What happens when journalists underestimate a story? What happens when they run out of words to describe an event? What happens when a simple thesaurus can offer only a number of synonyms to express what is already in print?
For instance when writing on an "Accident", they could alternate with the following words in the follow up articles:
"calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe, tragedy, adversity, bale, blight, blow, calamity, casualty, cataclysm, catastrophe, debacle, devastation, fatality, fiasco, holocaust, misadventure, misfortune, mishap, ruin, tragedy," ~ Thesaurus.com
Two weeks into the global financial crisis, and you can already see the cracks and strain on the vocabulary of Business reporters especially when they used up the big words early into the crisis like “destruction, debacle, slide, slump, crash, etc.”
Can you feel the pain of the reporter in that opening line? Perhaps, it is the overload of work since the 1930's great depression is taking a toll on reporters who have reported nothing but profits for the last decade.
Hammered! Side Swiped.... haemorrhaging - can't make out if the vocabulary is getting better or worse! But who cares, can't wait for my newspaper tomorrow to read the next set of words to describe the global financial scenario! Don't you wonder "How low can it go?"
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