OK, the PR is acknowledging a mistake and trying to correct it. But shouldn’t the first sentence be phrased this way: “…appearing in the Dec. 28 edition…?” After all, the letter appeared again in Thursday’s newspaper. Or maybe it’s permissible to drop the “in” whenever an editor feels like it, according to the latest update of the Associated Press stylebook.
Also, it’s unclear what is meant by the reference to “the writer’s intention.” Does this mean he didn’t want his letter to appear back in December or to have it recently reprinted? Considering the self-proclaimed journalistic excellence of the Press-Republican, maybe the writer didn’t want his letter printed at any time.
The PR is notorious for rerunning letters and articles. An article on page A2 ends up being repeated with a different headline on page B9. The article you read on Monday shows up again on Thursday. If there was a captioned photo accompanying the article on Monday, it gets dropped on Thursday. No photo earlier in the week? Then wait a few days and read the same article with a photo and a new headline.
Even comic strips are treated to the rerun fun. Hey, you like “Doonesbury?” Well, if you missed the December 26th appearance, the P-R will gladly run the same one a month later. (In case you were wondering why the characters were talking about Xmas near the end of January.)
Sometimes reading the Press-Republican is like déjà vu all over again.
While serving as unofficial editor-at-large for the P-R, this writog finds déjà vu is a blog hazard.
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