Arrgh.

I know it's fashionable to bash the traditional media for not being connected to the "new media"--by which they mean, electronic and viral media--and far be it from me to jump on the bandwagon...

...but man, they're gonna have to do better than this (seen on tonight's chyron on Fox News Chicago (WFLD) 10:00 newscast):

(something something) "...Joining the 'Blagosphere'".

If the story had been about Illinois politics, I could see it as an intentional, albeit hackneyed, pun (for my out-of-state friends, our governor's name is Blagojevich, and he's commonly referred to (among many, many less-flattering names) as "Blago", pronounced "bloggo", hence "Blago-sphere", ha ha freakin' ha)...

...but the story had absolutely NOTHING to do with Illinois. The story was about student journalists in Texas who were partnering with Fox News to deliver "new-media" content regarding the primaries and the 2008 election. The word "Illinois" was not mentioned even once during the story.

All of which leads me to these inescapable conclusions: not only does the guy in charge of creating the chyron text for the 10 PM newscast not know how to spell "blog", but he hasn't seen it out of the punny, old-media context to realize that "blagosphere" is not the correct spelling of the term; furthermore, either the individual doing the proofreading for the chyron guy fell down on the job (excusable, I guess) or he/she doesn't know the proper spelling of the term EITHER (just completely, utterly SCARY.)

Sometimes it's nearly impossible NOT to take a ride on the bandwagon.