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I hate to keep picking on the WaPo...
By
... so I'll start with the positive. Very good combo Outlook/Book Review section today, including a nice number, by Neil Irwin, on the fat target of Super Freakonomics. Sports section always excellent. Tom Toles remains the best editorial cartoonist I'm aware of. Keith Richburg does a good exploration of racial attitudes in China, in the wake of the Lou Jing controversy (the charming fashion model from Shanghai with a Chinese mother and a black American father, who has run into lots of prejudice in China; previously here, also here). And much more! Glad that I subscribe.
But I do have to keep wondering, as before and here, about such basics as copy editing. Consider this cover line for the (also good) story about the writer Edward P. Jones in today's Washington Post magazine.
The detail worth noticing:
C'mon!!! The intention behind this line is clear. But it is literally nonsensical unless it has a word like "other" or "before" in there some place. ("...has rendered the soul of black Washington in a way no other writer ever has"; "in a way no writer ever has before"; etc.) Or, making the second "has" into "had" ("in a way no writer ever had.") This is the kind of thing they put on the basic command-of-English portion of the SAT. In a blog post or a late-breaking story, OK. I make hasty errors like this all the time in email messages and drafts of stories. But on the cover of a magazine? How many people had to have seen this before it was published?
Back to the positive: lots of good stories! I'll leave it on that note.
But I do have to keep wondering, as before and here, about such basics as copy editing. Consider this cover line for the (also good) story about the writer Edward P. Jones in today's Washington Post magazine.
The detail worth noticing:
C'mon!!! The intention behind this line is clear. But it is literally nonsensical unless it has a word like "other" or "before" in there some place. ("...has rendered the soul of black Washington in a way no other writer ever has"; "in a way no writer ever has before"; etc.) Or, making the second "has" into "had" ("in a way no writer ever had.") This is the kind of thing they put on the basic command-of-English portion of the SAT. In a blog post or a late-breaking story, OK. I make hasty errors like this all the time in email messages and drafts of stories. But on the cover of a magazine? How many people had to have seen this before it was published?
Back to the positive: lots of good stories! I'll leave it on that note.
