Questioning Reality

I was somewhat surprised when I looked at the front page of the Living section in The Oregonian yesterday. The subhead of the feature story mentions “crowds of newbies” invading the gym. For some reason, seeing “newbies” in print on the front page of the paper made me a bit uncomfortable. Maybe I’m just used to internet jargon staying on the internet. I don’t expect newb and p0wnage to become regularly used in common English, let alone enter the lexicon of print journalism. I expect it from some of my friends, but not from The Oregonian. Maybe a weekly like Willamette Week and I wouldn’t be surprised, but for some reason, newbie just doesn’t feel very AP to me. Then again, it’s not like the headlines are being written in L33t yet. But I have to wonder how far off that really is.