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The Skinny About Best Boys, Dollies, Green Rooms, Leads and Other Media Lingo…The Language of the Media

Guest post by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: Book Review -- The Skinny About Best Boys, Dollies, Green Rooms, Leads and Other Media Lingo…The Language of the Media – Richard Weiner, Random House Reference, Random House of Canada Ltd., Toronto CA, ww.randomwords.com, ISBN 0375721419, 304 pages, April 2006, $14.95

The Skinny About Best Boys, Dollies, Green Rooms, Leads and Other Media Lingo…The Language of the Media

Collectors are everywhere. Individuals around the globe join together to share their passion for their collections.

But the most fascinating collector is the collector of words, phrases, their histories and their meaning.

In the communications field Weiner has to be one of the leaders of the pack.

His latest collection – The Language of the Media – won’t improve your communications activities but it is darn fun and interesting to read. We gained our experience in newspapers with linotype machines. We became experts of using metal fonts pulled from the drawers without looking based on a modified touch typing method. The experience came in handy in the military as we published the station weekly newspaper off base using even older type.

We got our TV experience using manual switching boards and pushing/pulling huge B&W camera dollies around.

While the print, radio and TV “lingo” Weiner explained didn’t hold much surprises for us it was fun revisiting the words and phrases. More importantly, it was educational to learn some of the background of the words and jargon.

The Skinny About…covers more than 2,000 terms. The author has packed all 250+ pages with a rich collection of slang and jargon covering every phase of information and entertainment including movies and Broadway.

We have always watched the movie’s credits skim by and wondered what a grip, gaffer and Best Boy was and what he or she did to contribute to the completion of the movie. A couple of hints:
- Best Boy is the first assistant to the chief electrician
- Gaffer – the chief electrician
- Grip – the individual responsible for moving the equipment around

Weiner’s book covers almost every aspect of media slang, jargon and insider talk for advertising, broadcasting as well as print. If you try to read it in one sitting – as we did initially – you’ll quickly find yourself saying … “more than I wanted to know.”

But then very few people sit down with a dictionary or encyclopedia in hand and read page after page…it is simply overwhelming. You’ll have to treat The Language of the Media in the same manner.

The written text of the book is difficult to follow and digest. But fortunately includes a 28-page index so that you can read the book and then flip to the back and zero in on the words/phrases you want to get more information about…it isn’t a foolproof solution but it certainly helps.

In addition to throwing a lot of words and their meanings at you, Weiner also gives you colorful background when possible to help you understand the phrases which are in such widespread use in the Hollywood, theater, publishing and broadcast industries.

Weiner has an easy-going writing style which certainly helps in what could otherwise be a very dry listing of facts.

While new entrants in the communications industry may think that print and “standard” communications are ancient history and that everything exists on the Web, it is important to remember that some of the latest readership studies note that teens and tweens spend an average of an hour a day reading newspapers (Center for Media Research). In addition, while more than a blog a second is started, most are only personal diaries or publications for friends/family. In fact Pew Research notes that after six months after most blogs are begun only about one-third of them have entries added more than two to three times a month.

More importantly, it is interesting to see how many of the words and phrases have woven themselves into everyday language.

Be careful though, you just might learn something from Weiner about the media and communications industry as well as the entertainment field. If not, at least you’ll learn how to write better “teasers” and be better “spin doctors.”

The Skinny About… or The Language of the Media is interesting, informative and fun to read. It just isn’t a book you’ll read and digest in one sitting…

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