Wednesday, December 19, 2007

New Web Page; Same Old "Journalism"

The Charlotte Sun has opened a new Web site. The major change seems to be a preference for gigabyte-sized ads at the top of every page that require many a long minute to download. Its flash-and-crash graphics eat up the humble subscriber’s bandwidth allocation pretty quickly. Headers on every page are flashing ads that make it difficult to read any normal text on the page. It’s like having a strobe light go off in the reader’s face. With all the whiz-bang, the Sun's publishers have forgotten to improve the most important thing: its journalism. This morning, local readers enjoyed this bit of nonsense, which no amount of Java-scripted pyrotechnics can cure.

ARCADIA – Builders rejoice and mark your calendars – Christmas has come early. Starting Jan. 1, DeSoto County will not collect any impact fees on new construction for six months.

Let’s ignore the punctuation, grammar and style faults in the first clause, and let’s overlook the trite and incorrect assertion in the second one. Instead, let’s ask writer Jon Sica why he thinks an ordinance that goes into effect eight days after Christmas is Christmas come early.

Oops; there's no one to ask him. No one’s left on the copydesk who has the time to read critically or question silliness. Spellcheck and publish. It’s the Web way.

1 comment:

  1. If we make it "Old Christmas came early for builders in DeSoto County," could we get around the cliche rule too?

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