Why are there so many spelling errors in newspapers recently?

[Markxxx]

@Nava

Which is a perfect example of the kind of mistake that can be caused by putting a piece of text through the spellchecker and accepting everything blindly.

But the OP seems to be saying that spellcheck could solve it.

A spellchecker might not get there for their (a grammar checker might get it) but a spellchecker certainly would get their mispelled as thier.

[Colophon]

Sub-editor here, on one of the few UK papers that still has a reasonable number of them.

I concur with what has been said above, and add a few points:

Some papers have actually dispensed with subs altogether, and allow reporters to write their copy straight into “page templates”. This strikes me as an economy of the falsest kind, seeing as most reporters I know have scant regard for fact-checking or libel law, and the damages from one libel suit could wipe out the annual savings in sub-editor salaries quite easily.

Online is not the same as print. The paper has a fixed deadline (usually), but the web guys want the content up there NOW if not sooner. If you tell them, “That piece hasn’t been subbed yet,” they will tell you they don’t care and they want the raw copy.

Readers care less than they used to. Or at least, that seems to be the perception. The young 18-30 audience that advertisers lust after have lived with the internet for their whole adult lives. They’re more used to seeing sloppily written, garbled shit all over the internet, so why should newspapers pay good money to feed them grammatical copy? (I don’t agree with this assessment, by the way.)

[Merijeek]

@Colophon

Readers care less than they used to. Or at least, that seems to be the perception. The young 18-30 audience that advertisers lust after have lived with the internet for their whole adult lives. They’re more used to seeing sloppily written, garbled shit all over the internet, so why should newspapers pay good money to feed them grammatical copy? (I don’t agree with this assessment, by the way.)

It’s not just newspapers, which are always facing a continual deadline. I get irritated at buying a $50 hardcover book that has an error or three per page, and half of those errors are things that Word will always, ALWAYS underline in red.

-Joe

[robcaro]

I hate spellcheckers!

[Oscalo]

@kunilou

No more middlemen. In (way) old days, reporters called their stories in to rewirters. The rewriters wrote up the facts and gave the story to a copy editor, who then gave it to the typesetter, who then gave the story to a proofreader whose job was specifically to check to mistakes. At the end, an editor placed the stories on a page and trimmed them to fit. And if a mistake did appear, there was usually a later edition to correct it, and many readers never saw the incorrect version.

That’s six people to catch (or make mistakes.) Today the reporter enters the story into a computer, an editor places and trims the stories (in small newspapers, it’s often the same person.) If it’s a good-sized newspaper, there will be another editor either at the middle or end of the process who actually reads the story, but that isn’t always a given. And many smaller newspapers only print one edition per day.

Spellchecks can help, but they’re lousy when it comes to catching a mistake in context. Of course, a spell-check can’t help at all with bad writing or editing.

I have a brother that works as a reporter and have done some freelance work myself in the past, and this is largely true.
Copy passes through fewer hands nowadays than it did in the past. Also the work done by typesetters in the past is now largely done by paginators who lay out the pages electronically, and at a lot of papers, even medium-sized ones, those people often double as copy editors.

[Colophon]

@Oscalo

I Also the work done by typesetters in the past is now largely done by paginators who lay out the pages electronically, and at a lot of papers, even medium-sized ones, those people often double as copy editors.

Yes, the design/layout, page-building and editing jobs often get combined. This is not usually a good plan, as in my experience, great graphic designers are often lousy spellers (and vice versa). We have graphic artists here that can create wonderful maps, charts, etc, in next to no time, but they seem to see the words as so much unnecessary clutter, so I always have to correct at least half a dozen errors.

[Marley23]

@Whack-a-Mole

These days I think they figure anyone who graduated the 8th grade can write and are cheaper than dedicated writers.

I suspect educational requirements are higher than ever in journalism. But the skills that are required are different. A newspaper reported decades ago didn’t also have to get video and other multimedia stuff. If you’re expected to be a jack of all trades, you’re going to get less training in writing.

• The death of copy editors.

They don’t die, they just fade away. By the way, did you mean death or dearth?

[ShadowFacts]

@Spoons

I guess the Gazette got a Pullet Surprise for that story.

And a tip of the hat to you, sir (or madam)! Extremely well done.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

Craigslist in particular and the Internet in general. The former took the wind out of newspaper classified ad departments, a major source of revenue; the latter took readership and thus ad dollars. With shrinking revenue, papers are forced to cut back, and proofreaders get axed before reporters for reasons left as an exercise for the class.

People say this a lot, but I don’t think it’s true. Or at least, not the cause of the financial problems.

Here in Minnesota, the Minneapolis StarTribune would still be making a profit on their basic newspaper operation, except for the money they are paying on loans.

A few years back, the new owners bought the paper by borrowing money against the assets & projected income from the paper. In effect, they borrowed from the paper to buy the paper. And since then, the value of the paper has gone way down – so, like many homeowners who bought houses during the bubble, they are underwater on these loans. So they have been cutting & cutting the staff of the paper (making it less & less worthwhile to subscribe to) in order to try to pay on these loans. (And they are failing; I believe they are or have already filed for bankruptcy protection.)

So it isn’t the lost revenue from Craigslist & the Internet that is killing the StarTribune, it’s the risky loan games played by the owners that put the paper in the red.

[Acsenray]

One of public radio shows recently did a program on how a private equity firm can take a huge loan in order to buy out a company (often hostilely) and then transfer the entire debt burden to the target company.

[Morbo]

A thread from last August, with a glaring error on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, both print and online.

The online link still shows the error.

[rowrrbazzle]

I think a lot of it is that many more people are reading the news. Writing errors (as well as factual errors) that were there all along are now being noticed by a lot of people.

@TV_time

In the old days (when I started in newspapering) the person who evolved into the position of copy editor got the job because he or she had not an ounce of creativity in his or her bones but was an obsessive-compulsive-anal nut job who saw spelling and grammatical errors as a personal afront (affront?). <snip> You hated having to sit by any one of them at the paper’s Christmas party, and you dreaded your story having to go through them because they would cackle everytime they caught one of your errors.
<snip>
They tended to be rather cantankerous and corporate doesn’t like that.

From your description of them as “obsessive-compulsive-anal nut job”, I guess nobody liked them. So I don’t think the dislike (to put it mildly) originated full-grown from corporate.

It is also as IAmNotSpartacus says. Cheap untested rookies replacing people who care about the stories.

I think it’s people who are interested in a story more than the facts. But that’s hardly new.

@Whack-a-Mole

This thread reminds me of a Vanity Fair article where they put their literary editor, research department and copy editors have at Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. The results are quite humorous and goes to show the difference when you have good editors in place.

It is definitely humorous that they would correct a spoken speech in colloquial English. Would that they applied that level of effort to all their stories.

@Colophon

Sub-editor here, on one of the few UK papers that still has a reasonable number of them.
<snip>
Readers care less than they used to. Or at least, that seems to be the perception. The young 18-30 audience that advertisers lust after have lived with the internet for their whole adult lives. They’re more used to seeing sloppily written, garbled shit all over the internet, so why should newspapers pay good money to feed them grammatical copy? (I don’t agree with this assessment, by the way.)

Interesting perspective. But heck, most of the young audience hasn’t been taught to write anything but borderline illiterate garbage. And why should they want to learn? And be called by people like TV time an “obsessive-compulsive-anal nut job”? Or a grammar Nazi?

[Acsenray]

@rowrrbazzle

But heck, most of the young audience hasn’t been taught to write anything but borderline illiterate garbage.

Actually, I recall hearing about a recent study showing that today’s young write much more than any previous generation and that texting has had absolutely no detrimental effect on language skills. I think I heard it on “Away With Words.”

[Marley23]

@acsenray

Actually, I recall hearing about a recent study showing that today’s young write much more than any previous generation and that texting has had absolutely no detrimental effect on language skills.

If we’re thinking of the same study, it went on to state that text abbreviating may may be good for reading comprehension because in order to understand the abbreviation, you have to know the actual word and be able to piece it together.

[Polycarp]

@mnemosyne

Following the Montreal Canadiens’ upset of the Washington Capitals in Game 7 of this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, police forces in Montreal took to the street to try and prevent rioting, armed with riot shields and guns loaded with rubber pullets.

Or so reported the Montreal Gazette.

Yhe rubber pullets were no doubt destined to be the entrée at a testimonial dinner served on Teutonic plates.

[Nava]

@Markxxx

But the OP seems to be saying that spellcheck could solve it.

A spellchecker might not get there for their (a grammar checker might get it) but a spellchecker certainly would get their mispelled as thier.

Sigh.

Yes, but a spellchecker whose dictionary contains “teutonic” but does not contain “tectonic” and whose suggestions are accepted blindly will change tectonic plates to german crockery.

Using the spellchecker without looking at what it says is as bad as not using it.

[Gyrate]

@Colophon

Sub-editor here, on one of the few UK papers that still has a reasonable number of them.

Not The Guardian then. Busiest Corrections Editor in the business.

[Sigmagirl]

@TV_time

In the old days (when I started in newspapering) the person who evolved into the position of copy editor got the job because he or she had not an ounce of creativity in his or her bones but was an obsessive-compulsive-anal nut job who saw spelling and grammatical errors as a personal afront (affront?).

Thank you.
Thank you very much.

[robby]

@TV_time

In the old days (when I started in newspapering) the person who evolved into the position of copy editor got the job because he or she had not an ounce of creativity in his or her bones but was an obsessive-compulsive-anal nut job who saw spelling and grammatical errors as a personal afront (affront?).

Sounds like me. And it’s “affront.”

Oh, and why did you take the time to question your own misspelling, rather then simply check it and correct it?

[Tom_Scud]

I’ll add a note here, which is that journalism and writing are probably related but not identical skills - the best journalist I know is creative, courageous, inquisitive, passionate… and her writing has energy but is sloppy as hell.