Here We Go Again, And Again, And Again

 

JUST WHEN I THINK THINGS CAN’T GET ANY STRANGER…

I have taken our local newspaper to task (several times) for spelling, grammar, and just plain crazy mistakes, but now they have really screwed the pooch.

Last Friday’s edition of the “Tribune-Star,’ the only newspaper in America published by and for illiterates, ran a story about a fund-raising event for a worthwhile charity. The idea was to sell T- Shirts at a couple of local high school football games. They were hoping to raise money to combat pediatric cancer as well as to raise public awareness.

Selling the shirts seemed to be a good idea. Unfortunately, the Tribune-Star, still trying to decide if anyone should actually proofread the paper before sending it out to the world, took that local story and guaranteed that it would go viral.

On Page A – 4 they ran the story, but no one bothered to check the Headline.

I now present an electronic clipping from last Friday’s Tribune-Star newspaper. Uh oh, Oops, and Dang it.

The jokes began to fly thick and fast on the Internet. I won’t repeat them here. I don’t need to. Within five seconds of reading the above headline you had them all sitting on the tip of your tongue.

I am dying to find out how the fundraising effort went. I can just imagine the scene when you drop this kind of snafu in front of a crowd at a high school football game. Thousands of high school age boys are not going to let this go without a wisecrack or two. I couldn’t and I’m a lot older.

What causes such recurring foul-ups at our local fishwrap newspaper? I know that mistakes are inevitable, but –  really now! Doesn’t anyone look at the copy before pushing the start button on the presses? I guess not.

The faultline runs through several levels I fear. The person who wrote the initial story obviously thinks that Spell-Check is God. Either that or they are trying to see what they can slip past every other pair of eyes at the newspaper.

Somewhere along the line there must be someone who functions as a Proofreader. Given the long history of typos and other gaffes at the Tribune-Star I would think that somebody – anybody – would at least try to purge these errors.

Perhaps the newspaper should be adopted by the local high school newspapers as a class project. Have those kids act as real Editors and take a fine-toothed linguistic comb through the Tribune-Star to make it into something other than a laughing stock.

Do that, or simply admit that their Proofreader is actually Stevie Wonder.