Comments on: A Media Availability, or: I’ve Called You Here Today To Tell You To Get Off Of My Lawn

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:40:15 +0000

Let’s call it an “organic homage”.

I’ll be holding an organic homage at 2pm this Friday at the downtown Carl’s Jr.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:40:12 +0000

Wikipedia, in it’s writeup on Press Conference, says this

Self-deprecating ironic misuse, or hilarious hypocrisy? You be the judge.

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:56:01 +0000

Looks like Akismet is wary of random piles of Chinese characters. Restored!

By: language hat

language hat — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:51:40 +0000

Here's the book. Search on the phrase.

By: language hat

language hat — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:51:05 +0000

I just tried to leave another comment (with a definition from a 2004 book), but it didn’t show up in the thread. I’m used to being SILENCED ALL MY LIFE, but this is ridiculous.

By: language hat

language hat — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:49:39 +0000

From 媒体关系指南/高级商务沟通指南/Guide to Media Relations by 申克勒, Irv Schenkler, 赫林 Tony Herrling (Published by 清华大学出版社, 2004), p. II.18:

Media availabilities: A compromise between a full press confer ence and time-consuming multiple interviews is called a "media availability" (or "media avail"). You make your spokesperson available for a set ten or fifteen minutes, satisfying the media's need for real-time comment, and then get the busy executive back to business.

By: language hat

language hat — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:37:25 +0000

Grr. Just pretend I removed the extra added “Edward Offley” as I intended to.

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:32:31 +0000

Yeah, that’s interesting. Scare quotes certainly argue against it being old, though I suppose it could be old, unpopular, and reviled.

OED has a single cite (from Oliver Wendell Holmes!) for plural availabilities, but that seems to be in a very different sense — those things to which one can avail, by my reading.

By: language hat

language hat — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:25:31 +0000

From Pen & Sword: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering the Military
by Ed Offley, Edward Offley (Marion Street Press, Inc., 2001), page 223:

The normally helpful Navy PAOs on the scene were powerless to help disseminate the most routine information about the ships, and a “media availability” at pierside almost turned into a reporters’ riot when local journalists were herded into a fenced compound out of earshot of anyone and prevented from obtaining a single quote from crewmen or PAOs.

If it was in a book published in 2001, I’m guessing it goes back to the last years of the twentieth century, though not very far back, judging by the quote marks.