New entries include: African Union; airstrike; BlackBerry; Boogie; carry-on; Chennai; farmers market; female; GPS; headlines; hip-hop; homebuyer, homeowner; intefadah; Islamic holy days; Katmandu; mentally retarded; merger (Business); Mumbai; Swift boat.
Changes and updates include: Baha’i; datelines (Baghdad); daylight saving time; editor-in-chief; European Union; Fatah; Mexico; planets; plurals (Broadcast); RSVP; telephone numbers; U.S. time zones map; track and field (Sports); volleyball (Sports); headlines (Filing the Wire); Hold for Release slugs (Filing the Wire).Deletions: husband, widower; Internet Search Tips; Laundromat; pupil, student; Serbia-Montenegro; U.S. Court of Military Appeals; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Ambiguity and an echo
I don't know what the new search-engine-optimization gurus have to say about echos ("search resumes" in the hed, "searchers resumed" in the lede), but there's no doubt that the main hed can be read as a command to look at resumes ("search" as verb, "resumes" as noun). It only takes a second or so to make the mental adjustment and get the correct meaning, but that second is precious time and the conflict has made the reader WRONG! Not anything you want to do. "Searches resume" would be better if you were correcting on the fly.Saturday, May 5, 2007
Circulation reverses in Philly
When the Inquirer's new owners -- private investors -- took over, it was said the circulation would improve when pigs flew. Circulation HAS improved and the paper celebrated with a four-page special section and even projected light images of flying pigs on the front of the Inky's building.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Must have been a slow news day...
Well my title to this entry says it all. If you look at today's front page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, you obviously see and enormous centerpiece that spans the entire length of the page. The purpose behind the centerpiece? It's not a story. It's a giant and colorful quiz that asks the reader to match each presidential candidate with each of their alternate career choices. It's different and there is supposedly a story to go with the centerpiece on the inside pages, but did it really need that much space on the front page? The concept feels much more like something that would randomly appear on the inside pages of a magazine, but not on the front page of a newspaper. Just some quick thoughts.
Thought this was pretty funny
The Demographics of American Newspapers:
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country . . . or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country . . . or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
Playoff Fever
The news I took in this weekend, and primarily yesteday, was focused entirely on the NBA playoffs. For those sports fans in the class, you have some idea of the circus that has become of the series between the Dallas Mavericks/Golden State Warriors series. This short entry has to do with a column that was written about Golden State's victory last night that gave them a 3-1 lead in the series.
"The first sign, though, that the Mavs had escaped whatever San Francisco fog enveloped them in Game 3? Nowitzki breaking out his air guitar courtside.
The Warriors, trying to keep the raucous pregame vibe going, played AC/DC's "Thunderstruck," as the players waited for someone in the TNT truck to radio the game ops director to notify the referees to motion the players out to midcourt. (Over-production, thy name is NBA playoffs.)
Nowitzki, who can rock the real six-string deal, folded down his socks and then abruptly struck an imaginary chord with a force that would've made Pete Townshend proud. The same morose German who unnecessarily painted his team into a corner by declaring Game 4 akin to "a Game 7," was, for a moment, as loose as Jack Black.
(Here's my point on the do-or-die reference: you can play as if it is, you just don't say it -- because, if you're the No. 1 seed playing No. 8, you should believe you can still come back from 3-1 down, as Phoenix did last year.)"
I see where Ric Bucher, the writer of this column, was trying to go with this, but he made a pretty bad comparison with his reference to "making Pete Townshend proud." After all, Townshend was the guitar player for The Who, and not AC/DC. Some editor should have switched in Angus Young, the actual player behind the song mentioned.
And on one more note, the passage in paranthesis is misleading as well. He references that last year Phoenix overcame this exact deficit that the Mavs face now, but it reads that Phoenix was the No. 1 seed and the Lakers were the No. 8 sead last year. Phoenix was actually the No. 2 seed and the Lakers were the No. 7.
"The first sign, though, that the Mavs had escaped whatever San Francisco fog enveloped them in Game 3? Nowitzki breaking out his air guitar courtside.
The Warriors, trying to keep the raucous pregame vibe going, played AC/DC's "Thunderstruck," as the players waited for someone in the TNT truck to radio the game ops director to notify the referees to motion the players out to midcourt. (Over-production, thy name is NBA playoffs.)
Nowitzki, who can rock the real six-string deal, folded down his socks and then abruptly struck an imaginary chord with a force that would've made Pete Townshend proud. The same morose German who unnecessarily painted his team into a corner by declaring Game 4 akin to "a Game 7," was, for a moment, as loose as Jack Black.
(Here's my point on the do-or-die reference: you can play as if it is, you just don't say it -- because, if you're the No. 1 seed playing No. 8, you should believe you can still come back from 3-1 down, as Phoenix did last year.)"
I see where Ric Bucher, the writer of this column, was trying to go with this, but he made a pretty bad comparison with his reference to "making Pete Townshend proud." After all, Townshend was the guitar player for The Who, and not AC/DC. Some editor should have switched in Angus Young, the actual player behind the song mentioned.
And on one more note, the passage in paranthesis is misleading as well. He references that last year Phoenix overcame this exact deficit that the Mavs face now, but it reads that Phoenix was the No. 1 seed and the Lakers were the No. 8 sead last year. Phoenix was actually the No. 2 seed and the Lakers were the No. 7.
We all make mistakes
It's good to know that even reporters at The New York Times are human and make errors from time to time. In fact, they make a lot more errors than I'd bet most people expect. So below is a link to the online corrections page for the Times. It's kind of interesting to look at and see that even Times can publish a misspelling of Boris Yeltsin's wife's name. Another interesting thing, the publish date on this particular page is today, but some of the mistakes corrected are nearly 2 weeks old. It kind of proves that in this profession, we are alotted occasional mistakes but there is no excuse for not owning up to and apologizing for those mistakes.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html
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