Copy Editors Agree: Subjects and Verbs Must

The headline's subject is not only plural, it's plural in triplicate. The verb needs to be plural. Once will do. Lower, in the story's second graf, the writer tells us " ... none of the collisions have brought down a plan." None, as copy editors -- and readers know -- is singular.


What the Story Says Doesn't Matter

On the local front, the Charlotte Sun's consumer
advocate advises caution when entering
pay-to-publish literatry contests. But
the copy desk disagrees and says so in the hed.

What the Reporter Left Out When She Phoned It In

Any improvement in reading scores is good news. But the local paper's report on the topic should make readers wonder if the reporter or the copy desk editor (who writes the heds) learned to read very well. Starting at the top, the headline screams:
Districts ace reading list

No; one district came in at about the middle and the other came in dead last on a list made up of districts that scored between the 75th and the 99th percentiles, a comparative ranking of participants. (We used to call it "grading on a curve." And, doesn't one "ace a test?" But why let the language as we all know it get in the way of the appearance of a snappy headline.)

DeSoto, Charlotte Counties at top of state program

No, they're not. Among counties that have been in the program six years, Dixie and Bradford were the two districts "at the top" of the fourth quartile. DeSoto ranked third and Charlotte ranked eighth, last in the top quartile.


The reporter writes: "According to the state education Web site, Reading First is a federal grant program that allows districts and schools to use scientifically based reading instruction in classrooms to allows all children to learn to read well by the end of third grade." (my emphases)

No. According to the state education Web site, the grant program requires districts to use scientifically based reading instruction. The reporter's use of "allows" -- twice -- invites readers to wonder if other reading classes are not allowed to use scientifically proven methods. The idea is silly, of course, and the silliness is rooted in the reporter's careless writing without benefit of a skilled copy editor.

And -- just an observation here, based on a decade of covering schools -- we also wonder what "scientifically based" means. Sure, it's a phrase tossed around (a lot) on the DOE Web page, but that doesn't mean it's English. (Educationese is a lot like copspeak, except it has a graduate degree.) The reporter never gets around to explaining the term or making an effort to show readers what it means for those who count -- the students, teachers, and taxpayers.

"Ultimately, the program hopes to increase the percentage of students reading at or above grade level, while reducing the percentage of students with serious reading difficulties. " The program doesn't hope. Teachers and parents hope. The program's goal is to increase the number of students reading at grade level. Be precise.

"According to the DOE, these schools increased grade-level reading by 14.72 percent since last year ..." No. The number of students reading at grade level increased 14.72 percent over last year. Be accurate.

Amid all the glowing, chest puffing, self-serving comments collected from the superintendents, the reporter needs to tell readers how the schools qualified for Reading First grants: They were designated as failures at reading preparation in the No Child Left Behind initiative and needed extra help to do the job.

A good education reporter would also have told readers, taxpayers, and parents:

--How much money has flowed into the school district in these grants (a figure not readily available on the school budget report -- there is no line-item for the federal "Reading First" funds, either as income or outgo.)
--If the program requires specially purchased books (remember the 2007 texbook scandal and congressional hearings surrounding this very program?)
--How many instructional folks have been added to achieve these goals.
--Whether the grant affects any grade other than third grade.
--Who, in the district, is in charge of the federal reading program.
--In what way the program is related to "No Child Left Behind."
--Whether Reading First instructional folks are counted as part of the state-mandated student-teacher ratio.
--How "scientifcally based" reading instruction is implemented.

-- How many children are represented by the 14.72 percent figure?

-- How much money per child is being spent for that increase?

And oh, so much more. As it is, everything Pam Staik says -- except for the local self-congratulations -- can be read in the press release. There has been no "value added" for the reader, no enlightenment for the taxpayer, and certainly no real journalism.

Accuracy and Trust: Journalism's Horse and Carriage

DeSoto Sun newspaper editors tell readers that local is important -- but evidently not important enough to write about or edit. Both key jobs of journalism have been left to -- well, sorry -- left to amateurs. And it shows.

Over at the Lake Placid Journal, second verse, same as first.

An epic recap of a state trooper's murder is marred from the first line, which opens with, "Two years have past ...." Come on, guys. Eighth graders know that should be "passed."

Next line: "For 17 gruelling hours the usual tranquil community ..." Ninth graders know that should be should be "the usually tranquil community .. ."

Next leg: "While undergoing emergency surgery at the rural community hospital, his wife and two children..." A copy editor would quietly change that to "While the officer was undergoing surgery...," avoiding the misdirected medical procedure.

Next leg: "Officers staged across the highway.." A copy editor would gently inquire, "staged what?" because "staged" is a transitive verb.

Next leg: "... taxed with the responsiblity ... " A wise copy editor would silently change that laugh line to "tasked with the responsibility ..."

The rest of the narrative-style recap -- intended to be a tribute -- is riddled with randomly Germanic capitalizations, illogical tense shifts, a profound ignorance of basic comma rules, awkward echos and redundancies, and a failure to attribute a single fact -- which is what journalism is all about. The story is not a tribute. It's a mess.

If the newspaper publisher genuinely cared about local news, he would assign someone the job of editing to save himself and his writers the embarrassment of childish writing. That, in turn, might salvage a shred of trust: If the newspaper's writers don't know how to write coherent sentences and editors don't know how to edit them, why should readers trust the paper's ability to report? Or its "commitment to local news?"

Local Journalism: Dying a Slow Death

The morning newspaper brings this news, printed on a single sheet of paper, composed by the general manager (the guy with a ring of keys). It was tucked in the home-delivery bag, and it apparently bypassed the pesky copy editing that might have provided clarity and coherence or supplied more than a series of breathless imperatives:

DeSoto Sun Customers

Please Read

The DeSoto Sun Newspaper will begin delivery six days per
week. The DeSoto paper will publish Tuesday through Sunday.

No Monday delivery! Effective 1/19/09

No home delivery or single copy papers in stores or racks
starting Monday 1/19/0-9 and contining on as a six day per week delivered paper.

Subscription rates will maintain current price point as a six day delivered product.

E-Mail your concerns and comments to ...

...

The news -- as told not by the publisher but by the guy with the thermostat key -- is this daily's publication schedule is being cut to six days a week. It's happening just a couple of months after home delivery was suspended to most of the county and a week after the complete shutdown of another paper in the Dunn-Rankin chain. The news is subscription rates will continue as if the paper were available seven days a week, says the man in charge of loading the trucks.
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Old Word Wolf's "concerns and comments" are actually questions: Will this in any way improve local news coverage? Will reporters and editors have more time to delve into local government and schools and report on tax money at work?
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Doubt it; that's not how things work. And the irony is, one of the newspaper's general managers, Lang Capasso, wrote in his (unedited, grammatically challenged) column just yesterday:

"Many newspapers seem to have forgotten what made them important to people. We haven’t and that’s why Sun Coast Media papers will always be at the table as the coffee is being drunk, the eggs eaten and the conversation turns to the news. We recognize that local news and the community are important to people. They’re important to us as well because, after all, we’re a part of this community too and what affects our neighbors down the street affects us as well."

I like that part: "... will always be at the table ..."

Always means never on Monday, not at all in Hardee -- and oh, only on Wednesdays and Saturdays in Venice, and only when the mail carrier comes if you live in the rural parts of DeSoto.

It's a shame, because if the Dunn-Rankins had understood genuine journalism, instead of "photos provided," rehashed press releases, plagiarizing preachers, and forced features there might have been a little more reader loyalty and support -- and thus value for the fast-disappearing advertisers.

The Big Picture Conserves News-Gathering Energy

Too bad this looks fairly innocuous in thumbnail. In real life, this six-column wide, half-page tall color photo of a man adjusting an amusement-park car screams, "Arcadia's six reporters and editors didn't write any news, cover local government or schools, and no one sent us any consumer-generated content, so you'll just have to look at the pretty picture."

So, why not go to the trouble to inform Arcadians about the world around them? Surely there was a Florida story on the wires, surely there is news from across the ocean ... yes, it's the hometown section, but if you're having production problems, this is not the way to carry on

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And .....

R.I.P. Hardee Sun

Today is the last day Hardee County, a DeSoto look-alike just north of the border, will have its own newspaper. Sun Coast Media Group's staff writer, Carol Sakowitz, announced in her column today that it's the last issue with "Hardee" in the mast. She didn't say why (we can guess: economics, economy of scale, ad revenues, and such) -- only that she's enjoyed her seven months as a reporter.

Detective's Fake Column Scams Sun News Editors

The story on DeSoto Sun's local page 3 this morning announces a scam "is being perpetuated nationwide." The story, by-lined Ken Kleinlein (neither staff writer nor regular columnist) comes to readers in the form of a "letter" that claims to be from a victim. Kleinlein claims to be a detective. Too bad he didn't do a little Internet investigation that would have taken him directly to Snopes.com.

The letter has all the hallmarks of fake news: first-names only, city and date unreported, credible source (a police report, maybe?) omitted, all presented by a naif. A real newspaper editor would have spotted the holes in this story on first reading.

"Ken Kleinlein," if that's his real name, posted the identical column on a local blog last month ("Red County: Grassroots Politics from the Center Right") with "thanks" to a NYPD officer for "contributing" to his report. Evidently, the blog wasn't enough glory, so Kleinlein sought out the "mainstream media" to get his "story" and picture in the public eye. Here's a more credible version -- one with less writer's ego, front and center.

According to Snopes, the baloney-detection site, the incident did happen -- in Sydney, Australia. Over a three-day period last October, a rip-off artist delivered gift baskets to homes and requested a $3.50-delivery fee, payable via credit card swiped in a portable electronic-funds-transfer gizmo; later in the day, he used the EFT information to clean out bank accounts. The con man was arrested and charged "with ten counts of fraud," New South Wales Police said in press release.

Kleinlein's "story" appears word-for-word on more than a dozen Internet sites -- strongly suggesting he and his NYPD buddy are unlikely to be the original writers. That alone makes the "detective" guilty of presenting the words and work of others as his own (or his friend's), and not properly crediting the source. His eighth-grade Language Arts teacher taught him the scam is called plagiarism.

Local editors have been duped -- and not by someone terribly clever -- because they failed to require this columnist-sprung-from-the-woodwork to provide the basics of any news story: who, what, when, where along with an independent source for verification.

Readers have been scammed because they have been fed an urban legend in the making instead of real news. Sure, warn readers of of a clever scam, but don't lie and exaggerate ("being perpetuated nation wide" and "especially prevelant around the holidays"). Get a real reporter to interview "Detective Ken Kleinlein," and then verify, verify, verify.

Windy Sailing Column Shows Poor Taste

Imagine you own a chain of small-town newspapers. Times are tough, advertising revenues fall, and you are forced to fire half the staff. Your internal memos on the matter “mourn” the loss of “family.”

But soon enough, a particularly lovely day in December dawns (remember, it’s Florida). You decide to “take a vacation day” (!) from your labors and head over to the yacht club where you untie your sloop for a sail around the harbor.

Question: Do you write a column about it?
Answer: Yes, if you are Derek Dunn-Rankin.

Comment: Enjoying his sail under “a milk-blue sky” is one thing. Writing about what is often regarded as an elitist activity is simply rubbing the staff’s nose in the disparity between Dunn-Rankin’s holiday and theirs.

Perhaps feeling a twinge of conscience about spending 20 inches of ink waxing poetic about his personal pursuit of happiness under sail, the company patriarch opines: “If I could get just a few thousand of the millions shoveling driveway snow to spend a few minutes aboard, we would once more have a shortage of houses for sale.”

Oh my! One tack out of the yacht club and consumers would be back on board! Having a full-time job that pays more than collecting aluminum cans and the means to qualify for a mortgage aren't part of the Dunn-Rankin sailing-to-economic-recovery plan.

If, after considering how many of his laid-off staff had to forgo yacht club memberships this year, Dunn-Rankin still decides to publish his lyric to leisure, then he should at least send the column to a decent copy editor. A “tiller arm” and “sheet line” are both silly redundancies. (A tiller is an arm and a sheet is a line, so there’s no need for the pompous inclusion of the extra noun disguised as an adjective.) He describes the boat’s “heel to the wind,” giving a backwards description of what happens when wind moves over sail. (By sailing left or right of the wind’s head-on direction, a sail produces different wind pressures on the front and back of its air-foil shape. The differential propels the boat forward. In the process, the boat heels away from, or “off,” the wind source, not into it.) But these are minor points.

The bigger point is Dunn-Rankin left his better judgment on the dock when he decided to tell his former employees and former advertisers how much fun he’s having, and suggest that all their problems would be solved if they'd only take a little sail, just like he does.

Plagiarism Operates at Fawcett Hospital

There's a new way to treat heartburn in our little town. Local physician Alvaro Bada says this about it: This procedure can significantly improve quality of life for our patients. Many reflux patients are unable to drink carbonated beverages, caffeine or eat rich foods or fruit without triggering reflux.

Strangely enough, Dr. William E. Kelly Jr. at Henrico (Virginia) Doctors' Hospital, describes the same procedure this way: EsophyX can signficantly improve quality of life for our patients. Many reflux patients are unable to drink carbonated beverages, caffeine or eat rich foods or fruit without triggering reflux.

And amazingly, Dr. Paul Cirangle of San Francisco explains the procedure like this: EsophyX can signficantly improve quality of life for our patients. Many reflux patients are unable to drink carbonated beverages, caffeine or eat rich foods or fruit without triggering reflux.

Back in our town, Bada's partner, Domingo Galliano, adds to the discussion: Recent studies of EsophyX have shown that the procedure can reduce patients' dependence on medications with 80 percent of patients remaining symptom free after two years and experiencing a dramatic improvement in their quality of life. We are very excited to be able to offer our patiewnts the same incredible benefits with minimal risk.

But Kelley in Virginia "said" it first, back on June 23: Recent studies of EsophyX have shown that the procedure can reduce patients' dependence on meedications with 80 perc ent of patients remaining symptom free after two years and experiencing a dramatic improvement in their quality of life. We are very excited to be able to offer our patiewnts the same incredible benefits with minimal risk.

Even the San Francisco doctor said it more than a month before the local guys got around to saying it: Recent studies of EsophyX have shown that the procedure can reduce patients' dependence on meedications with 80 perc ent of patients remaining symptom free after two years and experiencing a dramatic improvement in their quality of life. We are very excited to be able to offer our patiewnts the same incredible benefits with minimal risk.

There's quite a bit more, but you get the picture.

So, what's so bad about this obvious marketeering? Michelle Ritter, the local writer, put her name on the story and failed to use quotes or attributions; doing so tells Charlotte Sun newspaper readers she wrote it. That's clearly a lie for which there is a specific name: plagiarism. But the plagiarist doesn't sully only her own reputation; she draws others into the journalistic muck.


Ritter puts prefabricated quotes into the mouths of the local doctors, as if they had really said those things.

And Feeling Fit editor Jennifer Wadsworth publishes the fake as a news feature, probably unaware that Ritter is now a three-time winner in the 2008 plagiarism scorecard.

All in all, about a full third of the wordage Ritter claims as her own has a common source with the public relations writers for hospitals in Virginia and California. Old Word Wolf suspects a manufacturer's brochure or news release. At least the California and Virginia practitioners distributed generic notices, possessing an ethical compass that steered them away from claiming the words and work of others as their personal productions.

In other medical news, the Lake Placid Journal's edition of Feeling Fit wants readers to recognize the herb known as St. John's Wort. Here is the identification.

Write to Fit

In the old days, stories too long for the space allotted were cut from the bottom , giving rise to the tradition that reporters organize information in what came to be known as the inverted pyramid. Give the important stuff first (the 5-W lede), with details to follow. Today's headline on the Dear Abby column is an perfect example. The word "etiquette" is too long for the space. Cut off the end, all those repetitive "t's," and voila! a fit!

Five Ways to Spot Fake News

Congratulations to Sun Newspaper’s business editor, Terry O’Connor. Relatively new to the staff, he makes a front-page splash this morning with a publicity agent’s dream. He interviews a local construction company president, the president’s son, and a county parks director in order to describe – in glowing terms – the firm that built Sun Coast Media Group’s (O'Connor's boss) own addition to its telephone-company building in Murdock.

Unfortunately, it’s all fake news. As the reader swims through a sea of up-beat, uncritical praise for this sterling firm, she senses the editorial lard – a story greased with quotes that broadly support the paper publisher’s own policy of reporting whenever possible that the economic water glass is half full. It’s fake news, from start to finish. So, how does a critical reader spot fake news?

The first step is to look for the news nugget. If readers can’t find genuine news, usually near the top of the story, then all the words that follow may well be ersatz news. In this case, the not-news is presented as the grizzled construction mogul advising President-elect Barack Obama to “take care of our veterans [ ... give] them an affordable house.”

It’s patriotism. It’s history. It’s good intentions. It’s a WWII vet’s recasting of the past as a viable future. But news? No – maybe a sympathetic set-up for the soft feature that's about to swallow the news hole – but definitely not news. (If it were a real news story, O’Connor might somewhere have compared the number of returning WWII vets -- 16 million -- with 2.3 million troops since the 1991 Gulf war, and he might have pointed to the fallacy of wishful thinking as economic stimulus.) A real news hook might be that the county last week awarded its 25th contract to the company, or that the firm has merged or acquired or changed in some way. None of this is in evidence.

The second step is to look for hard facts, data, and numbers. Not too far down, O’Connor reports the company president says his firm's gross revenues declined from about $20 million two years ago to about $10 million this year. Gross revenues are a suitably vague measure of a privately held business. What the company’s profits actually are relative to gross sales is “company business [that] stays in the company,” as the patriarch puts it. O’Connor fails to note if this construction firm is the only one in town (which his feature makes it sounds like), or if similar firms are experiencing similar 50-percent declines. It’s one thing to put a rosy glow on the recession with profits generated by a $10 million base. It’s quite another thing to survive with two trucks and a Rolodex. The reporter fails to compare this firm's situation with any of the two or three major developers who have gone bankrupt or pulled out of major local projects. His hed says the contractor is "built to handle adversity," but nothing in the story supports this claim -- except that it thrives on government contracts: See Step Five, below.

The third step is to look for a cross section of what folks say about the “news.” The writer rounded up a county parks director (to give high praise for the nice construction company), a banker who needed a new building (to give high praise for the nice construction company) and the company president’s son (to give high praise for the nice construction company his dad owns and which has written him a paycheck since he was 10 years old).

The fourth step is to beware of “chamber of commerce” press release statements woven into the text. O’Connor manages to get the man who built his own boss's new building to say “Charlotte County is one of the finest places in Florida situated between two huge growing metro areas.” It probably didn’t take too much prompting to get him to add, “Now more than ever, it’s a very affordable community. It’s beautiful and you’re not in the rat race.”

The fifth step is to look for the reporter’s dig. This one didn’t dig; he surfed. He used the construction firm’s Web site and copied its list of projects. Some are generous and big-hearted sounding: “support areas for Charlotte County Homeless Coalition,” and a safe house expansion for the homeless. What the reporter fails to report is the millions made seem to stem mostly from local-government funded construction. Tax revenue funds this firm’s profits – and the head of that firm is urging the next president of the United States to build bridges and homes for returning vets.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with government construction. OWW is a big liberal when it comes to homeless shelters, county parks, city marinas, and air-conditioned “justice centers.” She just wishes the reporter had made it clear this featured contractor’s revenue stream flows directly from taxpayer.

There’s no evidence of digging when a reporter fails to report on lawsuits, liens, layoffs, settlements, or even one less-than-perfectly satisfied client. There’s no evidence of digging when the reporter fails to investigate exactly what it was that happened in Mississippi to make the contractor decide he was “spread too thin.” There’s no evidence of digging when readers are given no hint of interests overlapping, country and yacht clubs in common, or mutual business interests between publisher and the featured gentleman of the day.

So what happened here? A promising new reporter, fast promoted to business editor, gets roped into his publisher’s dilemma. As a result, readers are asking if the cash-strapped, layoff-prone newspaper has had to exchange a little free, uncritical publicity -- and a reporter's soul -- for a contractor’s debt.

Find 10 Things Wrong ...

It was a game page in Highlights for Children: Find 10 Things Wrong With This Picture. Maybe that's what those fun-loving Charlotte Sun editors have in mind. Here's three to get you started on today's paper:

Front page: The headline writer tells readers "Community leaders see local economic recovery peaking through the clouds."

Front page: A reprint from Fort Myers News-Press (implying that two copy desks read it? ) reports a stolen elf from a holiday lawn display. The mock drama of the mini-featurette is lost the moment the writer reports the scene was "grizzly." That's supposed to be grisly.

At the national roundup page: An event in Dale City, Prince William County (Virginia), is placed under a Washington, D.C., header. Even a sleepy copy editor should instantly recognize that D.C. doesn't have counties.

The rest of the 10 Things Wrong are scattered throughout the paper in all the usual spots: cutlines, overlines, the home-grown editorial, and in-house ads. Happy hunting!

Desperately Seeking Cute Trumps Accuracy

Since the headline doesn't refer to anyone in the story -- no one expresses desperation in this light rewrite of a prepared city council agenda -- and since the headline doesn't fulfill the requirements of a grammatical English sentence, and since it misprepresents the story, readers can consider themselves officially irrelevant. It's the copy desk's need to be cute that counts. It's the desk's need to show she/he has seen a 23-year-old grade B movie that matters. That's just plain desperate.

Gondo "Columnist" Pays for His Material

Back in high school, busy students logged onto www. free-essays dot com to download five or ten pages analyzing theme, conflict and imagery in The Scarlet Letter or "A Rose for Emily." When they got to college, those same busy, busy students hooked up with www. college-papers dot com. For eight or ten dollars a page, they could put their own names on “nonplagiarized essays,” complete with footnotes and bibliographies on such topics as “Comparative Motifs in The Pearl Poet and Sir Gawain,” or “Microeconomic Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of NAFTA,” and “The Psycho-Social Impacts of Gay Adoption.” Now, thrust into the real world of work, what’s a busy, busy high-school-valedictorian-college-grad-cum-laude now a very busy, busy CPA to do when he needs a nicely written newspaper column?

An Oak Harbor, Wash., firm, Mostad and Christensen Inc., comes to the rescue! For a tad less than $500 a year, the nice folks there e-mail a monthly assortment of tax and financial articles, edited to about 300 words and suitable for “publishing in local newspapers or community publications under your firm’s name,” according to the company’s Web-sales site.

And, my goodness! How well this system serves all involved – as long as you don’t count the reader – is evident right here in today's Gondolier, business page, front and center. D. Grady Hough Jr., who earns his living as a CPA in Venice gets “business columnist” status to publish the 300 words he bought last month from Mostad and Christensen. His purchase price includes the privilege of saying the essay is his own work, even though it isn’t.

Apart from the bleak ethics of lying about whether you wrote something – called plagiarism except when semi-winked at by contractual arrangements between consenting adults – this article requires the newspaper’s entire staff of writers, editors, and publishers turn a blind eye to the deception it works on their community of readers. Most newspapers, when running this sort of drek, put a box around it and display the words “paid advertisement” in a place easily discerned by readers who like their business news gathered and presented by trained journalists who make at least a pretense of objectivity.

As for the CPA: He’s in a field that requires a high level of trust. Old Word Wolf can’t trust him to admit where he got his “news” or acknowledge that he didn’t research it, write it, or check its accuracy. And we're supposed to trust him with our taxes?

On a jollier note ...



Cutline: Trees bring season joy

So that's why the holiday is happy!

Half a Name Isn't the Whole Story

There wan't enough room in the Charlotte Sun's state-roundup page to give the city's whole name, so half would have to do. The result: readers are briefly led to believe that an institution of higher learning in Pennsylvania has gone into the fowl-ordinance business.

Local hed style: York, Louis, Barbara, and Paul.


Back at the front page, a local writer
announces that "Today the U.S. Census released the first set of
three-year American Community Survey data ..."

The problem is, the data came out yesterday. Sun readers are accustomed to getting their news "whenever." The shock of reading -- at 7:30 a.m., no less -- what happened today was too much for Old Word Wolf.

Doing Too Much With Too Little

The DeSoto Sun's front page designers couldn't decide exactly what the story says (there's actually a good reason for that -- see next graf), so they opted to play it both ways:

Illegal immigration is down
Refugees keep on coming.

We can hear it now: "They'll figure it out once they read the story."

Uhm, no. We can't figure it out once we read the story. The opus opens with lots of stuff about illegal immigrants -- the news hook is 17 Cubans came ashore last month, beaching on an island at the fringes of the newspaper's circulation area. The problem is, Cubans aren't illegal immigrants. And the headline about "refugees" seems to be taken from the table, lifted from a Web-aggregator's data showing the top five countries that have been sending refugees -- all perfectly legal arrivals -- in the last decade.

To add to the confusion, the refer trailing the story announces "Lee County opts not to participate in 287 (g) program" Readers expecting to solve the mystery of what exactly a 287 (g) is turn eagerly to page 4.

No where in the inside story is a 287 (g) program defined or explained. The cops complain about it, calling it unflattering names. Administrators complain about it, saying it doesn't work. Officials, some 20 inches into the story, call it a "seminal problem," whatever that is. But no where, no where, no where can the reader learn what the heck a 287 (g) is.

Nice work, guys. Maybe if writers asked someone to actually read their stories before they landed on the front page, Sun readers wouldn't be quite so busy wondering if their $200 subscriptions are worth renewing.

And, a lot of papers have piled up since OWW was away....

Just skimming the top of the stack: back on November 30, Susan Hoffman went to the dog show and got the name of every champion, owner and city. But Samantha Williamson, sent to cover actual children, couldn't muster more than a "This little girl..." and "This little boy..." for the"Catch and Release Fun at Lake Katherine" cutlines. The dogs have names -- they're champions. The kids, well, never mind.

Where There's Smoke, There's Anonymous Sources

Anonymous sources are wonderful. No names to spell correctly, no towns or occupations to identify. Every quote is a gem of relevance that fully supports the reporter's prepackaged premise, lede.

Such is the case with today's Big Story (not): "Smoke Out ... a day to help smokers quit" by Susan Hoffman. But even before the array of "one woman said" bits, Hoffman seems to making it up, from the very start.

Smokers huddle close to the walls of a building, or sit together under a shelter far from the door.

Hoffman doesn't tell readers which building she saw, which "shelter" she visited or when she made this foray into smokers' huddles.

For starters, Arcadia has shelters? Pray tell: are they of the bus, bomb or homeless type? Not a one, as far as we know.

For seconds, here in Our Little Town, chawing, smoking, and spitting are considered fundamental rights. Hoffman's Big City stereotype of huddled outcasts is pretty hard to find, if it exists at all. Outdoor smoking in these parts typically happens in parking lots, leaning up against a pickup truck, or under one of our magnificent grandfather oaks. Tell me where Hoffman found huddled outcasts, please.

It has made many smokers paranoid. None of the smokers approached for comments realized the Great American Smokeout day was approaching, but [sic] none planned to quit, even for a day.

"I haven't thought about quitting at all," said one man. "I enjoy it too much." One woman said she had actually quit for five months while she was in the military service and had no choice. "But as soon as I got out, I strated right back up again."

Several said the cost of cigarette is not much of a deterrent here. "But if I lived in New Jersey or up north where it's $5 or $6 for ap ack, then I'd think about it," one said. Most of them said they don't think about smoking while they're working. "As long as we're busy, you don't even have time to think about it," one woman said.

And who, exactly, is "one woman" who speaks for all of the smokers? Old Word Wolf is just cynical enough to think she smells, not smoke, but a story the writer merely phoned in. That is, Hoffman was ordered to write a story that's not news but the calendar and an organizational agenda handed her editors an easy topic. And rather than actually report, Hoffman took the easy way out, complete with faked stereotypes and faked sources to tell faked news.

School Board Story: All Show, No Tell

The local school board is starting an on-line program of classes aimed at reducing its student drop-out rate. So, exactly what is the school drop-out rate? No telling.

Which classes in the curriculum are part of the program? How many students are expected to use the program? No telling.
What does the program cost? No telling.
How does a student enroll? Who supervises the work? No telling.
Where is it to be installed? When does the program begin? No telling.

In an unrelated story inside the paper, the school district's superintendent, Adrian Cline, show-and-tells his own FDR mementos to the local historical society. Cline comments that FDR was able to hide his disability from the public because "he had an understanding with the media. You'd never see that today."

Actually, Cline himself seems to have a pretty good understanding with the media. "Reporter" John Lawhorne has been carefully schooled: No telling anything.

So what's wrong with protecting your friends?

Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism describes its pretty well: journalists ... must maintain allegiance to citizens and the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor. This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization's credibility, the implied covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers.

John Lawhorne just doesn't get it.

In other news, the Lake Placid Journal breaks a really big story. It looks like God will be pursing other interests.

Muddy Mess Gets Big Play

For some reason, the DeSoto Sun seems to be relying more and more often on amateur photography to fill its pages. The result is clearly inspired by the bulletin board at the laundromat rather than the tenets of photojournalism, the principles of page design, or even the urge to be reader friendly.

Instead of one story-telling shot, well composed and thoughtfully selected, the page pourer (I can't bring myself to say "editor" or even "designer") uses nine muddy, back-lit, identically posed gangs to report a local hospital golf benefit. "Line 'em up against the wall and shoot!" seems to have been the command. Even the guys who couldn't stay for the photo op are included as "not shown."

This muddy, unreadable, uninviting report straddles the "double truck," the newspaper's center page -- prime territory for good design.

And just in case you're thinking this page is a fluke, here's page 14 in the same edition:

Small-time papers like to "get everyone's name in." The old wisdom was this would draw in readers. Please. No one wants to look at, much less actually read, a page presented as a hodge podge of random heads in hats except the principals themselves.

In reality, there are more readers -- and more appreciation for the nature of the event -- when the kids in charge of pouring InDesign plan an inviting, you-gotta-read-me layout. Quantity does not equate to quality.

As for reading, apparently the editors didn't. Every cut line -- all five of them -- in this hodge podge contains the refrain "... vets at the Arcadia Veterans Day parade Tuesday." OK, we get it; all the pictures are of the vets at the Arcadia Veterans Day Parade Tuesday.

Preacher Busy Plagiarizing, Part 2

Is the type too small to read? Then just go to the Web page from which this column has been copied. You'll have to scroll down past last week's plagiarism (read our Nov. 1 post, below) to reach this week's plagiarism. But it's all there.

Old Word Wolf wrote DeSoto Sun editors to point out that Patrick Elmore, pastor of two United Methodist Churches in these parts, had appropriated the copyrighted material of another writer. Nonetheless, Elmore's Plagiarism Part 2 has been awarded six columns in today's paper.

... Here’s the rest of the sermon: ...

It’s clearly the culture and thus acceptable to plagiarize at the Charlotte Sun, DeSoto Sun, and such. How does Old Word Wolf know this? Take a look at who's still "on the payroll."

Last week, Laura Schmid, David Dunn-Rankin and Chris Porter, principal editors of the DeSoto Sun and Charlotte Sun, were notified of Patrick Elmore’s cut-and-paste Saturday sermon. This week, they played Elmore’s Saturday sermon, part 2, plagiarized from the same copyrighted source, large and wide. Plagiarist’s Status: still on the payroll.

A couple of weeks back, staff writer John Lawhorne, used his byline instead of crediting Wikipedia for his “research” into a band’s history. Plagiarist's status: still on the payroll.

Last month, Gerald A. Rogavin, writing for the Gondolier Sun, a sister publication, did a crude plagiarism of a New York Times newspaper article. Plagiarist’s status: still on the payroll.

Susan Cairo, who plagiarized a park service brochure rather than write her own copy about Myakka State Park: still on the payroll.

Barbara Oehlbeck, who plagiarized the History Channel back in May for “her” piece on Decoration Day, was recently awarded a bylined article announcing a USF award to a plant biologist. Plagiarist’s status: Well, you get the point.

These are only the most recent examples of nearly three dozen cases of plagiarism (including the occasional editor and not just freebie "columnists") that we have posted in this blog since launching about a year ago in response to more than a dozen earlier cases that were reported to the publishers and largely ignored.

The publisher’s and editor’s culture at Sun Coast Media Group conglomerate condones – encourages – plagiarism by continuing to accept these articles without consequences for the plagiarists. Plagiarism is cheap, easy, and there’s no real penalty, right? Staff writers, editors, "men of god," and correspondents have all at one time or another cut-and-pasted their way to a byline at these papers. Here, there’s no expectation that the “journalists” investigate, check, attribute, or otherwise play fair with readers, subscribers, advertisers, much less the actual the ethics of publishing.