How can cutbacks not be mentioned in NYT analysis of Cronkite debacle?

Reminds me of a conversation I once had with an exasperated assigning editor about a writer seen by upper management as a rising star. Said writer had been promoted several times in quick succession and had landed the paper's highest profile beat, reporting to the assigning editor. When I asked how the writer was doing, the AE sighed and shook his head. ``Not so good,'' the AE said. ``He has a bit of a problem with the facts.''

Apparently, that problem wasn't a big enough deal to stand in the way of all those promotions. If management believes you have a ``voice,'' especially if it's snarky and ``edgy,'' the rest -- and that includes the basics, like facts and good reporting -- often doesn't matter.

 

As long as one person is left standing and breathing there, that whole comedy of errors should have never happened.

But the easiest way to avoid errors is to avoid them at the start, as the first words are being put on paper in the computer.

 

Interesting story.

Once worked with a prima donna. No education in writing, but momma helped non-traditional rise in the business. Drops out of school and gets a job at local daily. Wins a regional award and starts to think they're big time. Keeps rising to the top until making a comical collection over errors over a few days. Management, which had always backed them up, finally got embarassed and told her to straighten up. Gets pissed and quits. Never worked again in the business - and their peers and readers have been happy ever since.

Word of thumb: If you don't have the credentials for the job, at least give a crap enough to double-check your work, don't pretend like you know everything and don't make so many mistakes to piss off management.

 

True. No one wants to make a comical collection over errors over a few days.

 

Jeeeebus, after the Jayson Blair fiasco, I woulda thought the NYT would have tried to be a bit more careful. An obit on a high-profile person like Cronkite, a story that EVERYBODY who bought that issue probably read, and it's FUBAR.

Game, set, match. It's over. The biz is dead.

 

What were the seven mistakes?

I know they got his age wrong when he retired. What were the others?

 

It wasn't the obit.

 

Here's the correction, Mizzougrad. You can count 'em up -- seven errors, some of them very basic and embarrassing, even if not everyone might have known they were wrong off the tops of their heads:

An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

 

I love this sentence...

The short answer is that a television critic with a history of errors wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant were not.

 

The video of Katie Couric taking a swipe at STanley is indeed very amusing.

Imagine how many errors Ms. Stanley makes that are caught. That's a scary thought.

There are a lot of sloppy writers out there whose work is routinely improved by editors, and the outside world ---- and, seemingly, the higher-level editors at the paper ---- never know it.

 

yup. and i believe many, many, MANY more will be getting exposed, well beyond ms. stanley. sort of like names of baseball juicers getting leaked.

 

Sid Hartman has no idea what you're talking about.