viewing an
ad. This is the “gold standard” for advertisers because it most directly
matches the cost of an ad to its effectiveness. However, it's not commonly
used since it's extremely difficult to measure: it is often unclear when or how
to attribute an action to a specific ad. (Also sometimes referred to as Cost
Per Acquisition.) (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
CPC (Cost Per Click) — A pricing model in which the advertiser is charged
for an ad based on how many users click it. This is a common model for
“search advertising” (the all-text ads associated with search results) and for
text ads in general. CPC is well-suited for “directed” advertising, intended to
prompt an immediate response, because a user's clicking on an ad shows
engagement with it. Google AdWords is generally priced on a CPC basis.
(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
CPM - cost per thousand impressions. This is the cost an advertiser pays for
1,000 page views. The M in CPM is the Roman numeral for 1,000.
CQ - An indication that the name or term so noted has been checked and
verified. Copy editors, whose suspicions are well founded, often suspect that
reporters use CQ to indicate “better check this”. (courtesy of John E
McIntyre)
Creative Commons — A flexible set of copyright licenses that allow content
creators to specify which rights they reserve and which they waive regarding
their work that is supposed to codify collaborative spirit of the Internet.
There are six main Creative Commons licenses based on four conditions that
creators can choose to apply: Attribution, Share Alike, Non-Commercial, and
No Derivative Works. The least restrictive of the licenses is Attribution, which
grants anyone, from an individual to a large company, the right to distribute,
display, or otherwise make use of the work so long as the creator is
credited. The most restrictive is Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives,
which grants only redistribution. First released in December 2002 by the
nonprofit Creative Commons organization, which was inspired by the open
source GNU GPL license, the licenses are now used on an estimated 130
million works worldwide.(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Crosshead - A few words used to break up large amounts of text, normally
taken from the main text. Typically used in interviews.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) — Instructions used to describe the look
and formatting for documents, usually HTML, so that the presentation is
separate from the actual content of the document itself. If you watch a web
page that loads slowly, you will often see the text first load and then “snap
into place” with its look and feel. That look and feel is controlled by
the CSS. CSS, which was first introduced by the World Wide Web
Consortium in the late 1990s, helped eliminate the clumsy and often
repetitive markup in the original HTML syntax.(Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
CSV (Comma-Separated Values) — An extremely simple data format which
stores information in a text file. CSV is popular precisely because it can be
easily read by many different applications, including spreadsheets, word
processors, programming text editors and web browsers. Thus it is a
common way for people, including governments, to make their data
available. Each row of data is represented by a line of text. Each column is
delimited/separated by a comma (,). To prevent confusion about commas in
the data, the terms are often surrounded by double quotes (”). Many
applications support the use of alternative column delimiters (the pipe
character, |, is popular). Example below: “Name”,”Address”,”email”
“Laura”,”100 North Road, Brighton,
Sussex”,”laura@journalism.co.uk”(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Cub - A trainee reporter. Also known as a rookie or junior reporter.
Cut - To remove text.
Cuttings - A journalist's collection of published print work. Also known as
clips and sometimes presented as a portfolio.
Cuttings job - An article which has been put together using research culled
from a number of other articles or news items.
Cyber-journalist - A journalist that works on the internet. An online
journalist.

D
Data visualization — A growing area of content creation in which
information is represented graphically and often interactively. This can be
used for subjects as diverse as an analysis of a speech by the prime minister
and the popularity of baby names over time. While it has deep roots in
academia, data visualization has begun to emerge on content sites as a way
to handle the masses of data that are being made public, often by
government. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Dateline - A line at the beginning of a story stating the date and the
location.
Deadline - The time at which an editor requests a journalists to finish an
assignment.
Death-knock - Calling at the house of a bereaved relative or friend when
reporting on the death. Also known as door-stepping.
Deck - Part of the headline which summarises the story. Also known as deck
copy or bank.
Defamation - Information that is written by one person which damages
another person's reputation.
DHTML - Dynamic HTML. Allows exciting things to happen when you move
your mouse over words.
Digg - A community-powered internet link recommendation
system. Furloffers a similar service.
Direct quote - The exact reproduction of a verbatim quote in quotemarks
and correctly attributed.
Digital television - TV transmitted in binary format, producing good picture
quality.
Direct marketing - Sending advertising material directly to potential
customers either by post, fax, email or information by telephone.
Django — A web framework that is popular among news and information
sites, in part due to its origin at Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas. It is
written in Python, a sophisticated dynamic language. Major projects built in
Django include Disqus, Everyblock.com and TheOnion.com. News
applications teams, including those at the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles
Times, use the framework to present large data sets online in easily
accessible ways. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Document-oriented database — An increasingly popular type of database.
In contrast to relational databases, which rigidly require information to be
stored in pre-defined tables, document-oriented databases are more free-
flowing and flexible. This is important when you don't know what is going to
be thrown at you. Document-oriented databases retrieve information more
quickly, but store it less efficiently. The same document-oriented database
might let you store the information for an article (headline, byline, data,
content, miscellaneous) or for a photo (file, photographer, date, cutline).
(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Dogblogging - When the upkeep of a weblog becomes a hassle.
Dowdification - Deliberate omission of a term or terms to change the
meaning of a quote. Refers to journalist Maureen Dowd.
Download - Copying a file from a website to your own computer.
Draft - The first version of an article before editing and submission to the
editor.
Dropdown menus - Name given to website menus that allow users to
select from a list of options that drop down in a vertical menu.
Drupal — A popular content management system known for a vibrant open-
source community that creates diverse and robust extensions. Drupal is very
powerful, but it is somewhat difficult to use for simple tasks when compared
to WordPress. Drupal provides options to create a static website, a multi-
user blog, an Internet forum or a community website for user-generated
content. It is written in PHP and distributed under the GPLopen source
license. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
DPS - Double-page spread; can also be referred to as a spread.

E
e - Often used to indicate an electronic version of something, for example
eNews, for an electronic newsletter, or eGovernment, to describe electronic
government.
EC2 — A computing power rental system by Amazon that has become
popular among technology companies because it is much cheaper than
maintaining your own computer servers. Users can host their applications on
EC2 and pay depending on usage. EC2 is an example of cloud computing.
(Also see cloud computing) (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Editor - Someone who prepares material for print or broadcast.
Editorialise - To write in an opinionated way.
Embed — A term meaning to place a specific piece of content from one web
page inside of another one. This is often done using an embed code (a few
lines of HTML and/or Javascript) that you can copy or paste. This is a
common way for video content to be spread around the Internet and is
increasingly being used for interactive components. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Encryption - TV signals encoded so only paying subscribers can watch.
Endnote - Text written at the end of an article stating the authors
credentials.
eTail - Online or 'electronic' retail.
Exclusivity - When an advert appears exclusively on a page, rather than
being in rotation with other ads.
Ezine - Specialized online magazines.

F
Feature - A longer, more in-depth article.
Fisk - Detailed word-by-word analysis and critique of an article. Refers to
journalist Robert Fisk.
Flash - A program used to display design-heavy, animated content.
Flash - 1) Short news story on a new event. 2) Flash — A proprietary
platform owned by Adobe Systems that allows for drag-and-drop
animations, program interactivity, and dynamic displays for the Web. The
language used, ActionScript, is owned by Adobe; this contrasts with many
other popular programming languages that are open source. Creators must
use Adobe's Creative Suite products and web surfers must install a Flash
plug-in for their browser. Many claim that Flash players are unstable and
inefficient, slowing down web pages and crashing operating systems. Apple
has not allowed Adobe to create a Flash player for the iPhone operating
system, which has created a feud between the two companies. HTML5 is
emerging as an open alternative to Flash. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
Flatplan - A page plan that shows where the articles and adverts are laid
out.
FOI - refers to Freedom of Information requests made in the UK, made
under theFreedom of Information Act 2000.
Follow-up - An update on a previous story.
Font - Typeface.
Foursquare — One of many new mobile services, along with Gowalla,
SCVNGR and others, that combines geolocation with game mechanics.
Launched in 2009 at SXSW Interactive conference, Foursquare allows users
to “check in” at locations (bars, restaurants, playgrounds and more) to
inform people in their social networks of their whereabouts while earning
badges, collecting points and becoming the “mayor” of certain locations.
Despite a relatively modest user base at the beginning, Foursquare quickly
attracted a lot of attention for its potential for marketing and customer
brand loyalty. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Framework — A software package that makes writing programs easier by
providing all the “plumbing” for a particular type of task (like writing a web
app), allowing programmers to just “fill in the blanks” with their own
project-specific needs. For instance, Web development frameworks like Ruby
on Rails (written in Ruby, meaning programmers use Ruby to do the “fill in
the blanks” tasks) and Django (written in Python), have easy-to-use, built-in
support for common web development tasks, such as reading and writing to
a database, writing content in html, and so forth.(Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Freelancer - Someone that works alone, usually on a contract-to-contract
basis.
Freesheet - A publication that is free to consumers and generates its
revenue from advertising.
Free-to-air - TV service received without having to decode or pay.
Freeview - Commercial free-to-air digital service, between BBC, BSkyB and
the transmission firm Crown Castle.
Frontline Club - A club in London that promotes “freedom of expression
and support journalists, cameramen and photographers who risk their lives
in the course of their work.”
FTP - File Transfer Protocol. A method of moving files, usually used to
transfer files from your computer to a web server.
FYI - An abbreviation meaning for your information.

G
Geotag — A piece of information that goes with content and contains
geographically based information. Commonly used on photo sites such as
Flickr or in conjunction with user-generated content, to show where a photo,
video or article came from. There has been some discussion of its increasing
relevance with geographically connected social networking sites, such as
Foursquare. Twitter has implemented geotagging, and Facebook has
announced plans to do so. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Get - A very good or exclusive interview.
GIF - A type of picture file, often used for images that include text.
Glossite - The website of a glossy women's magazine.
Goat-choker - An article of inordinate and suffocating length, produced to
gratify the vanity of the author and the aspirations of the publication.
(courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Graf - Paragraph. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Grip - A person that looks after the equipment required to make a TV
camera move.
Grip-and-grin - A photograph of no inherent interest in which a notable and
an obscure person shake hands at an occasion of supposed
significance. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Geotagging - Adding metadata to an image, video, RSS feed, webpage etc,
which identifies the geographical location relating to the content

H
Hard copy - When the article is printed out on paper.
hed - A headline, giving rise to the abbreviation HTK, for head to come, an
article transmitted in a take or takes before it is in final form.
Hits - Number of downloads of every element of a web page, rather than
the page as a whole. A page of 20 images, text boxes, logos and menus will
count as 20 hits, so hits are therefore not regarded as a reliable
measurement of web traffic.
Headline - The main title of the article.
Homepage - The front page of a website.
House style - A publication's guide to style, spelling and use of grammar,
designed to help journalists write and present in a consistent way for their
target audience. The Economist publishes a style guide as does The
Guardian.
hot type - Metal type generated on a Linotype machine. Archaic.(courtesy
of John E McIntyre)
house ad - An unpaid advertisement put on a page to fill a gap left by an
lack of paid advertising. Often a promotional ad for the publication.
(courtesy of John E McIntyre)
HTML - Hyper Text Mark-up Language. Basic programming code used for
the design and display of web pages.
HTML5 — The upcoming, powerful standard of Hypertext Markup Language,
which has added advanced interactive features, such as allowing video to be
embedded on a web page. It is gaining in popularity compared to proprietary
standards, like Adobe Flash, because it is an open standard and does not
require third-party plugins. Using HTML5 will allow web pages to work more
like desktop applications. The latest releases of most browsers support
HTML5 to varying degrees. HTML5 does not coverCSS and JavaScript, but
often when people refer to HTML5, they often are using it as a blanket term,
applying not only to changes to the HTML, but also to changes in CSS and
JavaScript. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Hyperlink - A link that redirects the user to another web page.
I
Iframe — An HTML tag that allows for one web page to be wholly included
inside another; it is a popular way to create embeddable interactive
featuresIframes are usually constructed via JavaScript as a way around web
browsers' security features, which try to prevent JavaScript on one page
from quickly talking to JavaScript on an external page. Many security
breaches have been designed using iframes. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
Impressions - The number of times an advertising banner was viewed
during a campaign.
An internet - Any network of connected computers.
The internet - The international network of interconnected computers. The
World Wide Web, email, FTP and usenet are all part of the Internet.
Intranet - A private computer network inside a company or organisation for
internal use only.
Intro - Very important first paragraph, known as a 'lead' in the US.
Inventory - The number of advertisement spaces for sale on a web site at a
given time.
Island position - An advert surrounded by editorial content in the middle of
the page.
ITV network - 15 regional franchises that make up ITV1. ITV is the
Broadcaster that was formed by the merger of Carlton and Granada.

J
Javascript - A scripting language commonly used to add functionality to
web sites beyond that which is achievable in HTML.
Joomla — A free, open-source content management built in PHP. It is more
powerful than WordPress but not as powerful as Drupal. However it is known
for its extensive design options. The name Joomla means “all together” in
Swahili. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Joost - interactive television software produced by the makers
of Skypeand Kazaa.
Journalist - Someone who writes, researches and reports news, or works
on the production of a publication. Sometimes shortened to journo, hack or
scribe.
JPEG - Joint Photographic Expert Group. Common type of picture file used
on the web.
jQuery — A incredibly popular open source JavaScript library designed for
manipulating HTML pages and handling events. Released in 2006, jQuery
quickly gained widespread adoption because of its efficiency and elegance.
The definitive feature of jQuery is its support for “chaining” operations
together to simplify otherwise complicated tasks. It is the most popular
JavaScript library. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
JSON (JavaScript Object-Notation) — A Web data publishing format that
is designed to be both easily human — and machine — readable. It is an
alternative to XML that is more concise because, unlike XML, it is not a
markup language that requires open and close tags. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Jumpline - A line indicating a continuation, or jump, of an article on a
subsequent page. Though readership surveys for generations have indicated
that readers despise jumps and generally do not follow them, it does not suit
newspapers to do otherwise. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)

K
Kerning - Adjustment of horizontal space between two written characters.
Key/value store — A simpler way of storing data than a relational or
document database. Key-value stores have a simple structure, matching
values to accessible “keys,” or indices. In Web development, key/value
stores are often (though not always) used for optimisation. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Kicker - The first sentence or first few words of a story's lead, set in a font
size larger than the body text of the story.
Kill - To cancel or delete a story.
Kill fee - A reduced fee paid to a journalist for a story that is not used.
Kittyblog - A pointless and boring weblog, possibly about the owner's cat.

L
LAMP — An acronym referring to a bundle of free open-source Web
technologies that have become incredibly popular as a method for building
websites. The letters stand for the Linux operating system, Apache web
server, MySQL database, and either PHP, Perl or Python. This is often
referred to as a “LAMP stack.” A rival alternative would be a bundle of
Microsoft products. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Layout - (noun) How the page is designed and formatted.
Layout sub-editor - A sub-editor who specialises in laying out pages.
Leader - An article that shows the opinion of a newspaper.
Leading - Adjustment of vertical space between two lines.
Leading questions - A question that contains the predicted answer within
the question.
lede - The phonetic spelling of lead, the beginning, usually the first
paragraph, of an article, so spelled as to indicate the specialized meaning
rather than the common meaning to a Linotype operator. (courtesy of
John E McIntyre)
Legacy media — An umbrella term to describe the centralised media
institutions that were dominant during the second half of the 20th century,
including — but not limited to — television, radio, newspapers and
magazines, all which generally had a uni-directional distribution model.
Sometimes “legacy media” is used interchangeably with “MSM,” for
“Mainstream Media.” Legacy media sits in contrast with social media, where
the production and sharing is of equal weight to the consumption.(Courtesy
of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Libel - A case for defamation. Defendent would need to show claims were
true, fair comment or an accurate record of parliamentary or court
proceedings.
Library — In the context of programming, this contains code that can be
accessed for software and Web development, enabling one to perform
common tasks without writing new code every time. Many libraries are freely
shared. One well-known library is jQuery, released in 2006 and now the
most popular JavaScript library, which boasts that it allows coders to “write
less, do more.” (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Licence fee - BBC funding system.
Link journalism - Scott Karp defines link journalism as “linking to other
reporting on the web to enhance, complement, source, or add more context
to a journalist's original reporting”. Good link journalism should briefly
summarise the content of the article it is linking to, name the source and
author and, of course, link directly to it. Any direct reproduction of text
should be kept to an absolute minimum, appear in quotes, and be clearly
attributed to its source. For example: “I saw it coming” Mr Smith tells the
Times or “This is the next big thing,” writes Joe Bloggs (the writer you are
quoting). The journalist should also endeavour wherever possible to find the
original source of an article, rather than link to someone else's later version
of it. Also bear in mind that your own reputation will be judged on the
quality of the articles you link to; if you have any interest or connection with
the story, publication or author, then declare it.
Linotype - A machine for the mechanical setting of type, the brainchild of
Ottmar Merganthaler of Baltimore, to whom all praise be given. The Linotype
operator used hot metal, melted lead, to create slugs of type by
manipulating a keyboard. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Lobster shift - Working in the hours after a publication has gone to print.
Also known as dog watch.
Location-based services — A service, usually in a mobile Web or mobile
device application, that uses your location in order to perform a certain task,
such as finding nearby restaurants, giving you directions, or locating your
friends. Foursquare and Gowalla are location-based services.(Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Long-lead magazines - Glossy magazines, quarterlies and journals that
typically commission and accept work months in advance of publication.
Long tail - The effect of publishing content online and keeping it available in
an archive. Unlike in a newspaper, old stories will continue to receive traffic
long after publication date, hence the long tail.

M
Mark - Correction.
Mashup — A combination of data from multiple sources, usually through the
use of APIs. An example of a mashup would be an app that shows the
locations of all the movie theaters in a particular town on a Google map. It is
mashing up one data source (the addresses of movie theaters) with another
data source (the geographic location of those addresses on a
map). (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Martini media - Media that is available “any time, any place, any where”.
Mash up, mashup, or mash-up - a website or web application that
seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated
experience.
Masthead - Main title section and name at the front of a publication.
Media Kit - Practical information available to potential advertisers regarding
costs etc. See the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicleand
the Belfast Telegraph for examples.
Metadata - Meta data, or sometimes metainformation, is data about data,
of any sort, in any media.
Microblogs - Blogs dealing with very specialised discussion.
Microblogging - Variant of traditional blogging in which users write brief
text messages over the web. Popularized by web site Twitter, which limits
users to 140-character updates.
Mobile — An umbrella term in technology that was long synonymous with
cellular phones but has since grown to encompass tablet computing (the
iPad) and even netbooks. In retrospect, an early mobile technology was the
pager. Sometimes the term is used interchangeably with “wireless.” It
generally refers to untethered computing devices that can access the
Internet over radiofrequency waves, though sometimes also via wi-fi. Mobile
technology usually demands a different set of standards — design and
otherwise — than desktop computers, and has opened up an entirely new
area for geo-aware applications. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Moblogging - Where individuals contribute to a blog using images or text
sent from a mobile phone.
MPEG - Moving Pictures Experts Group. A file format used for digital video.
MPU - Known as a Messaging Plus Unit, a large square web advert usually in
a central position below or inline with editorial. Typically around 350 by 250
pixels in size.
Multimedia - Term used to describe a range of different delivery formats
such as video, audio, text and images, often presented simultaneously on
the internet.
Multiplex - Single digital terrestrial TV transmission comprising of several
channels.
MySQL — The dominant open-source database management system on the
Internet. It is popular because it is a free and flexible alternative to
expensive systems like Oracle. Projects that use MySQL include Facebook
and Wikipedia. The SQL stands for “Structured Query Language” and “My” is
the name of the inventor's daughter. It is officially pronounced My-S-Q-L,
but you will often hear it referred to as “My Sequel.” MySQL is a relational
database management system, not a document-oriented database system.
(Also see document-oriented database) (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)

N
Navigation - Structure that helps web users move around the website.
NCTJ - National Council for Training of Journalists, official UK accreditation
board for journalism courses.
Netiquette - Online etiquette, eg. reciprocal links.
Networked journalism - Another term to describe participatory journalism
or citizen journalism.
News agency - Company that sells stories to newspapers or magazines.
Newspaper Society - Industry body representing the regional press & local
press.
Newsreader - Software that helps receive and read RSS blog and news
feeds.
NIB - News in brief - a quick summary of a story.
Nut graf - Paragraph containing the essential elements of a story.
NUJ - National Union of Journalists, a UK trade union.

O
OAuth — A new method that allows users to share information stored on
one site with another site. For example, some web-based Twitter clients will
use OAuth to connect to your account, instead of requiring you to provide
your password directly to that third-party site. It is similar to Facebook
Connect. This allows sites to validate users' identities without having full
access to their personal accounts. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Ofcom - Broadcasting industry regulator.
Off diary - An unscheduled or unpredicted story.
Off the floor - When a page has been completed and removed from the
composing room (cf.), it is said to be off the floor. When an entire edition is
off the floor, it is said to have been put to bed.(courtesy of John E
McIntyre)
Off the record - Information that must not be disclosed.
On diary - Scheduled story.
On spec - Article that is written 'just in-case', but it will only be used if
needed.
On the record - Information given by a source that can be used in an
article.
Ontology — A classification system with nodes or entities, that allows non-
hierarchical relationships, in contrast to a taxonomy, which is hierarchical.
Taxonomies and ontologies are important in content to help related articles
or topics pages. (Also see taxonomy) (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
Op-ed - A feature, usually by a prominent journalist, presenting an
opinionated story.
Open ID — An open standard that lets users log in to multiple web sites
using the same identity through a third party. It is supported by numerous
sites, including LiveJournal, Yahoo, and WordPress. While Open ID has seen
adoption among technical communities, its authentication method is not
particularly intuitive, and it has not gained wide consumer acceptance.
(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Open source software - Software with openly available code to allow
developers or others to modify it.
Operating system — A basic layer of software that controls computer
hardware, allowing other applications to be built on it. The most popular
operating systems today for desktop computers are the various versions of
Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and the open-source Linux. Smart phones also
have operating systems. The Palm Pre uses webOS, numerous phones use
Google's Android operating system, and the iPhone uses iOS (formerly
known as iPhone OS). (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Orphan - First line of a paragraph appearing on the last line of a column of
text. Normally avoided.

P
Palm Pre — A smart phone introduced in 2009 by Palm which uses webOS
and allows for multitasking, unlike the iPhone. Despite rave reviews, the
product is generally acknowledged to have come out too late to gain
meaningful traction against the iPhone or Google's Android operating
system. HP recently announced that it would acquire Palm, which was once
the leading smart phone company. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
PACT - Industry body representing independent cinema and tv producers.
Pasteup - The assemblage of pages by pasting type onto page mockups,
which are then photographed to be made into metal plates for the printing
press. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Pay-per-view - A single programme that the viewer has to pay for.
Pay TV - Paid subscription service for TV.
PDA - Personal Digital Assistant. A hand-held computer combining a phone,
organiser and web client.
PDF - Portable Document Format – a standard file format that allows web
publishers to post documents viewable by any user who installs a copy of the
free Acrobat Reader.
eer-to-peer (P2P) — A network architecture in which users share
resources on their own computers directly with others. Often used to speed
up videos and large multimedia pieces that can take a long time to
download. Napster was an early example of a popular use of peer-to-peer
architecture, although it was not fully peer-to-peer. Today, Skype and
BitTorrent are based on peer-to-peer technologies. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Perl — A dynamic language that is often used to phrase and sort
information because of its powerful abilities in manipulating text. Perl can be
used to pull large quantities of data down from websites and standardise and
replace information in batch. Perl was more popular in past years, especially
in the computer-assisted reporting community, but it has been overtaken in
popularity by languages such as Python and Ruby. Perl still has an active
development community and is noted for the scope of its freely available
libraries, which simplify development.(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
Photoblogging - Contributing photos to a blog.
Photoshop - (noun) Computer program used to edit photographs.
PHP — A popular web scripting language to generate web pages that was
first developed in 1995, when it stood for “Personal Home Page.” (It is now a
recursive acronym, standing for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.”) Popular
websites that are written in PHP are Wikipedia, Facebook and WordPress. It
is criticized as being slow because it generates web pages on request.
However, Facebook recently released its internally developed version of
HipHop for PHP, which is designed to make the language dramatically more
efficient. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
pica pole - A metal ruler used by printers in the composing room to
measure type by picas (12 points to the pica, six picas to the inch). The pica
pole is pounded against a metal surface in the ritual of banging out an
employee leaving the premises for the last time. (courtesy of John E
McIntyre)
Pitch - Story idea sent to an editor by a reporter.
Pixel - An on-screen measurement. Most monitors display around 1024
pixels wide by 768 pixels high.
Platform — In the technology world, platform refers to the hardware or
software that other applications are built upon. Computing platforms include
Windows PC and Macintosh. Mobile platforms include Android, iPhone and
Palm's webOS. More recently, in an extension of its commonly used
definition, Facebook has created a “platform,” allowing developers to build
applications on top of it. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Podcasts - MP3 audio recordings that can automatically download to a
user's computer as soon as they are published online.
Point size - Size of the type face.
Pop-under/pop-behind - A web advert that opens under the browser
window.
Pop-up - A web advert that pops up on screen. These are commonly
blocked with a pop-up blocker.
Post - To add a comment to a blog.
Posterous — A blogging and publishing platform to which users can submit
via e-mail. Through APIs, it can push the content to other sites such as
Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. It is a for-profit company based in San
Francisco that came out of the YCombinator seed start-up program.
(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
PostgreSQL - An alternative to MySQL, another free and open-source
relational database management system on the Internet. PostgreSQL is
preferred by some in the technology community for its ability to operate as a
spatial database, using PostGIS extensions. This enables developers to
create applications that sort information based on geography, which can
mean sorting by whether various places are within a certain county or
pointing out the places that are geographically closest to the user.
(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Pork - Material held for later use, if needed.
PPA - Periodical Publishers Association. Industry body representing UK
magazine publishers.
Portal - A busy site often used as a starting point online through services
such as messaging, news and searches.
Programming language — A special type of language used to
unambiguously instruct a computer how to perform tasks. Programming
languages are used by software developers to create applications, including
those for the web, for mobile phones, and for desktop operating systems. C,
C++, Objective C, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby are
examples of programming languages. HTML and XML are not programming
languages, they are markup languages. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
Proof - Copy of a laid-out page ready to be corrected.
Prosumer - Marketing term used to describe professional consumers.
Puff piece - A news story with editorialised, complimentary statements.
Pulldown - Web text that is activated by a down arrow on a web menu.
Pulitzer Prize - American journalism awards. There are fourteen prizes for
journalism. The prizes have been awarded by Columbia University since
1917.
Pulitzer-Prize-winner - An article of surpassing artistry or investigative
virtuosity, usually of considerable length, written for Pulitzer jurors rather
than the readership of the publication, despite the unlikelihood that the
former group will have read it in its entirety before bestowing the laurels.
(courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Pull-out quote - Selected quote from a story highlighted next to the main
text. Often used in interviews.
Python — A sophisticated computer language that is commonly used for
Internet applications. Designed to be a very readable language, it is named
after Monty Python. It first appeared in 1991 and was originally created by
Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer programmer who now works at
Google. Python files generally end in .py. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)

Q
QuarkXPress - Desktop publishing program.
Quote - Record of what a source or interviewee has said.

R
Radio spectrum - Total capacity of radio frequencies that can be received.
Rate card - A list of advertising rates provided by a publisher.
reader - An article devoid of immediate news interest that will supposedly
be of interest to the readership. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Recto - Right-hand page.
Relational database — A piece of software that stores data in a series of
tables, with relationships defined between them. A news story might have
columns for a headline, date, text and author, where author points to
another table containing the author's first name, last name and email
address. Information must be structured, but this allows for powerful
queries. Examples include MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQLite. Most
modern websites use some kind of relational database to store content.
(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Redletter - Exclusive, breaking news coverage of a major news event,
printed in red type.
refer - A short summary attached to an article indicated a related story
elsewhere in the publication. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Reporter - Someone who writes and researches news stories.
Reporters without borders - An organisation founded in 1985 that fights
for press freedom around the world.
Retraction - A withdrawal of a previously-published story or fact.
Revision - A re-written or improved story, often with additional quotes or
facts.
Rich media - Artwork formats such as Flash, Java and DHTML that allow
interactive or multimedia content.
Rim editor - A copy editor, a nonentity. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Roadblock - The sale of all the adverts on your home page to one
advertiser.
RSS - This began life as Rich Site Summary in 1999, then mutated to
Really/Real Simple Simple Syndication in 2002, then Real Simple
Synchronisation in 2005.
Ruby — An increasingly popular programming language known for being
powerful yet easy to write with. Originally introduced in 1995 by Yukihiro
“Matz” Matsumoto, Ruby has gained increasing traction since 2005 because
of the Ruby on Rails development framework, which can create websites
quickly. Ruby is open source and is very popular for content-based
sites (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Ruby on Rails — A popular Web framework based on the Ruby programming
language that makes common development tasks easier “out of the box.”
The power of Ruby on Rails, which was developed by the Chicago-based firm
37 Signals, comes from how quickly it can be used to create a basic
website. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Run - To publish a story.

S
SaaS (Software as a Service) — A pricing strategy and business model,
where companies build a software solution, usually business-to-business,
and charge a fixed monthly rate to access it on the Internet. It is a type of
cloud computing. Salesforce.com is the best example, but other notables
include Mailchimp and even Amazon Web Services. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Sacred cow - News or promotional material which a publisher or editor
demands be published, often for personal reasons.
Satellite television - TV received through a satellite dish.
Scoop - An exclusive or first-published story.
Scoopt - the world's first citizen journalism photograph agency owned
byGetty Images.
Scribd — A document-sharing site that is often described as a “YouTube for
documents” because it allows other sites to embed its content. It allows
people to upload files and others to download in various formats. Recently
Scribd, which is based in San Francisco, moved from Flash-based technology
to HTML5 standards. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Scripting language — A programming language designed to be easy to use
for everyday or administrative tasks. It may involve trade-offs such as
sacrificing some performance for ease of programming. Popular scripting
languages include PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Search box - A tool that allows users to enter a word or phrase to search a
database.
Sell - Short sentence promoting an article, often pulling out a quote or a
interesting sentence. See also Pull-out quote.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — A suite of techniques for improving
how a website ranks on search engines such as Google. SEO is often divided
into “white hat” techniques, which (to simplify) try to boost ranking by
improving the quality of a website, and “black hat” techniques, which try to
trick search engines into thinking a page is of higher quality than it actually
is. SEO can also refer to individuals and companies that offer to provide
search engine optimization for websites. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) — A type of marketing that involves
raising a company or product's visibility in search engines by paying to have
it appear in search results for a given word. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
Semantic web — A vision of the web that is almost entirely machine
readable, in which documents are published in languages that are designed
specifically for data. It was first articulated by Tim Berners-Lee in 2001. In
many implementations, tags would identify the information, such as
<ADDRESS> or <DATE>. While there has been progress toward this front,
many say this vision remains largely unrealized.(Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Server-sid — Referring to when network software runs in a central location,
the server, rather than on the user's computer, often known as the client.
(Also see client side). (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Serif and Sans serif - Plain font type with or without (sans) lines
perpendicular to the ends of characters.
Server - A computer that hosts the pages of a web site.
Shockwave - Software that allows the user to play multimedia animations;
published by Macromedia.
Sinatra - A lightweight framework written in Ruby that can be used to set
up web services, APIs and small sites at lightning speed. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Skype - Popular free internet telephony tool sometimes used to
produceSkypecasts, or broadcast conference calls.
Skyscraper - A vertical banner advert, usually at one side of a web page
and 60 x 468 pixels in size.
Slot editor - On a copy desk, the copy editor who checks and corrects the
copy of other copy editors before approving it for publication. The term
arises from the obsolete furniture of the newsroom, where once a
horseshoe-shaped desk enabled the slot editor to hand out paper copy to the
copy editors on the rim, the outside of the horseshoe. To slot (v.) is to check
an article that has been copy edited before approving it for
typesetting. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Slug - A line of type set in metal on a Linotype machine. Also the one-word
working title of an article as it moves through production. SCOTUS (Supreme
Court of the United States) is a familiar slug for an article about a Supreme
Court decision. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Social bookmarking - A service that allows users to store interesting
website addresses publically on a web page and lets users network and pool
recommendations.
Social graph — A mapping of the connections between people and the
things they care about that could provide useful insights. The term originally
promoted by Facebook and is now gaining broader usage.(Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Social media — A broad term referring to the wide swath of content
creation and consumption that is enabled by the many-to-many distributed
infrastructure of the Internet. Unlike legacy media, where the audience is
usually on the receiving end of content creation, social media generally
allows three stages of interaction with content: 1) producing, 2) consuming
and 3) sharing. Social media is incredibly broad and refers to blogging,
wikis, video-sharing sites like YouTube, photo-sharing sites like Flickr and
social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Source - An individual who provides information for a story.
Spadia - An annoying flap of advertising copy that wraps around a portion
of the front page of a section, preventing the reader from seeing the full
page. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Spider - Also known as a crawler or ant, a program that uses hyperlinks to
make methodical searches of the web to provide information about pages for
search engines.
spike - The spindle on which paper copy that was not to run was impaled,
giving rise to the verb to spike, to kill a story. (courtesy of John E
McIntyre)
Spike - Not to publish a submitted article.
Splash - Front page story.
Standfirst - Line of text after the headline that gives more information
about the article.
stet - (From the Latin) Let it stand; let the original copy go as written. The
hardest word for a copy editor to use. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Sticky content - Content that encourages users to stay on one site for as
long as possible.
Strapline - Similar to a subhead or standfirst, but used more as a
marketing term.
Streaming - Watching or listening to video or audio in real time, rather than
downloading files.
Structured thesaurus — A group of preferred terms created for editorial
use to normalise and more effectively classify content. For example, the AP
Stylebook is similar to (but includes more rules than) a structured thesaurus
in that it gives writers preferred terms to use and standards to follow, so
everyone following AP Style writes the word “website” the same
way. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Sub-editor - The person that checksand edits a reporters' work and adds
headlines and standfirsts.
Subhead - A smaller one-line headline for a story.
Superstitials - A type of rich media advert that downloads gradually
without obscuring other content on the page; usually more popular than pop
ups.
S3 — An online storage system run by Amazon that's often used as a cheap
way to store (and serve) photos and videos used on websites. It is short for
Simple Storage Service. Its fees are often pennies per month per gigabyte,
depending on location and bulk discount. The service is often used in
conjunction with other Amazon Web Services, such as EC2, to allow
customers to process large amounts of data with low capital investment. The
New York Times used S3 with EC2 in this way to process its
archives. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)

T
Tabloid - Smaller print newspaper size.
Tag — A common type of metadata used to describe a piece of content that
associates it with other content that has the same tag. Tags can be specific
terms, people, locations, etc. used in the content it is describing, or more
general terms that may not be explicitly stated, such as themes. The term
“tag” is also used in the context of markup languages, such as <title>
identifying the name of the web page. In HTML, tags usually come in sets of
open and closed, with the closed tag containing an extra slash (”/”) inside.
For example: <title>This is the Title.</title>. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Take - A section of an article. An article that is transmitted to the copy desk
or the composing room as it is being written is sent in takes.(courtesy of
John E McIntyre)
Taxonomy — A hierarchical classification system. In the world of content,
this can be a hierarchy of terms (generally called nodes or entities) that are
used to classify the category or subject content belongs to as well as terms
that are included in the content. In many cases, website navigation systems
appear taxonomical in that users narrow down from broad top-level
categories to the granular feature they want to see. An ontology is similar to
a taxonomy in that it is also a classification system with nodes or entities,
but it is more complex and flexible because ontologies allow for non-
hierarchical relationships. While in a taxonomy a node can be either a
broader term or narrower term, in an ontology nodes can be related in any
way.(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Technobabble - Confusing technical jargon.
Technorati - Powerful blog search engine.
Teeline - A form of shorthand.
Telegraph section - The section, in which national and foreign news was
acquired by telegraph in the remote past. The copy was edited on the
telegraph desk, a component of the copy desk. (courtesy of John E
McIntyre)
Terrestrial television - TV sent through a beam transmitter directly into
the home.
Testimonial - Endorsement of a product, often by a celebrity or well-
respected client.
Thirty - A numeral indicating the conclusion of a take of copy. (courtesy of
John E McIntyre)
Tick-tock - A step-by-step account of how a particular event or
phenomenon developed. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
TK - Proofreader's insertion mark for data to come. Sometimes written as
TKTK.
Tie in - Placing the facts of a new story within the context of past events.
Also known as a tie back.
Tip - A lead of piece of new information about a new story.
Tombstoning - In page layout, to put articles side by side so that the
headlines are adjacent. The phenomenon is also referred to as bumping
heads. (courtesy of John E McIntyre)
Top heads - Headlines at the top of a column.
Traffic - Amount of users recorded by a website.
Transparency — In the context of news and information, a term describing
openness about information that has become increasingly popular. In many
cases it is used to refer to the transparency of government releasing data to
journalists and to the public. It is often used in the context of journalists
being open about their reporting process and material by sharing with their
readers before the final project emerges or providing more context in
addition to the final product. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Tumblr — A free short-form blogging platform that allows users to post
images, video, links, quotes and audio. The company is based in New York
City and competes with Posterous.(Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
Twitter - A service that allows users to send 140 character messages to
'friends' via mobile SMS, website or Instant Messenger.

U
UI (User Interface) — The part of a software application or website that
users see and interact with, which takes into account the visual design and
the structure of the program. While graphic design is an element of user
interface design, it is only a portion of the consideration. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Unique users - The number of individual users, as identified by unique
computer addresses, that visit a web site.
Upload - To publish a file on the internet.
URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) — The way to identify the location for
something on the Internet. It is most familiarly in “http:” form, but also
encompasses “ftp:” or “mailto:” (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)
URL - Uniform Resource Locator, technical name for a web address.
User - A visitor or reader on a web site.
User-generated content - Material created and submitted to sites by its
users - such as photographs, video footage, comments, articles etc.
UX (User Experience) — Generally referring to the area of design that
involves the holistic interaction a user has with a product or a service. It
incorporates many disciplines, including engineering, graphic design, content
creation and psychology. User interface is one element of user
experience. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)

V
Verso - Left-hand page.
Video blogger/Vlogger - A blogger who mainly uses video and publishes
on the internet.
Video journalist - A journalist who publishes video reports on TV and/or on
the internet.
Vertical search engine - A search engine containing information on a
specific subject area.

W
WAP - Wireless Application Protocol - an international standard for the
application that enables access to a wireless internet network using a mobile
device.
Web scraping - Automated process of finding content on web pages and
converting it into another form for use on another web site.
Warblogs - Opinionated and political web logs.
Webcasting - Online visual and/or audio broadcasts, usually in real time.
Webmercials - Similar format to television adverts used online.
WebOS — Operating system used on the latest generation of Palm smart
phones, including the Pre and the Pixi. Apps for webOS are developed using
web standards (HTML, Javascript and CSS), which means there is a low
barrier to entry for web developers to create mobile apps for webOS as
compared to other mobile platforms. It allows for having several applications
open at the same time, unlike the current iPhone. (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Webinar/Web conference - A seminar, lecture or presentation delivered
over the internet.
Web 2.0 — Referring to the generation of Internet technologies that allow
for interactivity and collaboration on websites. In contrast to Web 1.0
(roughly the first decade of the World Wide Web) where static content was
downloaded into the browser and read, Web 2.0 uses the Internet as the
platform. Technologies such as Ajax, which allow for rapid communication
between the browser and the web server, underlie many Web 2.0 sites. The
term was popularized by a 2004 conference, held by O'Reilly Media and
MediaLive, called Web 2.0. (Also see Ajax) (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers
Survivak Glossary)
Web 3.0 — Sometimes used to refer to the semantic web. (Also see
semantic web) (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Widget - application available to download or embed on a desktop,
homepage or social network. Allows you to share content, which will be
automatically updated e.g. Journalism.co.uk's news headlines.
Widow - Last line of paragraph appearing on the first line of a column of
text.
Wiki — A web site with pages that can be easily edited by visitors using
their web browser, but generally now gaining acceptance as a prefix to mean
“collaborative.” Ward Cunningham created the first wiki, naming it
WikiWikiWeb after the Hawaiian word for “quick.” A wiki enables the
audience to contribute to a knowledge base on a topic or share information
within an organization, like a newsroom. The best-known wiki in existence is
Wikipedia, which burst onto the scene around 2000 as one of the first
examples of mass collaborative information aggregation. Other sites that
have been branded “wiki” include Wikinews, Wikitravel, and WikiLeaks
(which was originally but is no longer a wiki). (Courtesy of
Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)
Wire service - (also the wire) The Associated Press or other news service
whose dispatches are transmitted electronically to the publication.(courtesy
of John E McIntyre)
Wi-fi - Wireless internet or network connection.
Wiki - An information site that can be edited and added to by readers. See
Wikipedia - an online Wiki encyclopedia.
Wires - Stories or photographs sent electrically to your desktop. Here is a
list of wire news services.
Wob - White text on a black or other coloured background.
WordPress — The most popular blogging software in use today, in large
part because it is free and relatively powerful, yet easy to use. First released
by Matt Mullenweg in 2003, WordPress attracts contributions from a large
community of programmers and designers who give it additional
functionality and visual themes. Sites that use WordPress include the New
York Times blogs, CNN and the LOLCats network. It has been criticized for
security flaws. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak Glossary)

X
XML (Extensible Markup Language) —A set of rules for encoding
documents and data that goes beyond HTML capacities. Whereas HTML is
generally concerned with the semantic structure of documents, XML allows
other information to be defined and passed such as <vehicle>, <make>,
<model>, <year>, <color> for a car. It is the parent language of manyXML-
based languages such as RSS, Atom, and others. It gained further popularity
with the emergence of Ajax as a way to send back data from web services,
but has since lost ground to JSON, another data encoding format, which is
seen as easier to work with. (Courtesy of Hacks/Hackers Survivak
Glossary)