Things I Don't Want to Know

Not only is this a detail I don't need to know, I don't need to be told four times....

Police: Man accidentally shoots self in testicles

Police say a man accidentally shot himself in the testicles at a Lynnwood department store

Police say a man accidentally shot himself in the testicles at a Lynnwood department store.
Police spokeswoman Shannon Sessions says the man was carrying his handgun in his waistband and it accidentally went off about noon Sunday.
She says he was wounded in the testicles and also in his leg and foot. No one else was hurt.
The man was rushed to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, but there was no immediate word on his condition.
The Associated Press

More Painful Than Editing Bowling Agate

Copy editor Mike Laws has a truly bad day (and it has nothing to do with editing).

Craigslist vs CNN

The people at Craigslist are in a pissing match with CNN over its ambush interview of Craig Newmark a couple of months ago.

It's worth reading. CNN ought to be glad it doesn't depend on classified ads.

Keeping It Simple

Amacom Books has a blog post today about copy-editing mistakes, and I have to say that if using the "he and she" construction too often or hyphenating prefixes are really the biggest problems they face, they're in pretty good shape.

The OMG Factor

I thought the Huffington Post's headlines had gotten just a touch better recently, a little better focused, somewhat more accurate. But the OMG approach still does it in at times. On a video clip of a seriously botched football game--high school, mind you, headlined:

Worst High School Football Play Ever (VIDEO)

there was this response, among many others:

Dear HuffPost,

You have the worst headlines EVER. Now, see how frustrating that is?
Isn't it annoying when someone comes along and pretends to be the
end-all-be-all authority on everything BEST and WORST? Wouldn't it make
more sense to just say something like, "Funny High School Video Fail
Discovered By Our Crackerjack Sports Gurus" ... or something to that
affect? Better yet, how about you hire some legitimate sports
journalists and stop wasting our time posting fluff pieces to this sight
that seem more tailor made for an audience of six year-olds.

What many sloppy operations don't realize is that this sloppy work is like crying wolf; after a while, no one, not even the most casual reader, believes anything you post.

When Freedom Isn't Free of Plurals

I was recently whining about the increasing use of "freedoms" where we used to just say "freedom," as in "Freedom isn't free." I believe it started during the Bush Administration for some reason but I'm not sure. As in, "the terrorists want to take away our freedoms."

Then this appeared today, in a story about a Louisiana newspaper responding to a complaint about its coverage of one of Sen. David Vitter's aides:

According to Redman, The Advocate's counsel informed Vitter "we're exercising our First Amendment freedoms..."

Stop, stop, stop.

A. I don't think you really exercise a freedom.  You exercise a right.
B. While it is indeed true that multiple kinds of rights are protected by the First Amendment, there's only one in play here, and that has to do with the rights of the press.

Too often lately, newspapers have picked up the language of political hacks and their followers protesting in the streets, while discussing the Constitution.  Ordinarily, I'd say give the guy some slack and maybe he spoke a little carelessly. But he's a lawyer.

Law and Disorder

"Lawyering up" is another one of those phrases so often used incorrectly that it seems destined to change meaning.

Here's an example:

Miller issued a statement accusing Murkowski of trying to "pull an Al Franken" by lawyering up.

Aside from the smear of Al Franken who legally won a recount, the problem is that the phrase means using a lawyer to avoid telling the cops or prosecutor anything and thus avoid self-incrimination. It doesn't refer to simply hiring Applebomb, Gribbitz and Dooster to represent you in legal matters.

I Give 'Em an F

No, I'm not picking on CNN because this could happen anywhere that doesn't have enough editors or value them enough to make sure they get a couple of looks at everything before it gets published.

H/t Charles Apple and Susan Schrock.

Numbers v. Opinions

This is really weak reporting from The New York Times:

But rallies, even daylong ones, are no way to seal the border. The Obama administration insists that its statistics show that significant financing increases in the federal Border Patrol have helped bring down crime at the border and make the smuggling of immigrants and drugs harder than ever.
But the activists who gathered Sunday had a decidedly different take. The border, in their view, is still far too easy to get across and has become so dangerous that some of them brought their sidearms for protection. Organizers urged participants to leave rifles in their cars.

There's been a fair amount of reporting by law-enforcement people, such as the attorney general of Arizona, the FBI and others, saying crime is down. Some numbers might be open to interpretation but generally they're pretty factual. To write this off as simply a debate between the Obama administration and people standing alongside a fence, is very poor, not what I expect from the Times.

Step Away from the Agenda

Politico is doing a truly appalling job on coverage of the reaction to President Obama's remarks about the New York Islamic center. (I'm sick to death of hearing it called the Ground Zero mosque, because a. it's a lot more than a mosque b. It's not at Ground Zero. If you know anything about New York at all, you know that two blocks is a great distance in defining neighborhoods and distances. )


But that's not the main point. Josh Marshall flagged this first issue a little while ago and I was struck nearly dumb by the idea that Politico was trying to pass off as a "middle American" someone who reaches back into history to discuss the changeover of the Hagia Sophia church into a mosque after the Islamic conquering of Istanbul. Seriously.


In a country where far too many people don't know what the branches of government are, can't tell the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, don't now what the Bill of Rights is and can't name any member of Congress (not even their own, too often), are we really to believe that this "middle American" knows Ottoman/Crusader era history?


That led me to read this really dubious second story by Politico, claiming Obama had backed off his Friday night speech, endorsing the right of Muslim Americans to build on private property. You know, he relied on that pesky First Amendment.


Here's what Politico wrote, and my challenge starts with the headline:

Obama's comments take mosque story national

Really? I thought it went national and international when people like Sarah Palin and Fox News, with their references to the "9/11 mosque" started hurling accusations and demanding "peaceful" Muslims "refudiate" the plan?

With criticism mounting of his support for the construction of an Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan, President Barack Obama on Saturday defended his decision to wade into the controversy the night before, but backed off from his previous stance. "In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion," Obama said when asked about his remarks at a White House dinner Friday marking the start of Ramadan. He did, however, emphasize that he was not endorsing the project, just the organizers' right to build it.

Again, really? He backed off? On Friday he said, 

"But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances."

In an effort to head off criticism, widely interpreted as a gutless CYA move*, Politico added this:

But his comments Friday night were widely interpreted as an endorsement of plans to build a mosque a few blocks away from where nearly 3,000 Americans perished at the hands of Islamic terrorists on 9/11 - an interpretation the White House hadn't disputed, up until Obama's comments in Florida.

*Not really. I made up the "widely interpreted" part.


As long as cable and occasionally the networks put these people on TV as "experts," they will continue to shape the political conversation into a he said/she said battle, with no one taking responsibility for anything they say. 

Update: The New York Times, too, hints, very carefully, that Obama somehow is backing off. But read the Friday night Times story very carefully. 

Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site

President Obama delivered a strong defense on Friday night of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, using a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan to proclaim that “as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.” 

It, including the headline, seems to go beyond Obama's words. Today, it's not Obama backing off. It's the reporters scrambling to get it right, and missing. 

 Update: Media Matters concurs.

Update 2: On the matter of calling it the "Ground Zero mosque,"  a Testy Copy Editor weighs in.

Focusing on Content

There was a little tempest on cable TV (where else) over a headline that accompanied Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner's op-ed piece in The New York Times.

The headline "Welcome to the Recovery" was read as snark by many and a number of reporters (who should at least get the name right) rushed to defend Geithner's work against sarcastic comments on the "title."

I've always thought headline writers could have more fun by writing heads that commented on the stories rather than simply tried to relay information contained in the story.

This site, though, has taken on book titles, and suggests ways to make them better.

'Panel to Weigh Issue'

Or something like that. I refuse to click in the link with this headline. I want it to forever remain a mystery.

Sides Negotiate,' 'Nothing to Report''

Warning Labels

You could have a lot of (endless) fun with journalism warning labels.

Keeping It Simple

Newspapers, take note. This is a very simple yet powerful graphic from The Washington Post about the effects of different tax cut plans. 

Really?

Please tell me that's just a decorative little doo-dad and not an apostrophe in "schools."

Because otherwise, it sorta makes a bad argument.

Of course, it's not as bad as this.

Calling an Adult

My, my, I'm about to sound like a fuddy-duddy, more than usual, I guess.

An AP obit about Patricia Neal included this teenager-like paragraph:

Whenever she was in town, a bunch of her friends would always get together and have dinner, Albers said. She had wanted to be there next week for a golf tournament that benefits the center, he said.

Now, I suppose it was a paraphased quote, but the advantage of paraphrasing it is that you get to write it the way an adult would write. I have no problem with pseudo-conversational style as long as it still sounds as if a grownup were in charge.

The Value of Editors

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, though obviously it is to some who think editors are unnecessary.

A study finds higher engagement of readers on edited pages.  A lot higher. There are a number of political and commentary pages that I read each day that would so clearly benefit from five minutes of copy editing. These are columns by smart, well-informed journalists who clearly had no review before publishing but whose work would benefit enormously from just a few tweaks.

Diagramming a Masterpiece

Gene Moutoux's diagramming page is one of my favorites. Here's his diagram of the first sentence of the Gettysburg Address.

First, for the record, here's the sentence:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Names as Verbs

I'm not quite ready to take up the word "Breitbarting" since I think "lying" fits the situation but Erin McKean makes a good argument for a new usage.

As she notes, "Breitbart is just the latest political figure to give rise to a negative eponym, following in the footsteps of borked (meaning attacked in the media, from the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Robert H. Bork), quisling (a traitor, from Vidkun Quisling, who headed Norway’s government during the Nazi occupation), and gerrymander (to draw political boundaries for partisan advantage, fusing the name of Elbridge Gerry, a former governor of Massachusetts, with salamander, which is what the district drawn that way supposedly resembled)."

Spelll It Right

This is something copy editors already know: if you know how to spell, you can't help but see other people's misspellings.

The urge to then fix the misspelling follows just a nanosecond later.

Now, author Jeff Deck explains his efforts to clean up errors in his book, "The Great Typo Hunt."

'We Expect Higher-Quality Editing'

I'm very glad to see an editor bucking the trend toward eliminating copy editors as unnecessary redundancies and acknowledge an increase in errors. And work toward a solution.

Hooray for the leadership at the News Tribune. Karen Peterson deserves applause. She's moving in the opposite direction from this guy.

And are we ready for a rebound?