pyrrhic victory

Wow, didn't expect this thread to take off like this. My take: as long as the term is used correctly, it should run. I don't think that a reader should have to go to a dictionary or encyclopedia a dozen times in a story, but if a writer has a word or phrase that is above an 8th-grade level, as long as it's used properly, I have no problem with it. Pyrrhic victory qualifies, in my mind.

I brought this up because of a copy desk disagreement regarding something in a story we ran recently. A local basketball team with high postseason expectations won a game, clinching its conference, but lost its leading scorer and the favorite for conference player of the year to a torn ACL in the second quarter, just weeks before the start of the postseason. Pyrrhic victory was in the original copy but edited out because the copy editor (actually, the SE in this instance) didn't know what it meant, and said "If I don't know what it means, there's no way most of our readers will." Thus, Pyrrhic victory found itself the victim of a heavy 'delete' key. I disagreed with the SE's assesment, said as much, but was overruled. Thought I'd see what the sj community thought.

As others have said, this situation seems emblematic (might that get edited out?) of some of the problems facing the newspaper industry.

 

No, I don't think it does. Given that there are thousands of papers in the U.S., and only 274 times in the hundreds of thousands of stories that were printed in those papers used the phrase -- I don't think it is.

Besides, a cliche is a phrase that is unnecessarily cute or pop-culturey -- Pyrrhic victory is a short, succinct way to describe an otherwise wordy subject -- The team won, but it was so costly as to not really be worth it, vs. The team won a Pyrrhic victory.

 

I'm not that old, and labor under a constant delusion that I am 10 years younger than I actually am, but I remember a day when looking up something you didn't know was an interesting thing. No room for that no more, I guess. Not in an age where people can't even sit still during a 95-minute movie.

I always have been a protector of the average people and interested in giving them much more credit than they're worth, but not anymore. I've seen the ignorance from about eight sides. You labor for people who can't even place the Civil War or the Declaration of Independence in the right century or locate Baghdad on a world map. You labor for a terminally ill patient. Studies prove it. Look no farther than this president.

If dumbing down is what the market commands, then business sense says to go with it. Somebody's got to eat.

 

And that, General Jackson, is why I'm not long for the word business. Christ, people, get a clue and a dictionary.

Back in the day, I used Pyrrhic victory in a lede. Sports ed shook his head, rolled his eyes and let it go. Nary a call received. Managing ed was impressed with the verbiage. Guess that'll never happen again.

 

Why not just spell it out that the victory was costly? Or 'borrow' from a quote associated with that war, "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone" ie., "If Podunk High has another victory like they did against BFE Tuesday night, their season may soon be over."

To be honest, I didn't know what it meant. Had I read it in the paper, I would have looked it up as well, but most readers won't. Without seeing the entire lead, I would venture to say it's not very good ... sounds like it's a young reporter trying to look smart.

Unless the writer is going into detail, compairing their star player's injury to a war with the Romans I don't see the point. Disclosure: I got my info from Wikipedia, which I would never do without double checking for a story but is fast and easy for these purposes.

 

This really depends on your audience. If your paper is in an educated, white-collar area, sure. If your paper is in a mill town where four of five people dropped out of high school, I'd be really hesitant to use it. If you're writing to golf fans, it's an easier sell. If you're writing to, say, race fans, not so easy.

I don't think simple language necessarily equals dumbing down. It equals clear communication. If you'd have written that Michael Waltrip's win at Daytona the day Dale Earnhardt died was a Pyrrhic victory, well, that doesn't seem to fit as well as it might elsewhere.

 

I remember reading a study not too long ago that said the average newspaper reader reads at a SIXTH-GRADE level. I have a reasonably intelligent sixth-grader, and no way does he know what a "pyrrhic victory" is.

 

How come we're okay with magazines like Sports Illustrated and books using terms and words that are sometimes far more obscure than this? People with their sixth-grade reading levels can read books and magazines. Some of them actually pick them up and read them.

There's a pretty good chapter on journalism in the one Chuck Klosterman compilation I have. He talks about how newspaper executives keep saying that we have to make it easier for people to read what they apparently aren't reading anyway. He wrote, and I agree with him, is that when television became a big influence in the '60s and '70s, newspapers tried to be more like television instead of going more the opposite way. That is, they should have become more in-depth with their stories, which is what I still newspapers should do. People that are genuinely interested in a subject will read more on that subject. I think it's okay to write long stories as long as they are INTERESTING and well written.
However, again I think that most people in the business are so stodgy that they still can't get past a certain framework. They were screams and rants when the Tribune and others don't run a game story with their weekly wraps. And God forbid, they didn't run them on the front. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I've seen the damn game and I've seen the highlights 50 times on SportsCenter starting that night and continuing into the morning. I ALREADY KNOW WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED! Tell me more. Tell me why. Tell me how. Give me details. Tell me where it all fits in within the context of the season.
I happen to think there's no need for a traditional game story outside of small college and high school sports. In most instances, newspapers should be writing featurized game stories. You can use other means to sum up what happened in the game - quarter by quarter boxes, drive charts, etc. I know certain papers don't have the design resources or just the general resources to make it happen and sometimes deadline is a problem.
If it's a well-covered event, people already know what happened. Give them more. That's why people aren't buying newspapers. The newspapers aren't giving them more for the money.

Here's a couple excerpts from Klosterman:

"If I have learned anything from working in journalism, it's that people who read newspapers apparently can't read newspaper. That's all I've ever been told. Every discussion I've ever had with an editor has stressed that people despise the process of reading. What people what, I am told, are shorter stories that never jump to a different page (stories that jump to a different page are apparently too confusing for people to follow, although it certainly seems like people manage to comprehend books, which tend to be spread over man, many, many pages). ... The one thing nobody wants is sentences, and they certainly don't want paragraphs. People despise paragraphs. Focus groups have proved [sic] this."

Then he talks about the emphasis on design ..
"Their goal is to make the page look pretty. Quite simply, they are creating a newspaper to be appreciated by the illiterate. ... What's most troubling about the growing influence of newspaper designers is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As newspaper and magazines become obsessed with shorter, breezier stories and visual gimmickry, readers adopt that sensibility as normalcy. We are losing the ability to understand anything vaguely complex. At the moment, the leaders of Knight Ridder and Gannett and Thompson and all other media chains are wrong; people who buy newspapers can still read them. But give them time. They'll be right soon enough."

 

I've been saying what Klosterman says for years.

It's painful, watching the leadership drive this industry off a cliff, Thelma and Louise style.

 

This was a very good post. I was amazed that so many on the board considered "Pyrrhic victory" beyond the realm of their readers. The schools in my region aren't failing us that badly. And for those worried about losing people, what about the readers who walk away from your publication because it's too simple? I can't stand reading USA Today, although I'll make it through the sports section when it's left at my hotel room.

 

Can you win a victory? Aren't they the same thing? Would it not be
The team achieved a Pyrrhic victory.
or
It was a Pyrrhic victory.

I'm actually asking with sincerity, not to be a smartass

 

there's a way to write stories that challenge the reader and make the reader think without gratuitious use of words like Pyrrhic

anybody who thinks that just by sticking money words into a sports story all of a sudden makes them sophisticated is just wrong