"Web site" to "website" in the AP Stylebook

A blast from the past for me – the AP Stylebook changes on something I use all the time but never heard of during a long AP career.

The following popped up on the AP retirees’ newsletter I get every week, and I thought many people might like to know that Web site is out and website is in. Note that there are several links to longer explanations of what goes on in the business of changing AP style. Enjoy.

AP Stylebook Team Announces That 'Web site' Is Changing To 'website'

The AP Stylebook team has announced that "Web site" is changing to "website." In an April 16 note to AP news leaders, Stylebook coordinators Sally Jacobsen, Darrell Christian and Dave Minthorn said the entry change reflects "increasingly common usage." They also announced that plans to change AP style on state abbreviations have been postponed, pending further review. Below, read a Q&A with Minthorn on AP's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/apnews See media mentions in the Washington Post blog "Faster Forward" at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/04/ap_says_write_website_not_web.html and at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=181664 in Mallory Jean Tenore's Poynter column

Q&A with Dave Minthorn: From Web site to website, mysteries of AP style explained

In a Q&A, AP Deputy Standards Editor David Minthorn offers a behind-the-scenes look at how The Associated Press decides on AP style guidelines -- including last week's big announcement that AP has dropped "Web site" in favor of "website."

Why the change from "Web site" to "website"?

Followers of AP style — editors, writers, students, P.R. professionals, word lovers — have for several years argued that the two-word spelling of "Web site" is out of date. Certainly it's easier to spell website as one word, along with other compounds like webcam and webmaster, adopted previously by the AP Stylebook. Also, the Stylebook's primary reference, Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, prefers the one-word spelling.

Still, the Web (the shortened proper name of the World Wide Web) and certain other two-word phrases like Web page, remain capitalized in AP style.

The three AP staffers named as the Stylebook coordinators were colleagues during my 25 years there. Sally Jacobsen and Dave Minthorn were people I worked with fairly closely from time to time in several postings, while Darrell Christian and I knew each other only slightly as he was in New York and I was all over the overseas map. If they’re listening, I wish them all well.

My retirement, at the end of 1995, came just as the Web was launching into the forefront of all our minds and work. Windows 95? Well, I started learning it after I bought my first laptop in Jacksonville while still living on the road and considering where to settle down. With crashes and dailups …

New links for politics

There was so much fresh news in the NY Times blog The Caucus today that I'm adding it to one of the links boxes in the right-hand column.

First, I'll feature it here for starters. Scroll down to the entry by Kate Phillips where she quotes an Obama spokesman saying the idea that Sarah Palin has more experience than Barack Obama is "borderline ridiculous." But if it were true that executive experience was be-all-and-end-all, "maybe she should run for president and John McCain should run for vice president." 

Tough.

Also to be noted is that the DNC has a new website analyzing McCain-Palin as JustMoreoftheSame.com. In case you need ammunition in your arguments. This too will find a place in the links boxes. UPDATE: I just read through the Fact-check section and it skewers practically everything Thompson and Lieberman said in their Tuesday night speeches as false and misleading. Valuable stuff. This points to fiery debates. First stop is Ole Miss on Sept. 26.

The Internet and the 2008 election: We're ahead

This report from Pew Research has been in the news today. Here's a link to a summary of the report, and therein is a link to the full text.

Boil it down and it says our side is ahead in use of online tools for campaigning. To keep it that way, all of us need to hone our skills. Try something new. Try something else. Talk to your friends about it and see what they do. Try another new thing.

New media laid bare

A departure here from the usual Democratic events. This post is from a lunch program I attended May 2 with the International Press Club in Miami on the new media. There were two speakers, and sometimes they had the audience gasping with surprise at how the world of journalism and communications has changed – and it ain’t standing still.

Speakers:

· Rick Hirsch, new media editor of the Miami Herald

· Allen Richards, head of department of journalism and mass communications at Florida International University

Notes from Rick Hirsch: The Herald now is so multi-media that it does 18 news broadcasts each weekday. Print output is slipping.

A handful of people with internet skills can compete with a newspaper with a $140 million printing plant.

The Herald had about 15% annual growth in internet usage until growth flattened recently. Now the paper has to do more to earn online growth with:

• Video online. All photography staff is now trained to do video, too
• Links to other media. A Herald story now may include a link to the Sun-Sentinel’s version of same event.
• Herald will have a video channel on its website soon. Now has daily video features
• No filter for public comment on Herald website. This horrifies old hands in the newsroom (Gasps from some in audience – How do you keep this family-friendly?)
• Be open to citizen journalism. Hirsch said the recent release of DOJ emails was an example. The NY Times and Washington Post put of a flood of the emails on their websites, and then some of the resulting stories came from readers who read the emails and made the damning connections.

Notes from Allan Richards. He was told to start teaching online journalism at FIU in 2002 when there wasn’t a website for the students to practice on, so they dummied one up with Powerpoint.

Later he had to do a course on blogging when he didn’t have a clue how. Students asked how; his answer was “Google is also a verb.” They figured it out.

Kids are so far ahead on digital stuff. His example was when he was asked for a photo of himself to illustrate a column, and his 9-year-old daughter took it and loaded it into the computer to be sent off.

Best website for exploring online communications: www.ojr.org, the Online Journalism Review of the Annenberg School at U. of Southern California.

There was much more, but hey, got to go protest the Veto. Later …