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Saturday, February 06, 2010

Professionalism

Some media traditionalists vilify bloggers for being lazy, unprofessional. These critics carp about everything from factual errors to typos. They say we need outlets like old-fashioned newspapers or the world will go to crap.

Oh ya?

Take a look at this headline from today's Press-Republican:




Huh. US troops were "ambused" in Afghanistan. How did that slip through? Someone was too lazy to run that headline through a spellchecker program that would've quickly flagged that typo. Such dumb mistakes happen too often at the PR, even though it's a "professional" media outlet.

Do I make stupid mistakes with spelling? Of course. That's why I run my posts through a spellchecker program, despite the fact I'm a blogger, not a "professional."



REVISED 2/26/10 to fix typo (changed thought to though in fourth paragraph). See comments.

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:55 AM

    The spellchecker doesn't always do the trick,e.g."Such dumb mistakes happen too often at the PR, even thought (sic) it's a "professional" media outlet."
    Proofreading is also needed.
    To be fair, very few errors get through on your blogs and I commend you for that.

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  2. Luke T. Bush12:20 AM

    Anon:

    Good catch. My dumb typo has been fixed and is noted. Thanks.

    Besides using a spellchecker, I also read over my posts before publication, looking for mistakes, but there's always the need for a second pair of eyes. One of most difficult tasks around is proofreading your own writing.

    So I do try to minimize errors. But when it comes to a misspelling like "Ambused" in a headline, sorry, I can't let that pass. The PR has a staff of a few people; this blog only has me. And with spellchecking, no way that would "Ambused" get by. It's been automatically red-underlined as I type this comment.

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