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And the next fist fight at WashPost will be...

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by JayFarrar, Nov 3, 2009.

  1. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    At this point, it's triage. Decide what you CAN do in print and do it. Don't try and middle it. Let Boz's first edition column stand and move on. If you want a clean deadline column, send a clean deadline columnist. Trying to pretend it's 1987 doesn't work for the paper or the readers.
     
  2. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    Harry, as an old and old-time newspaper guy, the thought of saying "hey it is on the Web" makes me gag. A reflex.
    But, yeah, in these circumstances that's the best thing, I think. People don't care about brilliance if it is sloppy brilliance (and count me in the camp of those who like reading Boswell).

    To our readers: Last night's game ended too late for all the copy to make the print edition. Please check www.washingtonpost.com to read Thomas Boswell's take on the game as well as (whatever)

    Ugh. If anyone has a better solution, I'm game. I just don't see one anymore. I guess we should just be glad the Web is there.

    Sad fact of life. We can't do as much as we used to do - but we still have to make damn sure what we do is done right.
     
  3. Shaggy

    Shaggy Guest

    Tight deadline or not, don't writers do a quick read-through of their work before they send it? I'm talking a 90-second skimming. Unless you're an idiot (which I know Boswell is not), a quick skim would've caught at least 30 percent of those typos.

    I edit a couple of part-timers with the old "the desk will fix it" mantra, and I want to punch them in the face. Really fucking hard.

    A piece of writing reaching a million people needs to have many editors. The first one is the writer himself.
     
  4. doggieseatdoggies

    doggieseatdoggies New Member

    I just ran this by our advertising people and they were perplexed. "What do you mean? Like, more important than the custodians?" they ask.
     
  5. SixToe

    SixToe Well-Known Member

    Shouldn't anyone from a recent college grad to a grizzled veteran be able to write a sentence without errors like this?

    I agree the system failed and bad deadlines or the more-with-less mentality has contributed to more errors. But "bare" for "bear" and "sears" for "series" shouldn't have been written to begin with.
     
  6. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    It's a multi-grain FUBAR. No one is exempt from taking the bullet.
     
  7. FreddiePatek

    FreddiePatek Active Member

    Relaying in spill chick proofed too bee I bud moves
     
  8. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    During one of my internships I worked as a copy editor and I was stunned at the number of spelling errors and grammatical errors the lead columnist (an extremely well-known and well-respected columnist) made on a regular basis.

    Some of the best writers out there would look pretty foolish on a regular basis without a good editor. Also, to be fair, when you have places that are more worried about getting it up on the net than they are about it being edited, there's blame there as well.
     
  9. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    Maybe it is just because I'm a hayseed, but why did Boswell attempt to write post-game analysis with about a 10-minute window to write and about 20 minutes for the desk to edit?
    Why not focus on something that happened early, a pitcher-hitter duel, a big hit, something. Or maybe focus on a hitter for both teams, talk to them before the game, watch BP. And then compare and contrast how they performed under World Series pressure. Write as the game goes, leave a hole for the last couple of innings and a graf up high with XX-XX for the score.
    Or maybe that was his plan and he scrapped what he had when he saw Damon get the back-to-back steals in the ninth inning.
    I guess I'm just curious to see what others think.
     
  10. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I would argue that there is nothing harder than filing a running baseball gamer on deadline when the outcome is in question.

    I've written more than my share of Sunday and Monday night football games that were completely re-written in the fourth quarter, but I always found that to be far easier than doing that for baseball.

    I almost think you'd be better off writing a feature-type gamer and just sticking the score and a few game details and then re-write a true gamer for the web after filing for the print edition.
     
  11. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    When I've been on tight deadlines, especially for something like regional or state basketball tournaments, I know I'm writing every chance I get. I'll get down a few paragraphs down during halftime, a few more at the end of the third quarter and, if the verdict looks obvious, do the rest and leave a hole for the score in the final moments of the fourth quarter ... then, if time allows, hope like hell I get some quotes that go with my version of the game!
     
  12. finishthehat

    finishthehat Active Member

    Boswell talks about it in an online chat:

    Our deadlines now are much worse than they once were. I have always had to have a "running" column in the paper that is filed before the game ends. But, in the past, that might only go into 50,000-to-100,000 papers, so any typos or errors caused by typing/writing faster than is humanly possible doesn't cause too much laughter. Then, within 30 minutes of the end of the game, I'd add post-game quotes and clean up mistakes for the next edition -- again, only a fraction of the full Post "run." Then, by 1 a.m., I do a final story -- the best I could turn out. of course, a lot of games in recent years have ended at 12:30ish.

    Now, the process is actually the same! But what you see is different. I still have to file a running column that is in my editors hands before the game ends. Or in the case of Game Four within 10 minutes of the end of the game since the score went from 4-2 to 4-3 to 7-4 and the "theme" changed a few times! However, that running column is now the only column that goes in the paper. The story I write for roughly 1 a.m. is the one you see on the internet.

    Over the years, there have periodically been perfect-storm running columns that were full of typos. the "daily miracle" of journalism was pushed over the edge oif the cliff and, that day, we lost. But not many people saw it. Now, when we have a perfect storm -- the entire paper being "held" for the series stories, a drop-deal midnight deadline, the game ends at 11:47, you file at 11:55, editors have almost no time to do anything except see what "spellcheck" identifies as a mistake (which I've already done anyway), you can get an ugly result. And we did in Game Four. I had two columns both written -- one with each team winning -- and 'spell-check" said they were free of mistakles. Ha!!! Spellcheck doesn't know that you typed "he" but intended to type "the" or "on" instead of "in" or that you didn't have the split-second needed to think about "bear" vs "bare."

    So I'm sorry about the Game Four mess. It's partly the "new world." But, really, it is exactly the same thing that happened many times before, but it only made 50,000 papers, not 500,000 ande everybody said, "Oh, that's an early edition. Read the one in the later edition. That's the real one." No, the real one is on the internet.

    That's fine because in 5-10 years, journalism will be 85 per cent on the Internet, not 85 per cent in print. (or whatever the ratio is now.)

    But it's ironic. If you really want to read MY column -- not just the "running" column which is a speed-writing attempt to get something in the paper -- then DON'T read The Wahinston Post newspaper. Read washingtonpost.com.

    But then you folks already know that -- because we're meeting online right now!

    But, again, sorry about my typos and spelling (always awful) in Game Four and the lack of editing by people who are trying their best but sometimes have to yell, "Drop that story now or there'll be no Series column in any print edition tomorrow."

    If you knew what went into making a daily newspaper -- especailly a sports section with all the old-fashioned deadline work, you'd be amazed it's ever as good as it is.

    Thanks for indulging the long explanation. (It's probably got some typos in it. You can have a fairly long chat with typos, or you can have a very short chat that is perfect. As Voltaire said, "Sorry about the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one.")


    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/10/29/DI2009102903228.html
     
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