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The Editors' Blog
Top editors answer questions and talk about The N&O's print and online news reporting. Contributors are John Drescher, executive editor, and senior editors Dan Barkin, Steve Riley and Linda Williams. Email John with questions or suggestions.
"Pimp my fair" headline criticized
Submitted by jdrescher on 10/21/2008 - 08:42
The cover of Friday's Weekend section included tips for how to improve the N.C. State Fair under the headline, "Pimp my fair." Several readers complained.
One wrote: "In an effort to be 'hip,' I suppose The N&O felt this headline was appropriate. However, its use actually demonstrates a great lack of knowledge of the English language, not to mention extreme bad taste. The fact that it was used to describe a family event in an entertainment section of the newspaper is further disturbing and disappointing." Another reader wrote: "Could you try to get The N&O out of the sewer or is that not considered a viable strategy?"
Adrienne Johnson Martin, Weekend editor, responded: "The term, as it was used, is a colloquialism that means to upgrade or improve. If you check the Fourth Edition of the Webster's New World College Dictionary, you will see that the term comes from 'pimper,' which means to allure or dress smartly....The Weekend section, as the entertainment guide, is a little younger and a little edgier than the rest of the paper. We try to acknowledge that and fufill the paper's mission of appealing to a mass audience. It isn't always an easy balancing act but it's never our intention to offend."
What did you think of the headline? Post your comment below.
For more on the fair, go to our blog at blogs.newsobserver.com/fair
About the blogger
John Drescher was named executive editor of The N&O in 2007 and is the seventh person to hold that job since the paper was launched in 1894. Drescher, who grew up in Raleigh, started his journalism career as a summer intern at The N&O in 1981. He also has worked at The Charlotte Observer and The State newspaper in Columbia, SC. Want to post a comment?
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Comments
Pimping is good for the economy
Mon, 12/01/2008 - 00:12 — QmagicOkay let's face it pimping is not something everyone aspires to become when they are children. The truth of the matter is there are two types of people in this world pimps and ho's. If you are a boss then you are a pimp, if you are a co-worker then you are a ho. Uncle Sam is the biggest pimp in the whole game. Everybody in the USA gotta pay pimping. Look I can not get into great detail about this for the lack of time. If you want to know how pimping really works then I suggest you go buy a copy of Silky Black's Keys 2 the Game by Golden Style it will give you a better understanding of pimping the book has some very interesting material in it. The author does not glorify pimping he gives insight to the game that's been hidden from lames ever since the beginning of time.
Pimping
Wed, 10/22/2008 - 06:30 — Cranky Old Guy (not verified)Yes, it is stupid, reminiscent of lame sitcoms in which some befuddled parent mangles teen lingo as hilarity ensures.
But it is also a silly symptom of the verbization of nouns. We have an adequate supply of verbs in the Mother Tongue. There is little or no need to impose action on sedate nouns. We should not "grandfather" in a provision, so to speak. Pimp is a fine and charmingly risque noun. Had the headline writers, those geniuses at expressing complex thought in 25 spaces or less, resisted hipness and said what they meant - Primp the fair - the hed would have been informative, accurate and almost as short.
Try this headline , dear ever-disgruntled "Cranky"
Thu, 10/23/2008 - 08:23 — Debrah"Who gives a monumental eff?"
Martin is exactly right
Wed, 10/22/2008 - 20:44 — DebrahReaders and detractors---just for the sake of being detractors---are "pimping" their own points-of-view with these protestations which reveal that they might be somewhat culturally-arrested......and not know it.
"To pimp" has become virtually synonymous with the idea of improving, hawking, or promoting something.
The only thing that seems to be "in the sewer" are the readers' knowledge of pop culture and the evolution of a word.
Pimper?
Tue, 10/21/2008 - 11:08 — CharlotteCowAsk anyone who's not an English professor and they'll tell you that to pimp something is to bling it up like a pimp would because they've got tons of cash from a decidedly non-family friendly way. It should not have been used to promote a family event. And besides, it's just tacky. It made N&O look like the middle aged parent who still thinks he's "with it" because he uses words that were cool five years ago.
The word, Pimp, might very
Tue, 10/21/2008 - 10:19 — Anonymous (not verified)The word, Pimp, might very well mean to dress smartly or allure. However, Most everyone knows it as the noun...someone who is a pimp....or the verb to pimp someone or something.
I didn't think it was offensive....just a stupid way to use the word.
don't be evasive
Tue, 10/21/2008 - 09:16 — Jon (not verified)The colloquialism clearly derives from the term as used to describe someone who manages prostitutes, especially with respect to the pimp's stereotypical gawdy attire. The explanation would be more to the point had the N&O cited such pop-culture references as MTV's show "Pimp My Ride," in which we see the transitive verb form used to adorn the object in question, although that would tend to underscore readers' criticism. An acknowledgment of the obvious, perhaps followed by a statement that there was no intent to offend and even a recognition that the colloquialism doesn't rise to the level of polite conversation, would serve readers better than this pretense that the headline writer somehow judiciously anglicized a Middle French term that the rubes mistook for something else.