“Crisis? What Crisis?” was the name of a Supertramp album back in the 70’s. Now that I’ve shown my age, lets talk about how everything seems to be a crisis.
Perhaps it’s time to give the word a vacation or at least reduce its use.
While the uses of the word “crisis” most often fits one of the dictionary definitions of the word, it has lost its impact. We have a lot of crises, such as the state budget crisis, the opioid crisis, a constitutional crisis or go back to the time of that Supertramp album when we had the energy crisis.
If everything is reported as a crisis, is anything a crisis? For many of us, it’s a go to word or just repeating what we’ve heard before. Farm crisis, inequality crisis, financial crisis and student debt crisis are among the crises I’ve found in the last day. In news-writing we have a crisis of unintentional laziness. Next time when writing, take a minute and use a different word, hopefully one that has more impact. Make your writing better.