Image from www.thisisbroken.com
As long as there is the written word, there will be the written error. The news world is a platform that experiences an environment of fast, deadline writing to get the stories out in time. In the fast pace world that online news creates people are more prone to error as well. Errors will never be one hundred percent eradicated obviously, as even major news organizations make multiple errors almost every day.
The first example of an error I found after a light search around the major news sites was one on Macleans.ca. The story is "The Real Jesus?" by Brian Bethune, and the error I found was in the first sentence. The story begins "You can take Paul Johnson’s word for it. In one persona, the 81-year-old Englishman is a right-wing journalistic gadfly with an acid tongue and the inclination to use it, once dismissing Bill and Hillary Clinton as locked in “a dynastic marriage of ambitious swine.” This sentence is confusing grammatically, it begins "You can take Paul Johnson's word for it." I believe the intention is to say that you can trust Paul Johnson and this is why; however, it comes off confusing, and as the paragraph continues on I found myself asking what it is I can take his word for? The next paragraph does begin saying "So there’s no reason to doubt him when he claims there are more than 100,000 biographies of Jesus Christ in English alone," this seems like way too long of a stretch to forgive the grammatical error in the first sentence, which contains no subject for the word "it".
An example of a fast-paced online news story that needed to get out as fast as possible is this story from the Edmonton Journal, entitled "Spring Storm slams central Alberta". The lead in this story is as follows "A spring storm that left roads slick with ice and caused major traffic tie-ups and road closures on provincial highways Thursday night forced the City of Edmonton to send 40 sanding crews onto city streets to bring roads up to good driving conditions." Due to the quickness involved in getting this story online as fast as possible this lead suffered some grammatical errors more than likely resulting from quick editing. The lead runs on and might read better if broken up slightly like this - " A spring storm, that left roads slick with ice and caused major traffic tie-ups and road closures on provincial highways Thursday night, forced the City...." Breaking up this lead helps with the sentence clarity.
In his blog post "Editing Detective" Tyler Grant, Macewan University journalism student, points out that not only bloggers and independent writers are subject to error. "Once and a while though the big-shots miss something. If an error gets into print on a major news site, it's a little surprising. Its also nice to see that even the most learned makes mistakes." I agree with Tyler here that it is somewhat re-assuring to see the best of the best making errors, showing that everyone, from a five year old to a professional writer, is prone to error sometimes.
Dale, again? Sorry, but this is my work, and I have to make sure I'm quoted properly. My exact sentence reads: "Once in a while though, the big-shots miss something. If an error gets into print on a major news site, it’s a little surprising. It’s also nice to see that even the most learned make mistakes."
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