The 2024 Buzzsaw Hall of Shame

Comments below are supplied by judges).

1. Unprecedented demand.  “If you phone a call centre or email a company today, you’re likely to hear or read that they’re ‘experiencing unprecedented demand’ and that they ‘thank you for your patience.’  This has been going on for years and is therefore ‘precedented’.”

2. Spatial computing. “This is a term to describe wearing very expensive computerised goggles on dry land.  Tech giants have discovered that there are lots of wealthy people for whom reality just isn’t good enough, so they’re selling them battery powered goggles that look like those fit-over sunglasses you could buy from mail order catalogues in the seventies.  I recommend renaming this ‘land snorkelling’ instead.”

3. Nontrivial. “This is a new and self-aggrandising way of saying ‘important’, but with a slight ‘more important than you’ vibe.”

4. Hard agree. “This means ‘my stance is firm, and I won’t be talked out of it’.” 

5. Hard code. “This is a similar term, which is part of a trend to reimagine office life as an action movie.  For instance, “I want you to hard code this into your information cascade strategy”.”

6. Deep dive. “More action movie terminology.  This means ‘examine carefully’.  I’ll bet ten bitcoins that there’s a few hundred consultancies that have diving boards installed in their receptions.”

7. Micro-influencer. “Many might question whether influencers have any value, but now we have the ‘rise’ of the micro-influencer, more likely to be ‘gifted’ a long weekend at a local caravan park by a client than a month-long residency in The Maldives.  Micro-influencers are so-called for their modest followings and the improbability of them having any effect. If someone calls themselves an influencer of any type, they are best avoided and never trusted.  If they’re called an influencer by others, expect dead-eyed endorsements for the price of a house.”

8. Parasocial. “This is a buzzword used to describe a connection with someone you don’t know personally on social media.  I suggest calling this ‘paranormal’ instead.”

9. Manifesting. “The act of trying to make something happen by thinking it will happen after you’ve done a two-day workshop with a ‘guru’ with one of those complex morning routines.  A cynic might call this ‘wishful thinking’.”

10. Flexodus. “This used to be a term to describe a group of bodybuilders moving to another gym because they weren’t getting the adulation they felt they deserved.  These days it means ‘leaving a job because flexible working arrangements aren’t provided.’”

11. Executive storytelling. “This is defined as the ‘strategic sequencing of facts and emotions’.  Enough said.”

12. Resenteeism. “Staying in a job you actively hate and appearing embittered and resentful.”

13. Toggling tax. “A recent study found that employees waste as much as five weeks a year shuttling between one app and another.  Hence, ‘toggling tax’.”

14. Infomediaries. “A sort of estate agent for your personal information.  If you feel like you’re being chased around the internet by a posse of ads for a flat pack kitchen cupboard, the infomediary is probably the scout.”

15. Critical thinking. “This means ‘thinking properly’.”

16. Paper ceiling. “A thick layer of degree certificates, framed honorary degrees, membership certificates, newspaper clippings, etc, that prevent employees with natural ability getting promotions.”

17. Edutainer. “Someone who uses magic tricks, puppets or dad jokes to teach you about ‘cutting-edge project management methodologies in twelve snackable one-hour videos’.”

18. Narrative. “Once upon a time, stories used to page-turners.  Now everything is a narrative, eg, “I’m exploring a personal narrative deep dive to elevate my leadership journey”.”

19. Elevate. “Essentially, this means picking something up off the floor, dusting it off and holding it closer to eye level.”

20. Journey. “Everything these days is a journey, however tedious. For instance, ‘A mesmerising unboxing journey’, ‘Our financial journey through the landscape of banking’, ‘The automating records management journey’, ‘A deep dive into the roadmap for your zero-trust journey’, ‘A journey to unlock the full potential of digital transformation’, etc.  Twat-Navs, in other words.”

12 Do's and Don'ts of Pitching Freelance Travel Journalists

 This is something I've been meaning to write myself, but this blogger has done a fine job, so I'll share it here instead. 

Lavanya’s Media Newsletter

Click to read

"Travel writers have many responsibilities these days: writing, editing, marketing, invoicing, acquiring images, and keeping track of constantly shifting mastheads. But if our work days are in constant flux, one thing remains constant: Our inboxes are always overflowing with press releases and pitches."

A related story I wrote may apply:

So you want to host a travel journalist

Why should you always credit shared photos on social media.

The various social media platforms we are all familiar with see an explosion of lovely images that engage, inspire and titillate us.

But before you share, there are some things you should consider.

Etiquette

It’s just good form to acknowledge the originating artist for any image you find and share even though your source may be Flickr, Instagram, Facebook or just ‘the internet’. For example, would you post a picture of the Mona Lisa without acknowledging Leonardo da Vinci? No. So even if you find a random picture of a building, landscape or public figure somewhere on the web, so too it follows that you should make every attempt to credit the originating artist, not just the place you found/stole it.

Copyright

Now, this is where you can come unstuck. Intellectual Property (IP) is protected by law, specifically the law of copyright, and there are many lawyers and quasi-lawyers trawling the web looking for violations and issuing scary notices that will either instruct you to remove the image immediately or, worse, pay an outrageous fee. Even if their basis of claim may be fragile, can you afford the expense and hassle to defend yourself?

Making clear and precise acknowledgement of the artist/photographer/writer in any IP you are sharing, gives you a measure of protection under what is known as ‘fair use’.

Here are some key points sourced from the Copyright Council

• Copyright is infringed when copyright material is used without permission in one of the ways exclusively reserved to the copyright owner.
• There are some situations in which people can use copyright material without permission, either for free or on other terms.
• A copyright owner is entitled to commence a civil action in court against someone who has infringed his or her copyright and may be entitled to various remedies.
• Some infringements of copyright (usually those that involve a commercial element) are also criminal offences, and various penalties can be imposed if someone is convicted of a copyright offence or issued with an infringement notice.

It should be noted that if you find an infringing image (for example) and proceed to share it, you can be held responsible for the same infringement. An area of danger in this regard is when you find a stock library image being used by someone who may or may not have paid for the right, you run the risk of getting a knock on the door from the legitimate copyright owner or their lawyer asking you to demonstrate your right to use the image.

Trademarks are another whole area of law, so when you use a corporate logo, be very sure you have permission.

When is ©opyright expired or not applicable?

You’ve probably seen the term ‘Public Domain’ meaning that the work is published (like uploading to Wikipedia)  and the artist has deemed the work ‘copyright free’. But this doesn’t mean you can use it anywhere and anyhow. Even Public Domain work has limits and you should know them.

‘The photographer is dead. It should be okay.’ 

Not necessarily. Even though the rule of thumb is that copyright expires 50 years after the death of the author, this is not a hard and fast rule. Copyright can be owned by the estate of the artist or the originating publication, like a newspaper or magazine. Be careful.

Copyright is a complicated area of law, so it can be dangerous to assume “she’ll be right”. So, if in doubt, posting a detailed credit or acknowledgement can sometimes shield you from ravenous copyright lawyers.

This article is published as a guide only and should not be construed as legal advice.

Roderick Eime is a professional writer and photographer with 40 years of experience. He holds tertiary qualifications in journalism from the University of Queensland and taught photojournalism at Charles Sturt University - Mitchell.

Five reasons to like Google Docs

Collaborate

Have you ever been embroiled in one of those content projects where docs are flying back and forth and everyone has their tuppence worth scrawled in the margin? Yeah, that would be all of us, right? Well at least with Google Docs everyone is working on the same document together, more or less simultaneously. While they're not eliminated, crossover edits are greatly reduced - and with version history, at least you know who to blame!

Optical Character Recognition

Once upon a time, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) was so clunky, you'd spend more time correcting the mistakes than it would have taken to type the whole thing out with one finger. Google Docs has a surprisingly accurate and useful OCR function that does all the work online. For example, just upload an image with text, open in Docs and 'Hey Presto'. Text.  It's a thing of beauty.

Back-Up and Share

Google Docs (and now the whole Drive system) creates a safe, searchable archive of all your documents, so when your dog eats your homework, you always have a backup. Where's that story on Belgian waffle face treatments you wrote last year? Can't find it on the hard drive because you gave it a stupid name, but just search Docs and .. shazam! There it is.

Spelling and Grammar

Google Docs has pretty decent spellcheck and now that it works hand-in-glove with Grammarly (a powerful third-party spelling and grammar checker) your embarrassing mistakes are minimised.

Recognise and Download in multiple formats

Choose a whole bunch of different formats to download including PDF, MS Word, HTML and even ODT, a format used by MS Word's big free competitor, OpenOffice. We'll discuss that later.

Buzzsaw's 2020 Hall of Shame: The top 15 eye-rolling cliches and buzzwords.

Don't you just love it when someone says what everyone is thinking? Thank you Buzzsaw.

This top 15 list reflects this year’s most frequent submissions to www.thebuzzsaw.co.uk, now in its 10th year.

The Buzzsaw, an online tool that strips the buzzwords out of press releases, speeches and blog posts, today announces its awards for the worst jargon of 2020.

The list is based on frequency of submissions from editors and correspondents worldwide.

The 2020 Buzzsaw Hall of Shame (Comments below are supplied by judges).

‘Curated’.
Judge’s comment: “A word that has been brutalised by Hipster culture. Google practically anything – potatoes, burgers, you name it – and there’ll be a curated list somewhere in the world. To make it worse, lists are often ‘carefully curated’, which is tautologous.”

‘Content’.
Judge’s comment: “Second only to the vacuum of space as the emptiest thing in the universe. It’s like calling literature or journalism ‘words’. It’s the high watermark in the commoditisation of writing.”

‘Disambiguate’.
Judge’s comment: “A word that rather cleverly obscures the thing it seeks to clarify. Like spraying mud on windows to clean them.”

‘Human Capital’.
Judge’s comment: “The latest in the personnel department’s march towards balance sheet.”

‘The new normal’.
Judge’s comment: “Unfortunately it is catching on. I get hundreds of emails a week that reference this phrase.”

‘In the time of Covid’.
Judge’s comment: “Gabriel Garcia Marquez it ain’t.”

‘Reach out’.
Judge’s comment: “My standard response is ‘back off’.”

‘Circle back’.
Judge’s comment: “Sigh. Incoming Halley’s Comet press release.”

‘Ideation’.
Judge’s comment: “A bold attempt to make a bad idea sound better than it is by diverting our attention.”

‘Bake’.
Judge’s comment: “Please stop using this as a noun. It is a loaf or a cake. It is not a bake.”

‘Fake news’.
Judge’s comment: “An oxymoron of such heft that only a moron could coin it. Unfortunately it has caught on.”

‘Mainstream media’.
Judge’s comment: “A tedious blamefest, thinly disguising a lack of ability to debate properly.”

‘We remain cautious’.
Judge’s comment: “On a quarterly basis, listed companies invite their advisors to visit them and help them draft their financial results statement, including the outlook statement. These three opaque words are the most overused and expensive a company will ever buy.”

‘Going forward….’.
Judge’s comment: “I long for the day someone writes ‘going backward’.”

‘Solutions’.
Long-time Hall of Shame member, best exemplified by the sticker company that describes itself as ‘a global leader in adhesive labelling solutions’.

Dishonourable mentions:

‘Prepone’:
Judge’s comment: “A word that seems to mean that something has been brought forward, potentially resulting in a missed flight, etc.”

‘Best’:
Judge’s comment: “As a sign-off on an email, this feels really ill-judged. If you can’t be bothered to say ‘best wishes’ or ‘best regards’, it’s not a great start, is it?”

‘Preneur’:
Judge’s comment: “Rule of thumb: if someone describes themselves as an entrepreneur, they probably aren’t. Worse still ‘cakepreneur’, ‘burgerpreneur’, etc. Fun game: try putting ANY word in front of preneur and googling it. Chances are, there is one.”

‘Awesome’:
Judge’s comment: “Not since the devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar, has something devalued as much as the word ‘awesome’. To be full of awe in the presence of a tea towel or poached egg is setting a very low bar.”

Final note to PRs:
Paste a press release or speech into the Buzzsaw and the document is checked against a database of thousands of buzzwords and clichés. The document is returned with all matches struck through in red.
www.thebuzzsaw.co.uk is used by thousands of organisations worldwide.

Same old Instagram cliches.

Now, call me an old fuddy-duddy, but as an early adopter of the Internet (first pages published mid-90s) I've seen most of the good, bad and ugly of the web and social media even before it was called that.

I've seen trends and fads come and go. MySpace, CompuServe, OzEmail, Lycos etc

As a former university photojournalism lecturer, I do believe I have an eye. Two in fact. And both give me the same feedback when I see some Instagram feeds.

I'm singling out Instagram because it is the pre-eminent visual social media tool and one that seems to be 'hot' right now. Okay, and Pinterest. But let's stick with Instagram.

Perhaps I'm not the right guy to be jabbering on about Instagram as I have a pathetic number of followers and I don't own a swimwear range and would fail the Men's Health cover model test. Badly.

Now, there's an old quote that says "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like (or hate)" and the same goes for me. Especially on Instagram.

Just like in travel writing, the same goes for images. Same old subject matter. Same compositional treatment. Same filter overdose. Same narcissistic crap.

What am I on about exactly? Well, here's a collection of images that would definitely NOT get my click of approval.

It might have been clever once, but now .. not so much.
Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Sphinx, Devils' Marbles. Give it a rest.
Okay, the LEGO one is funny, but now that you've seen it, you're just a copycat.

Unless you have the body of a deity, leave it alone. Please

Eeks! Throttle off the HDR filter. That 'Woodstock' effect is way too much.

Are you endorsing a leg wax? Then don't.

Centering our chakra, are we? Spare me.

Have to 'hand' it to the guy you started this craze, but now I want to shoot him.
Let go already!

Hey Moses, did you just part the Red Sea? Nuh. 

Got tickets on yourself? Unless you are a proper A-Lister, give us a break.

The best Instagram feeds IMHO are those that surprise. Be original. Be new. Be dazzling. No one likes a copycat. Even if you only have 12 followers from your knitting circle.

Want to pick me to pieces? Go ahead. Here's my Instagram.

Blogger fined $420k for #fakenews

The 'Belle Effect' is an age-old syndrome already rife across all our media platforms. When will we learn?

Australia’s Federal Court in Melbourne has handed down a verdict following an investigation by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) which determined that the blogger and self-proclaimed cancer survivor, Belle Gibson, had misrepresented herself and made fraudulent claims.

In a landmark case that should get the attention of all social media gurus and ‘influencers’, it highlights the vulnerability of the public in getting their news and advice from so-called experts via unverified social media sources ie #fakenews. A glaring case of ‘people believe what they want to believe’, fueled by a popular media hungry for sensation and a complete lack of fact-checking in their rush jump on the bandwagon.

Young, blonde and vivacious, Ms Gibson seduced not only the public, but also the media and publishing industry with her story of self-curing brain cancer with diet and alternative therapies.

Even when exposed, 60 minutes saw a way to keep the gravy train rolling

She was frequently seen on TV chat shows and obtained a book deal with Penguin who also copped a $30,000 fine for being part of the “unconscionable sequence of events”, although we hope this error was unwitting. The book, ‘The Whole Pantry’ has since been removed from shelves. All this gleefully gobbled up despite the fact that Ms Gibson refused to show any proof of her diagnosis for cancers she claimed to have in her blood, spleen, uterus and liver by a German magnetic therapist who she consistently declined to name. In the end, it was former friends who blew the whistle on Gibson, not any decent journalist or investigator.

What do you think it was about your Instagram posts that attracted so many followers? "Authenticity and integrity. It really is that simple. There’s not enough honesty out there." — The Whole Pantry, Belle Gibson

Whether it's the likes of Peter Foster and his amazing herbal tea, 'Dr' David Kaye and his Sydney Trauma Clinic or the perennial 'snake oil salesman', the 'Catch Me If You Can' fraudster seems to be a permanent part of our landscape that now extends to social media.

Con artists have been around forever. Social media gives them a new global platform.

“It should be no surprise that these (falsehoods) have adapted for the times and can now be found in a variety of TV shows, apps and websites peddled by a cacophony of wellness bloggers (who strain both credulity and grammar), lifestyle gurus or outlier doctors,“ wrote SMH columnist Amy Gray, “The surprise is that we still fall for them."

PAUL BARRY: ...what’s remarkable about Belle’s remarkable story is that no one who swallowed it apparently bothered to check it was true. Not the publishers at Penguin. Nor the chaps at Apple. Nor a parade of media admirers at The Sunday Telegraph, News.com.au, Cosmopolitan, Australian Women’s Health, Marie Claire, Elle and Channel Seven’s Sunrise, among others.

— ABC, Media Watch, 16 March, 2015

As the many thousands of dollars rolled in, the glamorous huckster promised to make donations to various cancer causes, specifically one to assist the family of young Joshua Schwarz, a boy with an inoperable brain tumour who she said mirrored her own experience. She failed in all these promises, donating a paltry $10,000.

In handing down the fine, Federal Court Judge Debbie Mortimer said, "If there is one theme or pattern which emerges through her conduct, it is her relentless obsession with herself and what best serves her interests."

We swallowed it 'whole'. Every last morsel of bullshit.

Ms Gibson refused to appear in court for any of the hearings and has never issued any sort of apology.

While there may not be many on the scale of Ms Gibson’s scandal, social media is rife with biased opinions paid for by PR-hungry brands looking to muscle in on media attention, social or otherwise. Nevertheless, many small-time ‘influencers’ in the travel, lifestyle and fashion space are having a similar effect on the opinions of the public, hopefully without such potentially disastrous consequences.

Pleased with the fine and ruling, Victorian Minister for Consumer Affairs, Marlene Kairouz said Ms Gibson “... knew exactly what she was doing and thankfully there aren't many people out there like Belle Gibson."

Or are there?


Sources include ABC News