A careless reporter, a sleepy news copy editor and the desk supervisor at The Record of Woodland Park combined to produce an embarrassing typo yesterday.
In a story about the Baha'i faith on L-6 in Local, the reporter, Hugh R. Morely, misspelled it as Baja'i in the second paragaph. The copy editor, probably just awakened from a nap Sunday night, grabbed a hold of the misspelling and put it in really big letters in the main headline.
The desk supervisor completely missed it. The newspaper is so pathetic these days, no correction ran today on Page A-2.
On July 6, 2016, Gannett, the nation's biggest newspaper chain, paid the Borgs $40 million for North Jersey Media Group (The Record of Woodland Park, Herald News, NorthJersey.com, (201) magazine and 50 weeklies). Stephen A. Borg, publisher for a decade, oversaw the biggest downsizing ever. Local news declined, errors mounted and most employees were denied raises. Gannett replaced Editor Deirdre Sykes, revised The Record's website and redesigned the print edition, cutting another 350-plus jobs.
Hugh Morley is one of the best, hardest working writers in the business department, but the oldtime copy editors who no longer work there knew his copy was full of land mines in the spelling of names and places. I missed my share, but knew to look for them at least.
ReplyDeleteOf course, no one will come down on Morley for his sloppy, often inaccurate copy. If anyone notices the headline typo, the copy editor will find it on his performance review. For some reason, reporters are revered at The Record, even if their stories have huge wholes, raise lots of unanswered questions and are downright inaccurate. Do you know what is the source of this respect the editors have for reporters, Aaron, even the incompetent ones?
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