Thursday, July 9, 2009

Copy Editors Distracted By Hot Bodies, Perhaps?

Right on the heels of Tuesday's post is another mistake you can file in your "copy editors distracted by accompanying photo" box, which you no doubt have. (Doesn't everybody?) Unfortunately, though, for the much-maligned Newsday Web editors, the Proofreader has learned his lesson about giving out Mulligans, so there won't be any more of that nonsense.

Lately, there's no shortage of nonsense from Newsday.com, although this mistake is almost excusable. Evidently, like what perhaps happened to the editors out in Portland, Newsday Web editors were so engrossed with the hot bodies in the picture above that they missed the spelling error in the first line of the deck. Hot bodies or not, these are pro journalists, so the mistake is officially inexcusable.

"Hubub" is close, but not right. They were looking for hubbub, two Bs, as everyone who's not busy checking out the bodies of Kara DioGuardi (who is that? Seriously. The Proofreader's not wasting time to Google her name) and Bikini Girl. However, it's possible that the editors there weren't distracted by the scantily clad bodies and, rather, just aren't that competent because they've been making a lot of mistakes lately.

2 comments:

Slapinions said...

Kara is a judge on American Idol. But since I (a 35 year old man) have a larger chest than her I'm not sure what was so exciting that it would distract the copy editor.

Love your site by the way. I enjoy lurking here.

J. Alfred Proofreader said...

Slapinions:

Thanks for the props--much appreciated.

I gathered Kara was an "AI" personality, but what else is she famous for having done? Is she a singer or something?

As for the mistake, there is another hot body in the pic, but I tend to agree with you because the Newsday Web editors have been continually letting mistakes slip by of late.