Is it just me or has the quality of editing online taken a complete nosedive over the last five years or so? Typos have been occurring since forever, but you’d think that spellcheck would eliminate nonsense words from appearing in headlines. I’m not talking like a your vs you’re or a there vs their sort of thing. I mean like this headline:
Feliver a blow? Seriously, no one reviewed or caught this? This is not that uncommon, either. I’d estimate I see headlines like that at least once a month.
Well, I grant I don’t see nearly as many in the Headlines, but yes, lots and lots of silly spelling errors that I can’t understand how they pass. Or rather, I do. A lot of ‘news’ is driven by the first clicks the fastest. So they’re pushed out with far less review than I’d expect. And the market for professional newsies seems to be minimal, so I suspect a lot of free-lance journalists are anything but formally trained or use proofreaders.
I mean, here’s an article from yesterday on CNN about the Argentinian elections:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/22/americas/argentina-vote-president-intl-latam/index.html
Massa, who is in the current government, balances a heavy ministerial portolio including inflation control, soybeans (the country’s main export) and Argnetina’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund.
“Argnetina’s”? Really?
And this is by: By Abel Alvarado, Stefano Pozzebon, Esteban Campanela, Karol Suarez and Heather Chen, CNN
None of them caught this? I suspect you have in this case, and probably others a few people putting together the information, another roughing it out as a single piece, and then, if you’re lucky, some schlub trying to check it all before rushing it out the door.
But I don’t think anyone in the media cares about fixing the situation anymore either. The above article has been up over 24 hours, and no fix. People like you and I might complain about standards, but as long as it’s understandable, we’ll still get the news, move on, and bitch to like-minded folks. And if it doesn’t have a noticeable effect on the bottom line, while being first to (digital) print does… well.
There’s no time for copy editing in the 24-hour news cycle. Copy editors just slow down the process of getting content to the public (and maybe getting scooped), so there’s fewer eyeball-minutes on any given piece of writing before it gets posted.
It doesn’t look like any of these news places have their software set to auto-squiggly spelling errors, or if it is, they dno’t care
I don’t think nobody cares anymore.
Yes. I’ve been especially disappointed by the Gray Lady (the New York Times) — they should be better than this.
I have a scan of a local physical newspaper from a few years ago that has a blatantly misspelled word in the headline. I remember complaining about the quality of editing online almost 10 years ago. To be fair, it really hasn’t gotten worse since then - but it’s still worse than it should be.
This.
Plus so many “writers” theses days are “digital creators” with no grammar nor journalism training/experience.
My GF is a professional editor (and a good one) and this has been a complaint of hers for many years.
I think the problem is it is too expensive to have full-time editors. People think they write fine and Google or MS-Word or whatever will clean things up enough.
But they don’t. More than grammar it is language and a good editor is golden if you want what you write to shine. But, when asked to pay $75,000/year for one (more or less) it becomes difficult to justify them on the payroll. Most readers probably won’t care or notice.
It cracks me up when I see it on the headline on Huffpo.
They use ridiculously HUGE fonts and they STILL didn’t notice.
No, they talk like that, to.
I’m pretty sure that they don’t see the text in a huge font when writing the headlines.
This headline was on the BBC website today:
Watch: Hurricane Otis wrecks havoc in Mexico
Which should, of course, be “wreaks.” Interestingly, in the box you see below, it is spelled correctly, but if you click on it, the headline on the actual page is wrong. (Or at least it was when I posted this.)