A Look at The New York Sun's Style Guide
We recently got a look at the in-house style guide of The New York Sun. Like many such documents (The New York Times actually publishes its own in book form) it can be taken to offer some insight into the editorial positioning of the publication. We found, among the many entries, the following:
"aliya, not aliyah. Jewish immigration to Israel. Literally 'going up.' Opposite is yerida, the 'going down' of Israeli Jews to live in other countries, like America.
"Avery Fisher Hall: At Lincoln Center."
"Charedi. Literally, trembling. Prefer 'fervently Orthodox' or 'black-hat' to this Hebrew word. Avoid the term 'ultra-Orthodox.'"
"Decter, Midge. The Cold War heroine. Note the spelling of her last name."
"Ethnic. Means not Jewish or Christian."
"Gentile. Not Jewish or genteel."
"Jerusalem. Avoid the phrase 'Arab East Jerusalem.'"
"Matzo. Unleavened bread eaten at Passover, also called the bread of affliction."
"Peace process. Confine use to quoted material. Use the Oslo negotiations or the Arab-Israeli negotiations or the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs."
"Prime ministers of Israel. Our readers can be counted on to know of which country Prime Minister Sharon heads the government. Likewise with the American president."
"Reveal, revelation. Use only in quoted matter or when referring to what happened at Mount Sinai…"
"West Bank and Gaza Strip. Territories under Israeli control from 1967 onward. 'The territories' is acceptable on second reference, as are Judea or Samaria for the Southern and Northern regions of the West Bank. Avoid the phrase 'occupied territories.'"
UPDATE: This one was too good to leave out...
"communist, socialist. See AP stylebook. Any favorable reference to a communist must be shown to either the editor or the managing editor of the Sun before publication."
I think it's funny that something like the Sinaic covenant would be referred to as a fact, or at leastsomething treated as such, by a newspaper.
obviously atheists are going to be excluded from this conversation.
I'm learning that anything slightly resembling a criticism of Israel and anything that's not outright 100% supportive is automatically stamped ANTI-SEMETIC!!!
ugh
To be fair, the Sun's style guide also says that most of its entries were inherited from the style guide of "The Forward," where Lipsky and Stoll used to work (and I think Stoll may have compiled the Forward style guide). It's not so surprising that a Jewish newspaper would have so many Jewish-related entries in its style guide. Maybe the Sun should have started a new style guide from scratch instead of importing the Forward's, but this seems like a minor sin compared with the Sun's day-to-day crappiness.
It is no surprise that the newspaper that lead the high-tech lynching of the Khalil Gibran school would have a style guide that says "Ethnic is not Jewish or Christian". Funny, Jewish makes up only 3% of this country. I guess African American is Ethnic, but Jewish is not.
c57t
Actually, New York City is 12% Jewish, just to be fair (it's a New York paper). Obviously "ethnic" does refer to "African American" by their definition, unless you're talking about non-Christian African Americans. It's still an offensive definition, but it's no different than the way most of the rest of the media uses "ethnic." ("ethnic neighborhood", "ethnic restaurants," "ethnic strife" -- all usually used to refer to non-white and/or non-Judeo-Christian)