Author Topic: My favorite paper is not having a good day  (Read 806230 times)

Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #60 on: October 21, 2017, 01:15:00 PM »
Let's start with an interesting video from The Record that was sent to me by fellow member Homer Jones. Actually, it's the title over the video that draws your attention because it declares that there's a new county in New Jersey:

"Pedestrian crashes spur crackdown in Paterson county"

See for yourself: https://njersy.co/2gxuwDN


Today's gremlins:

1. I guess redundant credit is better than no credit at all...........BUT IT'S STILL REDUNDANT!


2. Some space cadet left one out.


3. Speaking of space cadets, another one thinks that Game 7 in a series that's tied at 3 games apiece might not be necessary. Can somebody please explain how the postseason works to whoever creates these "helpful" schedules?


4. There's a very "TELLing" omission in this sentence.


5. It seems that every Record writer is confused about the use of "and" followed by a comma. Here's when it should be used:

...when "and" is being used to coordinate two independent clauses. An independent clause is a group of words that has a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a sentence. In the following example, the independent clauses are in brackets:

    [Miguel took piano lessons for sixteen years], and [today he is an accomplished performer].

The use of the comma would also apply when any of the seven coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) join two independent clauses.

Notice in the next example that we do not use a comma before "and" because it does not join two independent clauses but merely joins two verbs:

    Miguel took piano lessons for sixteen years and today is an accomplished performer.

Here we have only one independent clause—two verbs ("took" and "is") but one subject ("Miguel").

In two different articles on the same page (5S), the same writer was really confused, using both versions multiple times - some right and some wrong - but never with any consistency. I'm not posting the articles because it's too time-consuming to list all the similar problems, it would take up too much space and you don't really care.


6. I'd rather take up too much space with something else because The Record took up too much space in printing a story yesterday about a former Bergen Catholic quarterback from Hillsdale named Tanner McEvoy who is returning to the area as a wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks when they play the Giants this Sunday at MetLife Stadium. They reprinted it again today - albeit somewhat shorter - with the same picture (to fill up space?).

Basically, they took a writer's story and sliced out a couple of paragraphs (to fit the space?). What remains is not rewritten and the byline is the same...............essentially, it's verbatim filler.

Of the last three images, the first two are from yesterday and the third one is from today.


« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 01:16:32 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #61 on: October 22, 2017, 01:15:01 PM »
1. Well, lookee here - they finally got it right...............no "unnecessary" games questions.


Back to getting it wrong:

2. "COULD"


3. Splitting an unsplittable word


4. "GAMES"


5. "MEANT"


6. "EXISTS"


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #62 on: October 23, 2017, 12:39:58 PM »
One or two (or thirteen) little items today:

1. "...the he New York Post..."?

2. "The was the recurring  theme..."?

3. "And ti was a total team effort." (There's no "ti" in "team".)

4. "...Girardi..." what? "said"? A paper isn't doing much informing when it makes its readers guess.

5. Initially, the only thing to fix was a missing "of" before the last two words, but when I jumped from the print edition to the straight online edition, "sea-son" popped it (it had been split properly between sentences in the print edition).

6. "...will now assembling..."?

7. Shouldn't there be an "I" before "love"?

8. If you make mistakes, you make (or create) blunders - you don't take them (read the line before it). Would you say, "I took a mistake" if you made one?

9. Taking out the "along with linebacker Darron Lee" part, you have a sentence that reads, "Then he gave let Stills get loose for the game-tying touchdown."  Oy.

10. & 11. These are from two different stories by the same writer on the same page. I've included the next line of each story to show that they are, indeed, from two different stories. I'm seeing more and more of this type of repetition from the same respected writer lately, but he never did this in the Borg days, so I'm guessing that someone is fooling around with his stories.

And to think.........before I saw the larger picture, I was only going to post these because of one word: "entangle". The officials weren't waiting for the players to entangle - they were already entangled. The word that both stories needed was "untangle".

12. The second of those two stories finished with backwards game-scoring (darker print). Why would anyone consider this to be a good idea?

13. After those dozen doozies, we head over to the Better Living section and a story about diners.

"Why they are an icon"? Why is plural singular? "Why they are iconic" might be better. And why doesn't the last sentence end with a question mark? Is it not a question?




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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #63 on: October 24, 2017, 12:00:00 PM »
1. In fewer words, pluses = minuses.


2. Read the first paragraph. Shouldn't the second paragraph begin with something like, "It's quite another thing to..."?

ALSO: "...patience over impulsive..."? Noun over adjective? Wouldn't "impulse" or "impulsiveness" fit better?


3. How did "returning" become "retraining"?

Unlike in the print edition, there's no space here between "21" and "snaps".


4. Who can forget when Ron Artest changed his name to Metta World Peace? Here's your answer.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #64 on: October 25, 2017, 01:40:01 PM »
Not too bad today: one misspelling and one slightly-odd caption.

1. The Jets' GM is Mike Maccagnan - not Maccaganan.

2. "...second from bottom right..." in this caption implies that there are identifiable people in the upper part of the picture. There aren't. "...second from right..." is all that's needed.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #65 on: October 26, 2017, 11:38:34 AM »
1. The comma isn't needed and change "are" to "is" (unless "Atlanta are off to a shaky start" sounds right to you).


2.  Unnecessary hyphen should not be there.


3. What a great photo this would be: 3 large men sitting in a sideline seat! With their salaries, you'd think each could afford his own seat.  ;)


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #66 on: October 27, 2017, 11:55:04 AM »
Besides 3 different sections of today's Record, we also have contributions from its local weekly - The Hackensack Chronicle.

1&2. Let's start right off with two versions of something on the front (1A) page. In the straight online version, the caption is exactly where it should be - right under the photo. In the print version, it's about a half a mile away.


3. On the very next page, we find this "sentence". It shows 8 words.......it needs 11, like maybe add "failed to respond" or "did not respond" after "rapper"?


4. On the third page of the Local section, I have a proposition about a preposition: change "to" to "from". "third to the right" means you're starting from the left, while "third from the right" means you're starting from the right. In this particular case, you wind up with the same guy from either direction (in a lineup of 5 people, "3" is always in the middle), but if there were 4 or 6 in the lineup, the result would be different.

Why not just write "(middle)"?


5. On the 6th page of the Local section, a hyphen is missing. It should read "months-old".


6. Only one minor problem in Sports today: change "sat" to "sit".


On to The Chronicle:

7. In a weekly, you obviously can't expect to read only yesterday's news and you might skip the week-old news because it's........well, old news. - you've read it before.

If you go back to my October 5 post, you'll find a mention of my annoyance at the banal phrase, "looks on". THREE WEEKS after the publication of that story, it's the Chronicle's front page story, with the same caption (except they changed "Wednesday" to "Oct 5"). Mom, Mom - still looks on.

Talk about stale news!


8. Slight issue with the word "don". It's a present-tense verb meaning "putting on clothes". These people are not putting on clothes. They presumably donned them at home.

I'm trying to come up with a more appropriate verb to replace "don" in this caption. "Wear" is as boring as "looks on"............how about "sport"? (How about getting a new caption writer for both publications?)



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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #67 on: October 28, 2017, 02:00:00 PM »
1. Future writing about last night's game = stale news

2. "I was just try   " =  cliffhanger (tune in tomorrow when this doesn't get resolved)





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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #68 on: October 29, 2017, 01:25:30 PM »
Why, why, why, why................


1&2. This symbol is used in connection with unidentified currency. Why was it used 3 times in this story? (click to enlarge if the symbol is too small in the story) And why is there no comma after "Of course"?

3. Why is "joined" capitalized?

4. Why isn't "storm-proofing" hyphenated in this front-page secondary headline?


« Last Edit: October 29, 2017, 01:27:37 PM by BLeafe »
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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #69 on: November 01, 2017, 11:20:02 AM »
The Record appears to have undergone a bit of design change and the last couple of days have shown fewer errors/omissions. I don't know if those two things are related, but let's hope they are.

A couple of errors a day DO add up, so here's what's accumulated since Monday:

October 30

1. Isn't "isn't" missing?

2. You can't put an apostrophe at the end of "can't". It sticks out like an even sorer thumb when the next two sentences do it correctly.


October 31

3. "jimmies"? Short, easy-to-make kicks are referred to as "gimmies"................unless, of course, ice cream cones were involved somehow.


November 1

4. You NEVER use an apostrophe when pluralizing words! (and that goes for every lawn sign that shows the family surname, like "The Smith's", which denotes singular possession) The Smith's.......what? The Smith's House? Even that's wrong. It should be "The Smiths' House".

5. Read the sentences next to each "X". It's pretty clear that the Jets will be playing the Buffalo Bills tomorrow night. So why is the last sentence necessary?


The TV Time Sunday supplement

Lastly, remember the problems I posted about concerning the paper implying that certain baseball playoff games might be unnecessary, when that were absolutely necessary? The TV Time section made if even worse for the two most important World Series games - Game 6 and Game 7 - which were scheduled for last night and tonight. Because these listings are prepared well in advance, they SHOULD have blocked off the space and added "if necessary" to the Channel 5 (FOX) listings beginning at 8pm each night.

Instead, there's no mention whatsoever of the possibility of FOX's biggest moneymaker of the year being played on those nights. Instead, they simply listed all the regular shows that run during those time periods.

This may not be The Record's fault because I think the listings are supplied by an outside source, but it sure doesn't help the paper's image.

NOTE: The October 29, 2017 date on each is the date that the TV Time was published - not the Tuesday or Wednesday listings dates.

« Last Edit: November 01, 2017, 11:30:01 AM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #70 on: November 02, 2017, 10:40:00 AM »
1. Do you think they might have left out "think" as the third word?

2. While "games" is a plural word, "playing games" is a singular thing, so "don't" should be "doesn't". Just take out "on Thursday night" and see which sounds better.

3, 4. Over-punctuation strikes twice. Lose the apostrophe from "Thursday's" (never pluralize with an apostrophe) and the comma after "well" (there's no second subject after it).

5. This is NOT Record-related, but it's IN today's paper, so it's fair game. Isaac Newton is not Gorgh's ancestor - he's a descendant. An ancestor is one from whom a person is descended. Gorgh would be Newton's ancestor.

Important stuff, huh?


« Last Edit: November 02, 2017, 10:47:21 AM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #71 on: November 03, 2017, 11:34:59 AM »
1. Two stupid for words


2. How can anyone still not know when to use "less" and "fewer"? If the noun is a singular word that can be pluralized by adding an "S" (like "yard/yards"), you always use "fewer" - this case, fewer yards. If the noun can't be pluralized that way, i.e., a collective noun (like "yardage"), you use "less". Think of it this way: if you don't drive as much as you used to, you're using LESS gas (or FEWER gallons) than you used to. Does "fewer gas" sound right to anyone?

After a couple of decades, the people who write TV commercials STILL can't figure out that "less calories" sounds incredibly ignorant to anyone with a decent grasp of the language.


3. Can anyone figure out what this part of a headline is talking about? Did the Mets lose a long, 22-inning game to the Nats yesterday? How could that be? The season ended 2 days ago.


4. Well, here's your answer. When was the last time you saw someone's name not begin with a capital letter - especially in a headline?



Say what you want about the previous ownership of The Record, but these types of errors almost never occurred in the paper back then. Now that it's a near-daily, multiple occurrence, it seems that attaining a mastery of 3rd-grade-level spelling and grammar is nearly impossible.




« Last Edit: November 03, 2017, 11:43:09 AM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #72 on: November 05, 2017, 11:30:02 AM »
A half-dozen little annoying things, starting with one from yesterday:

1. So I'm reading the SATURDAY paper on SATURDAY morning, looking at the TV listings to see what's on that evening, when I see the picture and blurb for The Breeders' Cup at 8pm. But instead of saying "Tonight at 8pm", it says "Saturday at 8pm", as if the paper I was reading was from an earlier day in the week, meaning SATURDAY was in the future.


2. Did you know that Jimi Hendrix pre-formed something at Woodstock? Neither did I.


3. From today's TV Time weekly TV listings section: As everyone knows, the name of the magazine is "Rolling Stone".

On another note, TV Time recently underwent a makeover in which they decided that the day should no longer have 24 hours. Instead, they cut it to 16. According to TV Time, TV no longer exists from midnight to 8am ("but here's a bunch of useless junk to fill in the spaces to make it OK").

They fixed what wasn't broken................how thoughtful.


On to the sports section - the treasure error trove of the paper:

4. How do we know that this dull-as-dishwater, generic caption is accurate? Maybe he's on the sidelines. What indicates that he's "getting ready for a play"? What action on his part shows this in the photo?


5. You'd think they could have moved the schedule a tiny bit to the left to accommodate the date. There was plenty of room. Sloppy.


6. Look how many lines you have to read before you realize that it's a quote without the starting quotation marks.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #73 on: November 06, 2017, 03:00:06 PM »
1&2. Today starts off with an odd visual in the comics (print edition only). The colors start to get weird mainly in the right half of the three strips (a tan sweater becomes half-tan and half-pink and then all pink). In the second image (online edition), there are no such problems (except for the online controls that overlayed on part of the images).

3. Where did "at" come from?

4. Anyone have a clue how "Wej've" is pronounced?

5. It started off OK with the first comma, but forgot the second one after "Eagles".

6. Unless the game is still going on, the word should be "appeared".

7. "at" should be "and" (unless - of course - fans were agreeing with the jeering fans and cheered them on).


« Last Edit: November 06, 2017, 03:02:16 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #74 on: November 07, 2017, 11:00:00 AM »
1. Why did the first question get a question mark and the second one didn't?


2. So where's the statement?


3. Ever hang a picture? Basically, you put it in a frame and hang it from a nail in the wall. I doubt that this "skyscraper-size image" - as the article refers to it - is hanging from a wall, as the caption infers.

The writer of the article is Steve Popper, who's written for The Record for quite a while. He is not a staff photographer, as what's under the caption states. He's a writer who covers the Knicks and took a photo while he was near the Garden. It's cheaper than sending a real staff photographer along with him just to take that picture (pictures of the game in The Record were taken by a USA Today photographer).


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