My sharp-eyed, 23-year-old daughter Brooks, who has the makings of a good editor, called my attention to a Sunday New York Times story that had an unusual number of glitches, mostly related to missing and misused words.
It was a 17-paragraph story, inside the front section, about how a 340-ton, 21-foot-tall boulder was transported 60 miles from a quarry to the downtown Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Borne on a 196-wheel-transport truck, the boulder arrived at its destination at 4:35 a.m. Saturday and was greeted by a boisterous crowd of more than 1,000.
Within the next month, the boulder will be placed over a cut trench and opened to the public as an exhibit.
The story was fascinating and carried a catchy headline:
“Lights! Cameras! (And Cheers) For a rock Weighing 340 Tons.”
The writer was Adam Nagourney, a very well-known Times reporter. Nagourney, 57, was chief national political correspondent for The Times from 2002 to 2010, when he was appointed Los Angeles Bureau Chief.
The first 10 paragraphs of the story were free and clear of problems, as far as I could tell, but the last seven paragraphs were marred by six glitches.
Take a look:
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Paragraph 11: “Los Angeles is not a particularly late-night city, and people who made it there at 4:30 in the morning either found a new use for the disco naps of their use or stayed up all night.”
Huh? Try this…”either found a new use for disco naps or stayed up all night.”
Sound better?
***
Paragraph 12: “Jeff Miller, 32, (blank) to a Guns N Roses show at the Hollywood Palladium that lasted, he reported, until close to 3 a.m.”
The missing word? “Went.”
***
Paragraph 12 (continued): “At that point, he figured he would just make a night of it and headed over to (blank) museum.
Yes…”the museum.”
***
Paragraph 13: “By the end, the convey traveled 100 miles of road to cover 60 miles of distance…”
“Convey?” No comprende. How about “convoy?”
***
Paragraph 14: “And in any event, this did not appear to (blank blank) routines of people who are accustomed to late nights.”
If you guessed “disrupt the routines,” you get a gold star.
***
Against that backdrop of screw-ups, the last paragraph of the story began like this:
“Mr. Miller, who stayed up all night, said he had rarely witnessed events like this here.”
Now, had the story been otherwise glitch-free, I would have construed the italicized words to mean that Miller had rarely witnessed events such as this taking place in Los Angeles.
But in light of the mind-boggling word jumble that had gone before, I tended to interpret them this way: “Mr. Miller who stayed up all night, said he had rarely witnessed events like this here event.”
When a writer and a newspaper throw junk at the reader, what they get in return is disgust and even contempt from readers. That’s when you start hearing people say, “That paper contains so many grammatical errors that you can hardly read it!”
And that is exactly the kind of attitude that newspapers can no longer afford. Readers now have 340 tons of options for where they can go to get their news without having their intelligence insulted.
Editor’s Note: The errors were corrected in the online version of the story — the version that is linked above…”This here” stayed as is…or was, or whatever.
Editor’s Note, No. 2: I’ve got an e-mail in to Art Brisbane, The Times’ “public editor,” asking him essentially, “What the hell happened with this here story?”
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I agree with Siddartha Gautama, that mankind’s collective view on the entirety of life, is based on a bad pronoun reference.
Is wandering through the corrections needed in gramatical Samsara removing the veils from our eyes?
Who knew?
Fitz, a Bodhisattva.
I just got an initial response from Art. He said the New England edition, which goes to print later than the Midwest edition, did not have the errors…He is looking into it further.
Well, these things can happen to even the best of them, including the “gold standard” NY Times. Speaking of which, in the process of collecting material for my IWATS (I Worked At The Star) project, I was able to pull up the obituary for Henry C. Haskell as it appeared in the NY Times. Short obituary, as one might expect in a distant paper, but the heading read “Henry J. Haskell”. Henry J. was, of course, the father of Henry C. Someone was asleep at the switch there. Yes, it sounds like your “beautiful daughter” as you have lovingly referred to her has some potential as a proofreader if not a copy editor. Hey, the Times could always blame the glitch on “solar flares” since the dog hasn’t eaten anyone’s homework in this case.
Of course, the first thing I noticed in your clip art that starts out “Accidents …” is the absence of the much-needed apostrophe in “childs”. I think “Childs” is the last name of the guy who played basketball for Tennessee last year. Yes, it’s “convoy” as you so accurately point out. I think “Convey” is the last name of the new soccer player for Sporting Kansas City.
Rick — I trust you didn’t miss the subject-verb problem…”Accident happens…”
Hey: I can answer this.
We have a 12 noon eastern deadline for our first edition. So we were REALLY jamming it (I got back from the rock around 9 a.m our time). The first-edition story is the one that went on line right away, and because it was written and edited so fast (I had no sleep! I was going 100 mph!), those errors got through. They were corrected ASAP, certainly by the print edition, but I also think online within a few hours.
This is one of the challenges of this new era; we want to get stories online ASAP because our readers want speed, and sometimes it takes a little while for the editing/copy editing to catch up with it..
Hope this helps.
Best
–Adam Nagourney
Thanks, Adam. I appreciate you responding directly. I surmised that speed had a lot to do with it, but it’s still a concern that so many screw-ups got through the copy desk. I hope that wasn’t posted without a copy editor going over it. If, by chance, that’s what happened, I think it would be a clear warning signal that a few more minutes of attention would far outweigh the few minutes that a story wasn’t “up,” especially in the case of a feature story.
And it’s too bad that the tainted version got in any print edition. You have a ton of Midwestern readers, and I’m sure a lot of people noticed.
Again, though, thank you for responding quickly and personally. Check in on jimmycsays again sometime; I love The New York Times, and I’m almost always praising rather than criticizing.
Jim, for some reason I’m more in tune with missing or unnecessary apostrophes, missing letters and, in the case of the NY Times story, missing words than I am with subject-verb agreement. So I slowed time the second time through and saw the problem you were referring to. A good lesson for all of us – look TWICE before crossing the street, sending a story on to the pagination department (is that close?) or, in this case, offering an observation. Hey, I think it’s great that the writer himself just made an “appearance” on your blog to explain the situation. I really appreciate his honesty and openness. It would be nice to see the same occur with a Star employee should a similar situation present itself here. Mr. Gusewelle tells us in yesterday’s Star that the News Room is becoming a much more open place – literally – like it was in “the old days.” That’s a good thing, I think, but of even greater value is openness with respect to the handling of information and communicating with the general public. I think it says a lot about the NY Times if this reporter has the freedom to discuss how his story was handled (or mishandled) and to offer some insight into the process there.
I completely agree with you, Rick, about the value of openness from newsrooms. Unfortunately, The Star’s leadership has a bunker mentality and, as far as I can tell, always has. It’s that deal about, initially, not having to answer to the public because “we know our business,” and now the editors are hiding in their offices, afraid that if they say a thing, the McClatchy executives will strike with sledgehammers.
The New York Times’ reporters, on the other hand, tend to have the confidence to speak out because the organization is self-contained (the Sulzberger family owning a controlling share of company stock), and they understand the importance of accountability, especially in this free-for-all, digital environment.