Comments | grave_medicine: Maybe it's just me, but...

grave_medicine

Maybe it's just me, but...

Jul 08, 2007 19:15

Don't they edit on-line articles? Despite the trite content that passes as news today, don't they go over these things with a fine-toothed comb anymore? Everyday, article after article, I find words misspelled, grammatical mistakes, structural faux pas and even entire sentences awkwardly repeated. Even AP has an overabundance of these errors. ( Read more... )

Comments 8

rizen July 8 2007, 23:26:18 UTC

I find similar issues with print, when I bother to pick up a paper. Not as bad, but still there.

Maybe we should be editors for a living?

grave_medicine July 8 2007, 23:51:12 UTC

We'd never be successful in the modern sense. Sure, our papers would be top of the line, but our reporters would hate us, our publishers would try to have us killed, and it would probably go over the public's head anyway. Still, if we can find a way to travel back in time to the prime of newspaper reporting...

(The comment has been removed)

grave_medicine July 8 2007, 23:56:26 UTC

Oh, I loathe that. Those seemingly random sentences that don't tie into a damned thing, so they use them as filler in an article.

You try to alert 'em, but it don't do no damn good... *sigh* serratia July 9 2007, 01:43:05 UTC

From: serratia@serratia.com
Subject: Does your website have a copy editor?
Date: June 10, 2007 9:59:31 GMT-04:00
To: newsdirector@wlns.com

To Whom It May Concern:

I just followed this link: http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=6612598 posted in someone's online journal to a story about the University of Michigan Transplant Team's plane crash last Monday afternoon.

While reading the content of the page, I was appalled at the overall low quality of the writing, as well as the numerous errors-- in spelling, grammar, and word usage-- throughout the article.

Please clean up your act, WLNS! People come to your news website looking for accurate information about current events. When the stories read as if they were written by someone who is either careless or uneducated, the public will avoid your site and seek a more professional news source.

Debra Paron

Re: You try to alert 'em, but it don't do no damn good... *sigh* serratia July 9 2007, 01:44:33 UTC

The story's no longer there; but trust me, it was atrocious. And of course I never heard anything back from them. Idiots.

Re: You try to alert 'em, but it don't do no damn good... *sigh* grave_medicine July 9 2007, 01:51:03 UTC

Oh, I believe you. This is the one that set me off: http://news.aol.com/story/_a/rv-park-bans-hiv-2-year-old-from-pool/20070708152909990001

magicchupacabra July 9 2007, 16:40:19 UTC

I blame fox 'news'.

mwenyekischaa July 10 2007, 01:51:42 UTC

Dunno, it's been going on for a long time now, so I pretty much expect it. Some's worse than others, though, and some of the more horribly formatted things are transcripts from broadcasts that they just slap up without editing at all. Maybe they think with all the chatspeak and l33t lingo on the internet, no one reading articles online notices...