I know it's not germane to the topic claimed by this blog, but I thought it might be noteworthy to announce that I have taken the plunge and opened up a shop on CafePress, hoping to tap into the bottomless wealth of the Internet. The shop is designed to meet the gift-buying preferences of readers of my more active blog, Rick Sincere News & Thoughts.
The main page of the shop can be found here.
There is also a section devoted to Christmas products (called "Christmas Cheer"). Another section, called "Politics & Travel," will eventually be populated with products for the libertarian-minded shopper; for now, it has magnets and notecards decorated with various views of the Washington Monument and other notable buildings.
A third section, "Saints & Sinners," fulfills a more impish function. Check it out and see what I mean.
More items are sure to be added, and reminders will be posted here and at www.RickSincere.com.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Constitutional Fact Check
(This is cross-posted from my other blog.)
Perhaps it is understandable, if not entirely excusable, when a historian makes a factual mistake in something he writes, when the mistake deals with more recent events than those he is describing.
But one would think that a prestigious newspaper like the Washington Post would have fact-checkers on staff to make sure that errors do not end up in print, especially on the heavily-visited op-ed page.
In a piece published Wednesday, "Three Cheers for July Second,"Andrew Trees -- who used to teach at a tony New York private academy, Horace Mann School, until a racy roman à clef called Academy X
got him in hot water -- talks about the how John Adams predicted that our big national holiday would be celebrated on July 2, the day the Continental Congress voted for independence (two days before the Declaration of Independence was subsequently approved). Trees makes this suggestion:
What could have been the First (or Second) Amendment eventually became the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, ratified on May 7, 1992. It is the most recent amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the one that took the longest path from proposal to ratification. It reads, according to the National Archives:
. If he didn't learn about the 27th Amendment while writing his book, The Founding Fathers and the Politics of Character (could that require another irony alert?), then at least the Post's opinion pages staff should have caught the error.
Or maybe it's just one more mistake for us to celebrate on July 2.
Perhaps it is understandable, if not entirely excusable, when a historian makes a factual mistake in something he writes, when the mistake deals with more recent events than those he is describing.
But one would think that a prestigious newspaper like the Washington Post would have fact-checkers on staff to make sure that errors do not end up in print, especially on the heavily-visited op-ed page.
In a piece published Wednesday, "Three Cheers for July Second,"Andrew Trees -- who used to teach at a tony New York private academy, Horace Mann School, until a racy roman à clef called Academy X
got him in hot water -- talks about the how John Adams predicted that our big national holiday would be celebrated on July 2, the day the Continental Congress voted for independence (two days before the Declaration of Independence was subsequently approved). Trees makes this suggestion:I propose we make July 2 a national holiday to celebrate the Founders for some of their greatest but least appreciated attributes -- their mistakes.Irony alert: Later in his article, Trees writes about the originally proposed amendments that led to the Bill of Rights:
The Bill of Rights as we know it also is not what was initially proposed. The original first two amendments, one of which concerned the number of constituents each member of Congress had and one regarding congressmen's salaries, were never ratified by the states. What we think of today as our First Amendment freedoms were actually third on the list."Never ratified by the states"? Um, perhaps the first one, but not the second.
What could have been the First (or Second) Amendment eventually became the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, ratified on May 7, 1992. It is the most recent amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the one that took the longest path from proposal to ratification. It reads, according to the National Archives:
AMENDMENT XXVIITrees may have missed this development, focused as he was the "delicious, malicious stuff" (in Jonathan Yardley's words) recounted in Academy X
Originally proposed Sept. 25, 1789. Ratified May 7, 1992.
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.
. If he didn't learn about the 27th Amendment while writing his book, The Founding Fathers and the Politics of Character (could that require another irony alert?), then at least the Post's opinion pages staff should have caught the error.Or maybe it's just one more mistake for us to celebrate on July 2.
Where Are the Copy Editors?
The newspaper business is going through cataclysmic changes. Readership is down, advertising revenues are down, newsstand sales are down. More people are getting their news from television and the Internet.
As a consequence, newsroom staffs are shrinking. The Washington Post, for instance, recently made a major buy-out offer to its employees, which led to many veteran reporters and editors choosing early retirement. The Post's longtime, low-key executive editor, Leonard Downie, has announced his own retirement, and the newspaper has a new publisher, Katharine Weymouth.
Similar -- and sometimes more drastic -- changes are taking place at other major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times.
As these seismic shifts are being felt, old-fashioned copy editing is falling through the cracks. I am finding more, and more frequent, errors in the daily newspaper than ever before -- errors that normally would be caught before publication by competent and sharp-eyed copy editors and proofreaders.
Don't get me wrong: There are few more admirable miracles than the production of a major daily newspaper. Even before -- or perhaps especially before -- the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, the idea that an event could occur at noon, be discovered at 1:00 p.m., a reporter dispatched at 1:30, and a story and analysis written, edited, typeset, and printed by midnight for the early editions the next day is practically unfathomable.
Instantaneous communication -- with any blogger (myself included) able to post audio, video, photographs, and text within minutes after an event and letting the whole world know about it -- has jaundiced our opinions on the press. Reporters and editors deserve a great deal more respect than they often get.
But ...
In my other blog, Rick Sincere News and Thoughts, an eclectic mix of political and cultural commentary that has been on the web since December 2004, I every once in a while pick up on a disjointed word choice or odd sentence that does not, to be kind, serve its author well.
Sometimes I have found factual errors that should never have seen print. (For example, see my blogpost on historian Andrew Trees, who seems unaware that the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified 16 years ago.)
As these items come more frequently to my attention, I want to point them out and ask, "Where are the copy editors?"
Sometimes these items are unintentionally (I hope) funny; sometimes they are embarrassing; sometimes they are just sad. But they need to be identified and corrected.
I have started this narrowly-focused blog to bring these errors, mistakes, and howlers to the surface. I don't intend to be picayunish. I won't, as a rule, wag my finger at simple typos (typographical errors). But wrong word choice, badly constructed sentences, and errors of fact are fair game.
I'm also interested in opening up a dialogue on the question of copy editing. Is it an art or a craft? Is it a lost art, or a lost craft? Is it still necessary in the Internet Age? (I obviously think it is.)
I learned to edit at the feet (metaphorically speaking) of Ernest W. Lefever and Carol Griffith at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in the early 1980s. They not only taught me the skills involved in working with a manuscript, but also instilled in me high standards for what constitutes acceptable grammar, punctuation, and syntax. Those standards animate what will follow in this blog.
I don't intend to have any particular targets here. I suspect that the Washington Post, Washington Times, and Charlottesville Daily Progress will be the most frequently cited, simply because those are the newspapers I read in their print editions. Other publications may meet my gaze, but only if I run across an item on their web sites. I may also bring to my readers' attention the comments of others in the same vein.
As a consequence, newsroom staffs are shrinking. The Washington Post, for instance, recently made a major buy-out offer to its employees, which led to many veteran reporters and editors choosing early retirement. The Post's longtime, low-key executive editor, Leonard Downie, has announced his own retirement, and the newspaper has a new publisher, Katharine Weymouth.
Similar -- and sometimes more drastic -- changes are taking place at other major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times.
As these seismic shifts are being felt, old-fashioned copy editing is falling through the cracks. I am finding more, and more frequent, errors in the daily newspaper than ever before -- errors that normally would be caught before publication by competent and sharp-eyed copy editors and proofreaders.
Don't get me wrong: There are few more admirable miracles than the production of a major daily newspaper. Even before -- or perhaps especially before -- the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, the idea that an event could occur at noon, be discovered at 1:00 p.m., a reporter dispatched at 1:30, and a story and analysis written, edited, typeset, and printed by midnight for the early editions the next day is practically unfathomable.
Instantaneous communication -- with any blogger (myself included) able to post audio, video, photographs, and text within minutes after an event and letting the whole world know about it -- has jaundiced our opinions on the press. Reporters and editors deserve a great deal more respect than they often get.
But ...
In my other blog, Rick Sincere News and Thoughts, an eclectic mix of political and cultural commentary that has been on the web since December 2004, I every once in a while pick up on a disjointed word choice or odd sentence that does not, to be kind, serve its author well.
Sometimes I have found factual errors that should never have seen print. (For example, see my blogpost on historian Andrew Trees, who seems unaware that the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified 16 years ago.)
As these items come more frequently to my attention, I want to point them out and ask, "Where are the copy editors?"
Sometimes these items are unintentionally (I hope) funny; sometimes they are embarrassing; sometimes they are just sad. But they need to be identified and corrected.
I have started this narrowly-focused blog to bring these errors, mistakes, and howlers to the surface. I don't intend to be picayunish. I won't, as a rule, wag my finger at simple typos (typographical errors). But wrong word choice, badly constructed sentences, and errors of fact are fair game.
I'm also interested in opening up a dialogue on the question of copy editing. Is it an art or a craft? Is it a lost art, or a lost craft? Is it still necessary in the Internet Age? (I obviously think it is.)
I learned to edit at the feet (metaphorically speaking) of Ernest W. Lefever and Carol Griffith at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in the early 1980s. They not only taught me the skills involved in working with a manuscript, but also instilled in me high standards for what constitutes acceptable grammar, punctuation, and syntax. Those standards animate what will follow in this blog.
I don't intend to have any particular targets here. I suspect that the Washington Post, Washington Times, and Charlottesville Daily Progress will be the most frequently cited, simply because those are the newspapers I read in their print editions. Other publications may meet my gaze, but only if I run across an item on their web sites. I may also bring to my readers' attention the comments of others in the same vein.
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