More TV folks trying to. String together. A complete sentence.

First, meet Michelle Rupp — award-winning Arkansas "journalist." She likes to read.
http://www.katv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12899286

Now, read her story about the local U's bookstore pulling items off its shelves because of some concocted controversy. Be warned, however, because apparently Michelle likes to read but only at the third-grade level.
http://www.katv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13273873

Holy...

 

That's pretty bad.

I wonder, though, if they are just her notes or something that were put up as a story.

Or if some helpful intern converted them into text-speak gibberish.

 

That's pretty clearly a TV script converted directly to a print form. It's not a very good script, but it was never intended to be read in that manner.

I write for TV and for the web, and you really can't readily convert a TV script to a print style. The styles are too different. It's easier to start from scratch.

 

But that's what was posted on the station's web site, whether it's intended to be read like that or not. And it reads like a third-grader wrote it. You don't want to come off sounding dumb, take 10 minutes and re-write your story for the web.

 

I'm not sure that this is even much of a story:

The bigger story is how stores, libraries, etc. (or media folks) sometimes respond to a single complaint without checking it out thoroughly.

 

What PCLoadLetter said. It's obviously a script, either written poorly or transcribed poorly. And it's a shame that it got posted in this format -- because it does make the reporter look illiterate, and it makes a damn good case for needing copy editors -- but it's not nearly the educational travesty that the original poster would have us believe. Writing for broadcast and writing for print are two entirely different things. Sad, but really nothing unusual to see here.

 

I will edit. & repost. When smoke brake over.

 

Yeah, totally agree there. It's a case of a station that doesn't give a damn about the website, not an indictment of the literacy of the reporter (though it's not well-written for TV, either).

 

I'm sure Michelle's not that illiterate, but — jesus — if you're going to take the few seconds to put something online, you gotta clean it up. If what you're shooting for is any kind of journalism, putting that up for public consumption undermines credibility. I have the same gripe on the local station's crawl at the bottom of the screen. Sure, it's only the crawl but every morning I sit there and see errors that lead me to ask if these news folks don't know the diff between their/they're, too/too, etc., how smart can their reporting be?

 

Can't disagree with you there. It does show the cultural difference, and certainly a professional difference, between print and broadcast media. But TV stations just aren't putting a lot of resources toward cleaning up the words on their websites because, by and large, people aren't coming to their sites because of the printed word, so pesky little things like grammar and syntax don't matter all that much. Or at least not enough to pay for people who can write.

Maybe someday there will be a change in philosophy, policy and ethic. Right now, though, it ain't happening.

 

That's changed pretty dramatically at my station. Everything we add to the web is now run through a copy desk in another state before it's put online. We also have three people in the newsroom strictly devoted to the web. One of them is a former newspaper editor. We never posted scripts as egregiously as this example, but our online copy is much cleaner now.

 

Congratulations on working for a forward-thinking company. Here's hoping more of them join you soon, philosophically speaking.