8-year-old boy's dad didn't run in Marathon

Can't stand that rationalization. Just because things were chaotic doesn't mean he shouldn't be doing his job as a reporter.

 

People make mistakes. That's the only rationalization I'm using.

 

Maybe the father was doing a Rosie Ruiz and jumped in at end and ran to finish line.

 

You used the same joke on the N&S thread, early on in your ultimately successful quest to get it locked.

Your persistence is admirable, although concerning.

Keep it up and maybe you can get this one locked too.

It's all part of the plan.

 

Agreed. On the Boston Athletic Association's web site, there's a searchable database of every participant, by name, by state, by bib number. Within an hour of the explosion, every newspaper in the country should have been checking it to see if there was a local there. If you're writing a column where you know a specific person's name, it shouldn't be that hard to double check it. Especially if you work for the Boston Globe. That's a big boy job. You shouldn't be cutting corners.

 

That thread is still open and at this point anything is plausible. Pretty sure I was the first on here to bring to light the
discrepancy of report on the original story that everyone was fawning about Tuesday that now turns out to be wildly wrong.

 

How could he check the name of a person he didn't have?
He was relaying a story told to him. Cullen doesn't say the dad ran the race; the firefighter did.
Is it intentional misinformation to make a story read better or make it look like you have a scoop? No. Is it sloppy? A little. Is it bad info. Yes. But considering his sources, the info was good enough for a fucking transitional graf.
This isn't anywhere near as bad as what the Post has been doing this week or what CNN did the other day, Snark, so let's stop acting like it is.

 

He could have at least used the BAA site to see if Richard was entered. Takes a second to see that Bill Richard was not listed as entrant.

http://www.baa.org/entrants.htmlhttp://www.baa.org/entrants.html

 

They. Didn't. Have. A. Name.

 

Then you don't take the word of one person. You verify it with somebody else.