Saturday, March 17, 2012

When editors don't edit, vol. 398

So I'm looking at the feel-good story about current former mayors raising money for charity, and I find Rowle Simmons' name misspelled as "Rollie." In both references. Then I notice that the caption on the photo has the names in the wrong order. Eyes roll, forehead meets desktop.
   I'm guessing (charitably) that what's happened here is the fundraisers wrote up a press release without professional help, sent it in with a photo, and the editors dumped it into the paper without looking at it. Someone's in a hurry or just doesn't care, and we wind up reading egregious errors that live up to the paper's reputation for amateurishness. This kind of thing embarrasses the profession, in largest part because it's so easy to fix -- just look at what you're doing. You want to charge for this thing, right?

Update, 11pm: The spelling and caption errors have been corrected online, and my comment pointing them out deleted, without a correction notice.

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