If I were a prefix these days, it seems I would want to be meta-. It is everywhere. Every writer wants to use it, every nouns wants to be near it.  Trouble is I really don't know what it means when it shows up much of the time.   It is one of words and aspects to language that you drift past like the names of characters in an Dostoyevsky novel - familiar enough, get the idea that its important....but just don't ask any questions, ok?

I read the following in an article in the May 26th New Yorker magazine about the troubles which are facing the New York Times over its failure to notice that one of its reporters was a better writer in fiction than non-fiction:

...when the Times makes a mistake - a big mistake, a ghastly mistake, a mistake that seems to compromise the soul of its mission - that's not just news.  It's meta-news.

What does this mean? Is the point that it is news about new like metalanguage is language about language; a collection of newsiness like metabolism is about the collection of bodily functions; or a piece about the essence of news like metaphysics. Being a made up word, it is none of them.   Without something approximating neat definition, meta- may become cliche and, soon thereafter...well, think "information superhighway."   Just this year's mega-.   

A suggestion in clarity from Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia - some.   As in:

Guhd Lahd, tha's some news about that writer at the New Yahrk Toymes friggin' up.