“Soccer mom.” “NASCAR dad.” “Volvo Republican.”
Welcome to the “conceptual scoop,” a slightly more evolved version of that journalistic cliché, the trend story.
Roy Peter Clark, the Poynter Institute writing guru, described the conceptual scoop in 2004, attributing its parentage to at least two other journalists, Peter Gosselin and Paul Starobin. Mr. Starobin wrote a conceptual scoop about the conceptual scoop in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1996. Mr. Gosselin, who coined the term, described it as “developing concepts that allow readers to frame the news.”
We became intrigued by the idea but, unable to come up with any conceptual scoops of our own, returned to the comfort of our tried-and-true trend stories. Then the other day we heard Phil Bennett, managing editor of The Washington Post, discussing the concept on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
Mr. Bennett declared The New York Times’s Jennifer 8. Lee — our favorite reporter with a numeral for a middle name — to be “a conceptual scoop artist,” citing her 2005 tour de force, The Man Date, as a classic example of the genre. In the article, which describes the theretofore little-known practice of heterosexual men enjoying dinner together, Ms. Lee used as examples a handful of admitted man-daters, one film (Sideways), and one author (who was no doubt overjoyed at the prospect of goosing his book sales).
That sent us back to our desks to wonder what other conceptual scoops were lurking unseen on the academic beat, and what clever names could be applied. We came up with three, and invite you, the reader, to submit your own:
The Janitor Savant. Made his debut as a mathematical genius portrayed by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Reappeared recently as a Polish virtuoso pianist mopping floors at Scotland’s Glasgow University.
The Anti-Tenure Academic. Most become administrators. Steven D. Levitt, the Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago economist, is a rare exception.
The GOPh.D. David Horowitz is convinced they don’t exist, but we happen to know of at least one, Francis J. Beckwith, the conservative Baylor University philosopher who was first denied tenure but later won it on appeal.
—Don Troop
