Really, Chicago Tribune? Really?

It's close enough. Isn't that all that counts.

 

I think that was his point.

Oh, and I hope a paper the size of the Chicago Tribune has web folks who post stuff and it isn't left up to copy editors. I really don't know, but I guess I just assumed that.

 

That was indeed my point. It probably would have been clearer had I left out the Eddie Johnson jab. I just couldn't resist.

 

It's another state of this f***ing business. It's not just somebody making a typo mistake. Management has handed over the Web sites to people who don't know what they're doing. They post something like that and it stays for hours.
I was looking at a newspaper Web site a couple of weeks ago. The home page featured "The best abdomen in the world" and it had a photo of Giselle Bundchen to link to the story. The link was dead, but this was in a featured position on the home page and it never changed all day.

 

This is a case of the Web department handling the headline for the Web site. The Trubune's actual sports department probably had nothing at all to do with it.

This kind of thing happens every day. Compare papers' Web site heads, subheds, captions and graphics (everything but the actual story text, which probably is edited by the print desk) and contrast it with those in the print edition over several days running, and you'll notice differences -- some subtle, some not -- in terms of not only style but also substance.

And the Web stuff is usually weaker, less accurate, more casual, or more likely to be stylistically incorrect, at least in terms of what has been known and done before in journalism.

What I haven't quite figured out yet is this: Are these differences actually intentional, and being used as a means of separation between "the Web" and "the paper", or are they a result of the gap in sports and journalistic knowledge, and changing news judgment/approaches and different style guidelines that I believe exists between those in the more-tech-than-journalism-oriented Web/electronic departments, and those on the traditional sports desks in print newsrooms.

 

Still worse are headlines which basically misconstrue or contradict story facts reflected in body copy. You're seeing this more and more in print, at major papers . . . never mind, the online stuff. Too much work, too few hands. Speed up the production line, dammit!

 

I don't think it's intentional, Write. I do think that better and/or more experienced copy editors spend more time proofing the print edition and that allows them to rework heds and subheds on the page. If a trained copy editor gets a look at a Web story, it's probably their first and only look -- and those folks may or may not be locked out of changing Web content on their own, too. (In which case, don't blame the Web desk -- access is usually something management decides.)

 

People in India would never make those kinds of mistakes.

 

Jerkoff, defensive management:

Institutional memory! Too expensive! More with less! Bwwwwwaaaaaaaaa!

 

We're into our 11th hour since the story was posted and the mistake still lives.

 

It's 8:15 in Chicago. Still wrong.

 

Still wrong.... not so bad that it was spelled wrong. Just that it spelled wrong, and then spelled correctly in the story. If you are going to get it wrong, at least get it wrong every time. Do it right.