Casual language/multimedia knowledge

Since this is my last post, I thought I'd do a little combining of subjects. First up, the issue of casual language or slang in headlines has always bothered me. Mostly because I feel like it's frowned upon unless you're in the confines of an art hed or elaborate pun. A few hours ago at work, I wanted to write "digs" in reference to a school's new building -- as in "Elementary school gets 'green' digs." (Green as in energy-efficient.) But I figured that wouldn't really fly in a normal news story. I could be wrong, but kind of don't think I am. I wonder if use of slang is frowned upon because the older crowd is who actually reads the newspaper, or publications think it's an easy way to maintain credibility, but either way, it stinks. I feel like if it's a common expression/word that basically everyone would know, why can't we use it? Everyone knows what "digs" in that context would mean, right? I think if the copy editors banded together and decided to quit being so stuffy, we could actually draw in a younger audience so badly needed with headlines that have more conversational, entertaining language.

The second thing I wanted to touch on was something I saw (once again) on Romenesko, which said something about how newspapers want to hire people who have multimedia knowledge. This scared me a little, because though I like to think I know a good amount about computers, generally, technology and I don't get along too well. Thank god for this class, that we have learned Soundslides and other programs, but apparently the more experiences you have the better. I kind of like staying in my print-knowledge comfort zone (aka basically no multimedia needed), but I know I need to push out of that to keep up with the times. I guess if we walk into a job without having a multifaceted multimedia background, we're going to be in trouble. Enter my next semester god save: the J-school's online media class.