The other day, a huge group of children came through the newsroom on a tour of the paper. They were cute kids, probably third or fourth grade, and seemed to actually be interested in what was going on (which is a big change from the high school students who often come through).
One of the kids, while learning how the newspaper works, had this question: “Where would the internet get news if there weren’t any newspapers?”
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The Stranger, an alternative paper from Seattle, recently ran a list of its corrections/regrets for 2008. Among my favorites:
Dan Savage, the editorial director of The Stranger, does not regret a single word he wrote in the wake of Proposition 8. He does regret the dismal state of reading comprehension today, as evidenced by the confused reaction to some of what he wrote. Mr. Savage would like to state for the record: “Your inability to read isn’t evidence that I’m racist.”
Leading up to today, I had been a little nervous about attending the Society of Professional Journalists conference. I tend to feel somewhat out of place at these things, and you know I get stressed out when I don’t know what to expect or exactly what I’m supposed to do.
Now that I’m here though I’m having a lovely time. I went to three seminars in this afternoon, and have at least two more to attend tomorrow. Weirdly, the one I’ve found most interesting was all about copyright law and the internet. Fascinating right? But the thing is, it really was. The time just flew by and I feel like I have a much better handle on how copyrights work, specifically with Web content.
The other two seminars I attended were about blogs — probably a little basic but I got some good ideas for blogs for our paper — and new technologies in journalism. At the beginning of that one, I was skeptical about how useful it wold be, but there was one idea I got that was probably worth the whole hour. I think we may be able to use Twitter in a good way, so I’m excited about that.
In a way, I wish I could stay through Sunday, but the budget just doesn’t allow that many nights in a fancy schmancy hotel. So I’m planning to get as much as possible out of my two days here.
Okay, so here’s a word usage rule that bugs me to no end. And smart people mess this one up all the time. What’s wrong with this sentence? Louisa May Alcott wrote a book entitled “Little Women.”
Correct; the sentence should say the book is titled. Books, movies and plays have titles. I am entitled to read them. This mistake is super common. Even many of my coworkers — professional writers — improperly use entitled all the time.
The dictionary can help clear this up if you often find this confusing:
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