Another Mistake In Coverage of Woods Drama

As the number of women claiming to have mounted Tiger Woods continues to, uh, mount, so does the number of mistakes made in the coverage of the scandal. So far, the official tallies: Nine mistresses linked to Woods; three mistakes in the frenzy of media coverage caught by the Proofreader.

As you can see above, this article from the ABC News Web site, about porn star Holly Sampson and pancake waitress Mindy Lawton being the eighth and ninth women to publicly join the Woods harem, is missing a word. While recounting the claims of an alleged Tiger Woods mistress, ABC News omitted the word "other." Rather than "...regularly saw each for sex," the phrase should read "...regularly saw each other for sex." Yeah, it's a stupid mistake, no doubt, which was probably made in the haste to stay out in front of this labyrinthine story, but it's a mistake nevertheless.

Folks, the Proofreader needs help in evening out the numbers here. As it stands now, there are many more alleged Woods mistresses than there are found mistakes in the coverage of the drama. If you notice any printed mistakes in the Woods drama coverage, please e-mail the Proofreader directly.

The good news is: The Proofreader is leading 3-2 in the less glorious mistakes-to-waitress ratio. Three mistakes (two in one article by Slate and the above mistake by ABC News) to one cocktail waitress and one pancake waitress. It's interesting how the media are classifying the waitresses in this soap opera with such exact specificity. Perhaps they know that still more waitresses (who serve specific things besides cocktails and pancakes) are waiting to divulge their affairs with Tiger Woods to them.

Medley of Blagojevich Misspellings

Okay, it's not a word that ever popped up on the old Speak & Spell, so many of the common folk are having problems spelling it on blogs, message boards, news comments sections, etc. But, wait. Shouldn't professional journalists be able to spell the name of Illinois Governor Rod. R. Blagojevich correctly?


Yes, they should be able to, but frequently they don't, as you can see in the screen shot above of an article dated December 11, 2008 on CBSNEWS.com, which features two misspellings of the name, highlighted for your viewing convenience.

Granted, his wasn't a household name till a few weeks ago, but the guy has been in the news--and even leading the news--every day since. Pro fact checkers, copy editors, proofreaders: let's get on-point and spell the guy's name correctly. Enough slacking off. In fact, most news organizations don't make the mistake, which is laudable. But too many do.

We've seen it before and now you can see some more, from big-name media companies to small-name. This post features a medley of articles that incorrectly spell the governor's surname "Blogojevich" in headlines, decks and the bodies of articles. And in almost all cases, the name is spelled correctly elsewhere in the article. Really? Yep, really.

Here's a mistake in the headline of an article dated December 30, 2008 from ABCNEWS.com, which has since been corrected.


Next, we have a misspelling in a Web exclusive opinion article dated December 12, 2008 on Newsweek.com.

To keep things "fair and balanced," a mistake in the deck of an article dated December 15, 2008 on FOXNEWS.com.


A mistake in the headline of an article dated December 17, 2008 on the Web site of The San Francisco Chronicle.

Another headline mistake from an article dated December 11, 2008 on the Web site of The New York Observer.

After getting it once right in the piece, here's a misspelling in the second-to-last line of an article dated December 12, 2008 on Yahoo! News. (The pics below are sans a good portion of the article's body)

And, finally, a mistake in the body of an article dated December 16, 2008 on the Web site of The L.A. Daily News.


Several of these mistakes have lingered online for multiple weeks. That's ample time for them to have been noticed and corrected, but for some reason that hasn't happened in most cases.