My Billings Gazette

Of the many endeavors involving language, perhaps none is so stultifying as legalese.

So it warms the heart to see a judge -- confronted with a case involving a ticked-off golfer who wants to sue over his booting from a college team -- sprinkle his opinion not with stuffy jargon but instead golf references.

(The golfer, by the way, is Andrew Guiliani, son of the former New York mayor. But that's neither here nor there.)

In rejecting Guiliani's claims against Duke University, the judge -- U.S. District Court Judge Wallace W. Dixon -- even quotes from the greatness that is "Caddyshack":

Dixon quips that Giuliani's attempt to use a particular legal maneuver - one not recognized in North Carolina courts - "brings to mind Carl Spackler's analysis from the movie 'Caddyshack.'

"He's on the final hole," Dixon writes, quoting Spackler, the movie's mumbling, gopher-chasing groundskeeper, played by comedian Bill Murray. "He's about 455 yards away, he's gonna hit about a 2 iron, I think."

As any golfer knows, a 2 iron would do little to close such a hefty gap.

Simply outstanding.

You might recall Ralph Keyes and his zeal for ridding journalism of retro references.

Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post has a fitting response.

Read it here.

If you need proof that blogging can be good journalism, look no further than Visual Editors blogger Charles Apple and what he has pieced together about the Tribune Co.'s plans for its copy and design desks as the ailing company limps through bankruptcy.

Apple writes:

A staffer at another Tribune paper — who wishes to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons — tells us copy desks all over six Tribune-company papers are being gutted:

Reporters and line editors are being told that their copy has to be clean enough to publish because it may not get another read. Word is the copy desk is only going to read copy for the section fronts, and they’ll get to the rest of the paper if time permits.

As if newspapers didn’t have enough problems retaining readers as it is. One big advantage newspapers — and newspaper web sites! — have over a common blogger is their fact-checking, proofreading and accuracy safeguards.

And now we’re cutting back on those. Abso-effin’-lutely insane.

By building prefabricated national, international and business news "modules" in Chicago and distributing them to satellite newspapers, Tribune is sweeping away people who can be classified as "manufacturers" -- apparently forgetting that one of the key components of a manufacturing arm is quality control.

The "modules" apparently are rife with errors, and from the extensive descriptions in Apple's post of what's going on, local news at the satellite newspapers is not likely to get much more polish. The quality-control experts, alas, are being turned out en masse.

One last bit from Apple, toward the end of his post:

Another source tells us:

They are working hard on plans and introducing technology that will ultimately allow reporters to place stories directly onto pages, perhaps with one edit or maybe with none.

I have seen flow charts of Tribune’s newsroom of the future that includes basically just reporters and section editors. The only reference to visuals workers or leaders was one “editor” who would “process” all graphics, photos, video, etc. I think they ultimately envision section editors doing everything — writing, editing stories, photos, video, managing the web site, etc.

Frankly, if I was a section editor at a Tribune paper, I don’t know what would be worse, being laid off or having to stay on the job and be part of their newsroom “of the future.”

It's a scary, tumultuous, career-shattering time in the newspaper business. It may well be that Tribune, as one commenter under Apple's post put it, is just trying to survive. Still, it's not heresy to ask what kind of survival entails taking your most precious commodity -- credibility -- and leaving it exposed in this way.