First it was the “tweet.” Now the New York Times has a “hipster” problem.
According to standards editor Philip Corbett, the term was used more than 250 times by the paper in the past year – that’s up from 19 in 1990 and 100 in 2000.
“Our latest infatuation with ‘hipster’ seems to go back several years, perhaps coinciding in part with the flourishing of more colloquial (and hipper) blogs on our Web site,” Corbett wrote.
It also coincides with the Times’ coverage of Brooklyn, where the “hipster” not only lives, it thrives.
According to Corbett, “[96] Times pieces in the past year that included the word ‘hipster’ also mentioned Brooklyn, edging out even once-hip Manhattan, which had 87 overlapping mentions. Queens trailed badly with 33, while the Bronx merited only a handful and Staten Island just two.”
According to a quick search, though, the most recent use of "hipster" in the paper was August 8, in a Travel section article on Boston:
To get some New England hipster cred, order a tallboy Narragansett Beer ($3.50), the region’s answer to Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Corbett is asking Times writers and editors to “look for alternatives and try to give it some rest.”
The plea comes two months after his memo to staffers urging them to cut back on “tweet” to describe Twitter posts.
That quasi-ban didn't work out too well.
