Not at all content

I'm a journalist, I like words as a general rule, but there's one I have a problem with: "Content".

At some point, probably while I had my back turned, it became acceptable for this industry that prides itself on plain English to stop discussing columns, copy, video footage, photographs and graphics and instead talk about "content".

If we must have a pointless umbrella term can we at least have a sensible one like, oh, I don't know, "news"?

A friend told me I was being precious when I ranted about this to him, but I disagree.

It's not that I don't understand that one day it's news the next day it's fish and chip wrappings - or some kind of online metaphorical equivalent - but I still think the c-word does journalists and our readers a disservice.

The word means everything and nothing and it's a euphemism of the worst kind that illustrates the muddled, navel-gazing that the industry succumbs to when talking about online journalism.

It's as though someone, somewhere has decided that because the new-fangled interwebnet2pointzero is here we need "content" - not cracking video footage, pics that generate hits or Pulitzer prize prose - to publish on it.

"Content" has a one size fits all ring to it, and the whiff of costs and corners cut and that's my other problem with the use of the term.

Brilliant reports, in any form, require an investment of time, talent or training - it can't be done on the cheap.

You shouldn't go slopping it about like Amy Winehouse trying to pour Sambuca shots, and no decent online editor does, so why use a term that makes it sound like we do?

It's time to relegate the phrase to manager speak and press officer babble where it can take it's place alongside "going forward", "cascade", and "synergy".

Class dismissed.