OFF BEAT

'TRUTHINESS' PICKED AS WORD OF THE YEAR

After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 was "truthiness," The Associated Press reported.

The word best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

"Truthiness" is credited to Comedy Central's satirical host Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

Colbert was pleased with the news.

"Though I'm no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me," he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

CONFUCIUS SAYS

Be more productive - work with Dragon.

The staff of Quill magazine couldn't agree more. How many hours have you spent transcribing your notes following interviews. If the interview was only 10 or 15 minutes, it's no biggie. But what about that one-hour sit-down with the new mayor?

You can cut hours off your work week by utilizing a digital recorder and voice-recognition software such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Simply install the software and upload your interview that is in a WAV, MP3 or WMA format. The software then turns language into print and is compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel, Corel or WordPerfect. You can also use the software to dictate e-mails, reports and your stories, if you choose. There's always editing on the back end, but it sure beats sitting through a one-hour interview twice.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred (which is what most executive and journalists would want) costs about $200, and we wouldn't recommend using it with a tape recorder. But if you can afford it, it's well worth it. And you can always write it off on your taxes as a business expense.

Learn more: www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/preferred

DEATH OF A NEWSCAST?

The headline of a Jan. 5 Gallup poll release reads, "Local TV Is No. 1 Source of News for Americans." In its annual Lifestyle survey, Gallup found that 55 percent of people get their news from local television stations every day.

That number is consistent with results from the first time Gallup measured this in 1995. (In contrast, 44 percent get their news from newspapers every day and 22 percent get theirs from the Internet.)

However, not everyone is sure this is cause for local television news executives to rejoice.

Terry Heaton, a senior vice president for Audience Research & Development, a Texas-based media consulting firm, points out that local news viewing has not grown one bit since 1995, despite all the efforts of broadcast journalists to bring in more viewers.

"It's pretty clear, news on the Internet is going up; every other medium is not," Heaton said.

To read more about this topic,

visit http://spj.org/art-edu07.asp.

- By Debora H. Wenger,

Virginia Commonwealth University